Exciting News For September

Baptism's and a Visit With Elder Whiting

9-7-14

Well this last week has been really good. Our new investigator excepted a baptism date for October 11th. He has been coming to sacrament meeting every week. Its very exciting although I may not get to be here for it because its happening next transfer and I have been here for 3 already (so btw if you ship anything you may want to do it through the mission home because I could be getting a transfer call in a few weeks). He had a problem with almost every part of the Word of Wisdom, coffee, tea, smoking, beer. But he has stopped doing all of it except for smoking. He is working on it but of course its a hard habit to stop. We may teach the stop smoking lesson with him. I have never had to teach it before.




A Special conference. Can you find me? 

This week we are going up to Morioka the zone head quarters for a few days. I have splits with the zone leaders up there and we have a special conference with one of the members of the 70. It looks like either me or my companion is also going to have an interview with him.

We usually actually take a 2 hour block for email, but it does go a lot faster. In my last area we just did about an hour a person, here we have 2 computers though so we can both email at the same time. Most of my companions like to write letters also though, so we usually spend some time doing that. But I just go and practice the piano.



Sister Missionary Baptisms

The sisters investigator is getting baptized this week, I was asked to play a special musical number, I threw together a rearrangement of my favorite hymn number 100. Hopefully it will go well, everyone keeps telling me it needs to be super spiritual because I am playing it right before she gets baptized, no pressure I guess. I asked if I could just do a medley of video game music but no body was down for that (sarcasm). 

Heres a selfie!

.
And a random one of me and my companion when we were at the aquarium, its of course right next to the ocean  (or sea of Japan as everyone kept telling me, but I still say its the ocean).  That was also taken before the hair cut.

 I did get a hair cut, its a lot shorter now.  Explaining how you want your hair  cut in Japanese is never easy

After My Hair Cut.  Just a Little-I say. So she gives me only a little hair.

In fact it reminded me of the first time I got a hair cut in this country. I was with a Japanese companion so he was no help to me, when the lady asked what I wanted I just used the one word I could think of for a hair cut and I just said "sukoshi" which means "a little bit" I was trying to mean just cut a little but I guess she took it the other way and the next thing I knew I had almost all of  I did get a hair cut, its a lot shorter  hair buzzed off. But there isn't really much I could do at that point. My hair grows back really fast anyways. 

I cant believe that I am going to hit the half way point and turn 20 next month.

love you guys!

-Elder Canepari

9-14-14

The sister missionaries baptism happened last Saturday. There was a couple things that came up but it ended up just fine. No one said anything bad about the piano I played so hopefully it invited the spirit because I was asked to play it at the President Smith training next week, I'll maybe see if my companion can get a video of it or something, but unfortunately I cant send videos so you guys will have to see it when I get back. We had both of our investigators come to the baptism which was really great. Our investigator with the baptism date said that he felt really good and he knows he needs to get baptized. Then they both came to church the next day and we were able to teach both of them a lesson after church. We taught them at the same time so me and my companion split up with 2 members to teach the lessons. I asked our other investigator to be baptized again during the lesson. He basically said no, but he is getting there. He said he was planning on coming to church again next week so that was good, but he has no desire to give up coffee right now. Our other investigator says he hasn't touched a cigarette since we went over the Word of Wisdom with him so that was great to hear. He is still all set for October 11th. This is the most productive I have ever felt so I started my mission. So much great things are happening. I had splits with the zone leaders this last week and they told us that our districts numbers are better than the rest of the zone combined, we need to make sure we are staying humble though.




Reading the Book of Mormon

Transfer calls actually change, we get called on Sunday every 6 weeks So the next one will be on the 28th. I was interviewed by Elder Whiting of the 70. He chose about a half dozen or so people from our zone to interview. The conference he gave was really good. The first part was just him answering questions, I learned a lot. He has such a wealth of knowledge about the gospel, every question that he answered he pulled something out of the Book of Mormon and then explained it so clearly. I wish we could have talked with him all day. He also called us all out on our obedience, he said we need to all be exactly obedient all of the time. Its so hard though, there are so many little things and rules that its so easy to not be exact with everything all of the time, in the interview he specifically asked me "what are you going to do about it?". It was really good though, I hope it was a wake up call for everyone else in the mission just as much as it was for me. He also said that he actually used to live in Sacramento and was in the North Stake. But this was like 30 years ago.


It was a very crazy last week, we went up to Morioka which is about a 4 hour train ride on Thursday morning for the conference, then the next day we had splits with the zone leaders, and then we had to get up at about 4 am on Saturday to catch a 5 am train back to Akita, we had to set up for the baptism that day.

Rugby

Rugby

But we also got to go see a rugby game, we were invited by one of the members, 2 of the Tongans in the branch play on the Japanese rugby team, I got a few pictures. One thing that was pretty cool was that after the game they were calling out ticket numbers and give out stuff for people that had the matching tickets. The last thing they had was pretty cool and everyone was really excited but it happened to be my ticket, lucky me I guess

My Winnings,  I would not be tempted!

I cant really do anything with it, so I just put it in my suitcase. The funny thing though was he read my name off of my name tag, so I guess that was some good publicity for us missionaries here in Akita, he was surprised that I could speak Japanese

I had never seen a rugby game before, its pretty brutal to watch sometimes, but it was much funnier than watching a football game.

I'll send another email with a few more pictures, but that's basically all for this week.

 Love you guys,
-Elder Canepari

[It was us and another zone combined which is why there was so many people. I'm in the top right corner in the grey suite.]

I ran into all of the Elder I was with in Ishinomaki on a train going to zone conference last week. Well, all except for Elder Whittle, but he is just Andrew now since he returned a few months ago.

A few more from when we went to the OGA Aquarium.



We have a transfer call every 6 weeks, but that doesn't actually mean we will be transferring. For example, I have been in Akita for 3 transfers now. But every 6 weeks we get a call from the mission president and he tells us who is transferring.

 Not to much new happened this last week, we got like 3 new investigators though, but they were mostly passes from the sister missionaries.

 Our investigator still looks ready for baptism. We taught him most of lesson 4 on Sunday which is the Commandments. He was good with all of them, although we haven't gotten to law of chastity yet, that's next time. Our other investigator  we visited last Saturday. He told us he prayed about baptism and he said he received an answer and it was that he doesn't need to be baptized. Obviously he does and that answer he thinks he received was from another source. We taught him the doctrine of baptism and after a long lesson he said he would be baptized, he said he would come to church next Sunday and that we could set a date for him after sacrament meeting.

That will be 2 baptisms next month. We also ran into a guy from Popanugueni (I have no idea how to spell it) some island near Africa I think. He speaks English and has been studying in Japan since about March. He is very interested in the church, we have a lunch appointment with him on Saturday, hopefully that will go well. I will be sad if I transfer, but I will find out on Sunday, my goal is to always leave an area better than where it was when I got there. I know that is definitely the case for Akita. When I got here we only had 1 investigator, now we have 5 and a baptism date, its really been great here.

Love you guys!

-Elder Canepari

We also found a cool T-Rex!