weekly mission email

Just some thoughts that came up in this past week:

Have you ever looked up the definition of an asp or a cockatrice? They
show up in 2 NE 21:8 my eyes have been opened; it puts a whole new
perspective on the scripture. An Asp is apparently a Cobra used by the
Pharaohs as a symbol of their power over life and death; and a
cockatrice is basically a basilisk. Whoa.
Also, what does 'driven' in the term "driven snow" mean? 1 NE 11:8

I never realized how much left-handed I was until I lost the use of my
left thumb for a day. (it was just a scratch; a flesh-wound) --don't
worry about it

Starbucks doesn't do the name-calling thing in Japan like in America?!
You got to be kidding, that was my favorite part!

Guess what! Missionary schedules are changing around the world! There
have been official changes from the Quorum and Presidency made to
P-Day, regular schedule, and the Key Indicators--to be effected almost
immediately. That includes two extra hours P-Day, and
decide-it-yourself-with-some-required-guidelines proselytizing days!
Wow, weren't we all surprised at that! We are literally receiving the
freedom to decide as a companionship when all our studies, eating,
exercising, planning, etc. will happen throughout the day; As long as
they happen for a certain (often slightly shortened) amount of time,
you're good, it seems. Well boi-Yeah!

food blog

Somebody bought us Kentucky Fried Chicken; whoa that was good. Pretty nostalgic

An elder made something off the top of a hat and it was actually almost delicious. 

Then I did the same 

You know that Golden Curry packet? Well, I subbed the potatoes for apples. Turned out pretty alright. Interesting flavor. 

food blog

I found a Denny's out here and I just had to try it out. Expecting
something similar to America, I was blown by receiving the exact
opposite: Denny's out here it an actual, semi-fancy dine in. They have
courses, and the waiters are on their toes for your every command, and
the courses are descent meals that aren't breakfast at all. I started
with a cheese Caesar salad, then Doria (hamburger w/cheese over rice
and surrounded by curry), then a huge American Devil chocolate
parfait. Wow. Pink lemonade was free refills.

Made an actual sandwich! Like, an actual sandwich! With tomatoes and lettuce! 

Made a potato bar! Like, with peppers, tomatoes, ground beef, onion, ranch and such! 

Healthy breakfast: granola, yogurt, berry sauce, and raised cracker 

Homemade udon 

To be continued...

We made actual hamburgers! Like, with tomatoes, lettuce, mushrooms and
such! Look at the beautiful progression

Classic ramen 

A cheap pizza! 

weekly email

Greetings from Ueda! This week:

I tried me some Anchovy Butter because it was on sale. It wasn't very
good; I wouldn't recommend it. 6 out of 10 would not recommend to a
friend.

Wow. So miracle of the week: we had this guy last week who just showed
up to Eikaiwa after we had literally posted to his apartment earlier
that day. This week, after Eikaiwa, he comes up to me and asks about
Mormons. He asked me if I could teach him about Christ. I was like,
"Yeah, I can teach you about Christ!" Then he asked about the BOM, and
if he could somehow get a copy. I was like, "Yeah, I can get you a
copy!" We set up a lesson for that Saturday. Come Saturday, we teach
him the whole Restoration and after some HTBT find out that he had
literally come from China to Japan in order to study and enter a
Christian church. Then he asked, "Do you guys have a reihai (church
service) I can come to?" Boom! Minds blown. We're too excited. "Yeah,
we have a reihai you can come to!" This guy is awesome. (BTW his name
is Kuri).

We woke up and Elder Miyaki was just dead. He just had no energy. We
were exchanging sheets for a service project and it was Zombie slow
the whole time. But it was A-OK; we got back to our regular get-up
right after that.

Elder Miyaki has taken a sudden interest in cursive. Well that's nostalgic.

We attended a sketchy origami class where people were literally going
nuts over a piece of copy paper folded into accordion shape. Ooooh
aaaahh

And that's about it!

愛しています！

カードん長老から
Elder Cardon

Hello from Ueda!

My companion believes burnt food contributes to cancer. Does it? 

We posted to the most random apartment and had a new guy show up to Eikaiwa that very night. Blessed. 

Virginia's Letter to the Sun (a New York newspaper way back in the day) and the Editor's reply is just astounding! Is Santa Claus real? Hmmm. We read the answer for Eikaiwa and it went way over everyone's heads, but it was still fun. Afterwards I told them the names for the different fingers and toes, which was a much more understandable activity. That was fun, too. 

old oreos! Mom, you got the better of me! I can't believe I didn't see it before! The expiration date! Aaaaaaahhh... 

Wow Friday in Saku City was blasted with blessings. 

First we got to meet a Less Active who everyone loves but dropped off the radar for a whole month, and we had a great time talking about various things over a great lunch. We get to visit him again the next day, and see him the day after at church! Yeah! (Ah, except he didn't show up to either of those. Oh well.) 

Then miracle of miracles! We went to find a service activity in Saku City, and the lady we met who was helping us has a daughter who actually stayed in Utah for a year (for an exchange program); the daughter attended church and such and just basically loved the Mormons! She has wanted to go to church ever since coming back, but hasn't been able to find the place. So.. here's the person we've been waiting for! Baptism! Hahahaha we'll see 

Later that night we thought we'd drop in on a person who hasn't actually been an investigator but everyone knows is super close to becoming one, maybe--if you can pin her down. Turns out she was having dinner, and invited us in to share it with her! (Her good friend graciously gave his presence to make this possible). It was awesome! Toward the end we got to explain some basic things (i.e. Lesson 1) and invite them to learn more. So.. that happened. Free dinner and unplanned lesson is good. 

Lastly we were honored with the presence of our mission president for church on Sunday! This is an extremely rare occurrence. Plus, it was his birthday the day before! We had a good time over sandwiches and cake, and he gave some good advice on what to do for LAs and missionary work in Ueda. Tea time for daaays. 

愛しています！

カードん長老から

Elder Cardon 

Food blog

I'm making some pretty bomb fried rice after picking up a trick from

AE. This stuff is loads better than what I was making before!

Hey look, Jacob, I made okonomiyaki, too! Here's my version: 
(PS my companion saw the sauce on the side and said, "That's so American." I thought it was way cool. I inserted diced carrots and mushrooms into this one--someday I'll visit an okonomiyaki restaurant and see all the different varieties.) 
PPS okonomiyaki is best made with thin slices of meat. Ever thought about trying out bacon?

My "healthier" breakfast: granola, banana, yogurt

Way to ruin my healthy breakfast--with unhealthy dessert. I received a bottle of 65% berry juice from a member; what's inside the other 35% of the bottle, the world may never know. Made in Hong Kong.

And a watery Berry Bowl is born! 

To be continued... 
(I ran out of space in the email due to me commentary.) 

It's amazing what you can buy for under $5 at the convenience store; here are some examples from this week: 

We were treated to a restaurant named Big Boy (Hamburg and Steaks; not to be confused with hamburger, I learned). All-you-can-eat salad, soup, curry, and drink, plus the menu item.

President Ishii visited Ueda for church on Sunday. It was also his birthday on Saturday. To celebrate both his gracious, rare presence and the happy occasion we went all out at the Food Meeting afterwards. Somebody was supposed to bring soft-shelled tacos but he never showed up.. but there's cake! And Rice Krispies! Sandwiches, garlic spaghetti and parsley spaghetti, o-Inari, apples, onigiri, and special Mochi squares!

food blog

This is literally the single best bowl of ramen I've ever had: miso
ramen. Don't be fooled by the separation of the broth and spicy sauce;
most every ramen I've seen out here has some oil and broth used, so
it's very common. The point is they're complimentary.

This is a fancy Mochi that once upon a time was reserved only for the Emperor to eat on New Year's.

We had these things around; if I microwaved them, and put some teriyaki chicken marinade on it, no lie they tasted exactly like chicken from ABC Mandarin. 

This is the cause for disaster; this is the worst thing I've ever eaten. 

We went to eat at the huge Karaage chicken place again! 

A cheap bowl from a Bento fast food place 

Missionary instant meal here: Natto, rice, cabbage, spices

We treated ourselves to "new Harvest" rice we received at Christmas. Made fried rice of it, then topped with Katsu. Soooo good. New Harvest rice is the most delicious rice in Japan.

weekly mission email

Heloooo from Uuuueda! Some updates: 

I've destroyed my health; I don't know if I can ever recover it again. This week, I made the single worst meal I've ever eaten, and I'm pretty sure it's slowly breaking down my cells with the pure gargliness of it. I can still taste the overbearing sense of expired corn on my lips. My stomach churns from the use of all the other slightly expired ingredients I threw together in the pot simply just to use them. Mayo couldn't fix it. Sauces couldn't fix it. Spices couldn't fix it. All my attempted reparations only served to jumble and make matters worse. Literal bleh. 

It actually reminded me of some of the things made playing Chopped at the house, for some reason.. 

We had a miracle call Thursday night. Our less active friend who dropped out of the books for an entire month suddenly calls and asks for a visit next week. Sounds like he's moving again, but this time he's actually going out of our boundaries so he wants to give a proper farewell or something like that. Really sad because he's literally my favorite person I've met since coming to Ueda. We'll keep in contact, bet on it. 

I attempted to play tennis and it was hard. 

I gave a talk in sacrament meeting! 

DTM was all testimony all around. Everyone was given ten minutes to share what they learned from reading the entire BOM over the holiday. Good feels. 

We made a mistake and it was extremely costly. On Saturday we were supposed to teach an Eikaiwa at 1:00, so we left extra early to make it on time. When we switched train lines, we hopped on the wrong one and ended up going clear out to Karuizawa! We had to go back to Komoro to switch again, then walk to Eikaiwa. But we walked to the wrong location! Apologizing profusely to the members, we walked another hour to get there--making us late almost two hours. We skipped lunch in favor of time, so afterward (being starved) we had to stop by somewhere and pick up some food. That really puts a damper in my wallet. I'll be a penny pincher from here on out. 

We had another miracle call on Saturday night. Our most promising investigator who went on a business trip to China for a weekend and has been MIA for several weeks now suddenly picked up his phone! He's A-OK and we actually made an appointment with him for the next day! Yesssss 

Whew! 

Ere you go. 
愛しています！

カードん長老から

Elder Cardon 

Aichi-ken, Nagoya-shi, Meito-ku, Itakadai 1-304

weekly mission email

Our P-Day changed for one week to Tuesday; we didn't even know about
it until Sunday, so there was no heads up I could have given. But not
a lot happened last week. Here's the recap:

It is tradition to watch the Rising Sun on New Year's morning. So we did that.

It's also tradition to eat Mochi to celebrate New Year's. We did that, too.

We spent this week not doing a lot of heavy missionary work because of
the difficulty proselyting around the biggest holiday of the year (at
least over here it is). So we spent one entire day deep cleaning the
apartment, several half days reading the entire BOM, and several days
visiting members and less actives wishing them a happy new year.
That's about it.

We had an exchange on Thursday. That was cool.

I completely forgot how gigantic American toothbrushes are. I almost
gagged the first time after several months of using the Japanese
toothpicks.

Happy New Year's!

Love,

Elder Cardon (^0^)v

food blog

We found a Chinese restaurant nearby that actually tastes a lot like
Ogden's Golden Jade, except it serves ramen and fancy little dishes
like kimchi and that small pudding dessert thing. The servings are
ginormous; this is I-don't-think-I-can-eat-this kinda big. Like, I'm
as full from eating one of these as I am at any all you can eat
restaurant. Best part: it all totals about $6.50

This week we ate a lot of snacks because we were indoors a lot 

And I made this: fried sweet potato, soy sauce chicken, and pineapple mmm 

And of course where would we be without e traditional Mochi and red bean paste on New Years 

And then this delicious breakfast: mincemeat with cumin and miso paste, then cabbage and green pepper and mushrooms, then two eggs--add pepper and spices