weekly letter

Transfers down to Tsu 

Tsu! No way, it's a port town! Ah, I smell the ocean! Smells so good, I love it. 

No way, we have a mini house! It actually has an upstairs. 

This area just went from a two companionship area with three dying missionaries, to one poor Elder Reis who's only been here a transfer and me. ...Alright! The entire district is pretty much whitewash, actually. Elder Reis is the oldest guy around. 

This week in adventures: : closing the Suzuka area apartment. "2-3 hours," they said. "Costco muffins," they said. Well, it took a good 6 hours, a scrawny muffin, some heavy Tetris skills, and lots of junk, junk, junk to clear before it got there. But! We got the best of the best from it: a GUITAR, bath mats, wall clocks, and all the packaged food in the apartment. The real question is, what was the guitar doing in the apartment in the first place? We're allowed to keep said guitar as long as it stays at the church, we practice on P-Days, and use what we learn for FHE's and stuff. So, this is gonna be awesome! 

 Elder Reis, my new comp 

Brazilian, from a southern countryside place I don't know. He speaks with thick tongues: accent, slight lisp, nasally, and the mumbles. But it's great, he's really excited to teach me Portuguese. He's only a transfer below me. Nice guy, great intentions, maybe needs to draw out a little more umph; 元気を出す。

Hahaha he has this Cute little bib for messy meals; it surprised me when said that he wanted to lose weight, and then proceeded to pull out a huge bowl of dark, thick, rich triple chocolatey brownie batter gooeyness. Whoa. Even if it's Brazilian, it's not necessary classified as "healthy"; ; Elder Reis loves teaching, loves helping;  he's a military man of a year or so; he basically learned to speak English entirely on his mission, what a stellar guy. It's gotten pretty good.; absolutely loves music. Plays the piano, sings a mean belted, nasally, almost strained yet lively hymn, and adores my dad since the moment I mentioned that he plays organ for church. We're trying to sing hymns in Portuguese and it's not too bad. Oh, gotta love him. 

愛しています！

カードん長老より

Elder Cardon 

food blog

Check out this Brazilian food that our favorite RC [recent convert] made for us. Took
all of four hours of slow cooking. Craaazy good stuff. If you look
closely, you can see a bit of Pig Ear towards the top. The biggest,
fleshy looking one.

Craaaaaaaaaazy stuff we bought at this weird foreign meat import store. 

Yeah. That includes pig feet, tail, heart, entrails, etc. also, quarts of blood on the side. 
chicken feet. 
Also ...is that ...a whole pig head? 
Every part imaginable, they have it. 
I actually got to see a bit of the raw stuff as they pulled out a fresh one and started chopping it up into the parts right inside the store, on the other side of the counter in front of us. You think you liked Biology class heart dissections? Get a load of the whole rump. 

Yeah... so actually I heard afterwards that pig is some of the most unhealthy thing you can eat. One time thing, probably. It tasted fantastic, though, not gonna lie. The ear was only slightly chewy after four hours of slow-cook. 

weekly mission email (xfer and new companion)

This week in Inuyama was actually my last.

Exchanges: we went with the District Leader and his bean (new
missionary) to Nagoya Station (the biggest in the mission) in order to
advertise for a new English class that they'll be teaching.
But first, we had to prepare the flyers. You can hand out a lot of
flyers on a busy corner, but not when they have the wrong address!
So we spent a decent chunk of time cutting and glueing, cutting and
glueing ...like two hours . There were so many. But we went out with
six white males to advertise English, handed out all the stacks, and I
heard that they had great success with a new 15 or so students showing
up the next day! Good to hear, because I was dead tired after three
hours of handing the flyers out.

Transfers! The call came Friday night. I'm dipping out of Inuyama!
Really sad, actually. I love the people here more than anywhere else.
But I'm off on an adventure!
Tsu! I'm off back down towards Yokkaichi. It's another branch, with a
load of foreigner members. I heard there may even be more foreigner
members than Japanese ones. That's going to be interesting.
My new companion is Elder Reis! Pronounced Elder Hays. He's Brazilian.
Yeah, third Portuguese transfer in a row! Four, almost. Hahahaha maybe
I'm destined to pick up more than I've done so far. I don't even know
what to do for language study anymore.


愛しています！

カードん長老より
Elder Cardon

weekly email

This week was full of right people at the right time. 

We got to Eikaiwa class on Wednesday totally drained. We'd been out in some heavy rain, things weren't going so well, and we were just feeling tired. Elder Patey takes me aside before we start the class and tells me, "You know that we're gonna see a miracle tonight. That just how God works. He takes your worst time and hands you something great." 

Well, some 20 min late walks in two new students: a Korean man and his Japanese tech teacher. And the Korean man asked us to teach him about the church afterwards. What. 

The ward had another big BBQ, to which we've been inviting everyone for weeks, and a lot of fun people showed up. That includes several new faces, to whom we got talking, and they showed tons of interest! Lots of homestay stories in California with Mormon families. 

Before going out one night, we had a long sincere prayer asking for guidance and the Spirit. We're inspired to go to Kani, up by a RC's house, and take the train up a little later in the night. One thing leads to another, and we got lost finding apartments. It's late, but we press on and push a couple more doors, and the last one opens up and listens to our entire schpeal called The Restoration. This guy had been invited to church before back in Brazil, and ended up attending the LDS congregation for about 5 months before moving to Japan. He hasn't liked any other church since. Has a small family and wants to knows what's right for raising his cute little girl.

Also, our Ward Mission Leader's wife was fantastic and brought a friend ready for baptism to church on Sunday. 

愛しています！

カードん長老より

Elder Cardon 

weekly mission email

Recently in Inuyama: 

So we got a referral from HQ a couple weeks ago, and were finally able to make contact with the referral just this last week. They actually live in this dirty, cobweb-filled cement block of a insane-asylum type apartment building, top floor.  The referrals turned out to be members, not investigators. They had moved recently from the Philippines and are recent converts into the church, but didn't know about our church building in Inuyama. So we committed them to a pick-up and off to church with us the next morning! It was great. 

As part of Public Affairs, we are volunteers to help fix translations for the quarterly City newsletter. A meeting was held this last week for that. I got a little lost during the talks, but the mingling afterwards went super well. One old guy, who is on the English translation squad, came up to me afterwards and requested that we come visit him sometime. His daughter had a homestay in Kansas with a Mormon family some years ago, and now they love us! Hahaha this is gonna be great. 

I'm plowing through right now working with my companion in some Brazilian family visits. My ears are fine-tuning and I can feel some clockwork adjusting going on, allowing me to understand at least the general flow of the conversations. Gift of tongues is real. This last visit was a first-timer, and I actually pulled off the impression that I totally understood Portuguese, but just had a hard time speaking it. Haha!! Elder Patey caught me up later and said that whenever the lady addressed me, she didn't hold anything back. Patey saved me from a couple pickles back there.. 

Cool miracle: on a late trip home we bumped into a teenage Philippine boy who has better English than Elder Patey. This boy moved to Japan about two weeks ago, is still working on friends and doesn't speak any Japanese. Bam! New bestie! Traded numbers and we'll be following up with him this week. 

愛しています！

カードん長老より

Elder Cardon 

food blog

Fried Cartilage, Broiled Sardine, Hawaiian Ham w/Avacado and Onion,
..., Conger Eel, and Diamond Squid Sushi

The equivalent of a hamburger in Japan. That's a raw egg on top of pineapple on top of processed cheese on top of saucey Hamburg, lettuce, rice. 

Mazesoba. Ramen that you mix yourself. 

Brazilian fried shell meat pastry.

weekly email

Elder Patey became an uncle this last week and he can't stop talking about it.
Also, his bike finally came after three weeks of waiting, but then it
got a flat after the first ride and we were stuck again until PDay.

One late night, we swung into a Brazilian restaurant with the intent
to get homie with the owners, and ended up talking to three families
and teaching one the entire Restoration lesson. We have follow up
appointments and phone numbers, connections, plus a new great place to
chill and meet all the foreigners who we've been missing for the last
couple transfers. It was great.

Another late night, we were headed home, already slightly past curfew,
and bumped into three foreigner ladies who asked us to help them
adjust their train tickets. Walking the same way, the conversation got
flowing and Elder Patey focused his conversation on the Chinese
graduate student while I got the two Thai undergrads. Well, the
Chinese graduate student turned out to be  golden (my ladies, not so
much). The former was all down for coming to church, learning about
Christ, participating in Eikaiwa, etc. She actually studied
Christianity or something before. She'll only be here for the next two
months, so we'll see what we can't do in that time.

We were having a lesson with a part Member family, teaching the
husband and getting to know him, when suddenly the wife mentions that
her job is to make scissors and then pulls out her extensive
(intriguing) collection. I didn't even know that most of those
scissors existed.

At church on Sunday, a Brazilian man walked through the door and
screamed miracles. He's new to Japan, an uber strong member, and wants
to help. We totally see him being one of the new Brazilian leaders
that this area needs. We need him to help reactivate a bunch of people
asap.

愛しています！

カードん長老より
Elder Cardon