food blog

Delicious mazesoba with huge karaage pieces

Just some teriyaki chicken 

Who puts curry over steak? And cabbage as s salad? 

Traditional treat: red-bean paste coating rice balls. It was ..interesting, but wouldn't recommend to a friend. 

weekly email

This week in Tsu we were hardly even in Tsu.

Lots of exchanges. ZOne Leader and District exchanges, interviews,
plus a night helping out the Eikaiwa in the other area. Elder Reis
didn't come back until Friday morning, and we left for the first one
on Monday night.

But we learned a lot! It was great. Elder Reis has been struggling
with his confidence in talking to strangers on the street, and working
with a Zone Leader helped him to realize how he can show his happiness
and use his personality to talk naturally to people.
Also, we are trying to reach out to younger people, specifically
Japanese high school students, but the problem everybody always
encounters is that between school, clubs, and cram school no high
school student ever has any time to meet! But, working to solve this
we've seen some success in inviting them to short church tours with a
promise of helping their English homework afterwards. I just wish that
our branch had a baptismal font. All the more reason to try our
hardest to qualify for our own building!

So during my interviews I mentioned to President that I've been
concerned about an unexpected rash that has recently developed on my
neck. He suggested that I call the Mission Doctor that night and have
it examined.
On the way down to Ise I made the call, and sent in photos, and then
waited as the Doc diagnosed the issue. Halfway through Eikaiwa the Doc
calls back (and of course I have to take the call, I'm dying to know.
Plus, it's the doctor!).

I'm diseased.

Aaaand we'll leave it there. Thanks for tuning in!

愛しています！

カードん長老より
Elder Cardon

Tink

weekly mission email

From down in Tsu: 

This week has got to be one of the best I've had in my Mission. 

So the Zone Leaders came up with a bunch of goals that change out every week in order for us to focus on the different parts of being a spiritual missionary. This week happened to be 'Boldness.' 

We made rough goals to talk to more people on the street, and set out that very night (Monday) to accomplish them. Just biking around working on our approaches, but by the end of the night we had found a pretty promising young college Japanese guy who showed interest in both a Gospel message and TOEIC English. Got a Set Next Event (SNE) and a phone number from him. The whole thing went so smoothly that I was second-guessing myself and scared that any of that was real. 

The next night we went out again, but it started raining. Nobody is really outside getting caught in the rain, so we tweaked the goal towards housing. Knocking on apartment doors, top floor we found two Philippinos who are in their 20s, came to Japan for work. We kinda wormed our way inside their apartment and ended up teaching them the whole Restoration lesson. Promised to come back with Tagalog BOMs on Thurs because they don't really understand any English. 

And so we had follow-up appointments with each of them on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. 

It also helps that we have a companionship goal to teach in unity, which equals 50/50 teaching time. It's hard to sit back and have Elder Reis lead discussions at times because he is so straightforward and blunt about everything, but everything was saved in the end and all the lessons turned out really spiritual. Some of the best lessons I've had since the MTC, actually. 

It all boils down to Sunday, where we had our second SNE within the week for each of them. The Phillipinos promised to come to church, and we would teach the Japanese guy later that night. 

Well, at all these lessons we worked towards teaching in the light of baptism, being straight with our purpose and promising blessings for an act of faith. Again, alongside the members we had incredibly powerful lessons, and particularly the Phillipino man felt impressed that he needed to follow this. It was such a testimony builder to see this in hindsight and the miracles God provided for us. 

They haven't committed to a date yet, but I feel that each of them have great potential. 

This whole week was like the Lord had held up on the blessings of the entire transfer and suddenly decided to shower our heads with them. Many miracles besides this story, and we can see leaps of progress in the Tsu situation as it continues in its quest towards becoming a ward. So glad to be a part of all this, I'm loving the work down here. 

Thanks for reading. 

愛しています！

カードん長老より

Elder Cardon 

weekly mission email

We had a lot of random moments this week..

Typhoon Noru: Our house is leaking. Ants are crawling in!

We went posting: big mistake. Ouch, sunburnt. Turned into three midday
hours. At least we finished the neighborhood.

Accidentally housed a new Eikaiwa student and got two referrals out of it.

I subbed in for our Beginner's Class Eikaiwa. Mid-aged women
eikaiwaaa--Round 2, cause I've subbed for them before when the sisters
are out and about with appointments. Basically I just ask them about
their mom lives and they love it.

Zone Conference: wow.
AP training was incredible.
Things learned/impressed: The story of Nephi going to get the plates.
They went 3X. Was that because they didn't have faith? No, there were
valuable lessons to be learned. Faith is a principle of Action and
Power. The Lord's way is to be loyal to what you know to be true, take
a step into the dark (take action), and power will FOLLOW. When we
pray, we can pray for our performance to be consecrated, instead of
praying for the strength to do something.
Got back super late, didn't even finish transferring contacts from the
phone, but I got pickles out of it!

All day in Matsusaka. There were some funny moments.
We had Studies in a park. "Uh.. elder, the library is closed." After
spending like an hour between OYM's finding it.
Those infernal kids! They stole my Conbini seat!
--after a long, difficult bike ride with multiple lost points-- "it
says, 'may have moved'"
(..Elder, that's the wrong pin.)
That guy is staring at us.. man, I wanted to take a photo shoot.
We're borrowing nice, large Kid MOUNTAIN BIKES provided by a member.
Matching yellow and I got the nice helmet.
It's late; Let's go home. --proceed to Immediately get separated and lost--
“Ok, meet me at McDonald's! ...Elder, where are you? At McDonald's?
But I'm..“ {you see, we had each found a different McDonald's}
(ok, where are you?) "Well, I'm at an intersection.." (that doesn't
help, elder..) "..next to a yakiniku restaurant.." --facepalm--
Coming home late and tired.

Finally Meeting with Branch Pres Ootani!! Man, that was so good. We
learned all about the Branch and exactly what we need to do to give it
the little push it needs to become a ward. Tsu literally is teetering
on the fence line for ward-ship and only needs that last little
stretch. All of our work has just become so much clearer, so much more
in focus.

I have a talk ...and, translation services?! So I was first called to
give a sacrament talk the day before, but then the translator lady was
on holiday, so right before the meeting began I was asked to do the
English translations. So I ended up giving my talk, pausing after each
line to give the subsequent translation, and then finishing the rest
of the session as well. It totally butchered the joke story I had been
going for. Oh, well.

愛しています！

カードん長老より
Elder Cardon

food blog

I've never found a jar of pickles in Japan before, this is sweet.

That one day when I had straight mud for lunch 

Elder Reis and his cute aprons.

those pics (treehouse shirt)

I'm a personal fan for the last one (Paul)

weekly mission email

Hey everybody, not much new and excited from Tsu right now.

District Training Meeting (DTM) was really good and I learned a lot
this time. Lots of good quotes shared. The theme was "Faith" and
specifically what faith means to missionaries, like what kinds of
things we should be doing and what qualifies as success. Just a couple
of my favorite ones:
"Faith...is an assurance of the Spirit." --Marcus B. Nash
"Faith...seeks the assurance and courage to move forward." --Elder Anderson
"信行の炎を輝く" (a play on the word 信仰 meaning 'faith')
Aand the new District Goal is to "ASK before [you] DO" or, in other
words, pray for assurance, guidance, confirmation and such before you
go about doing any work, even phone work. It's supposed to elevate our
reliance on God and increase our general spirituality.

There's also a typhoon coming in today called Nora or something. We
only caught a glimpse of it as we were headed to the church. The sea
was roiling! It was awesome.but also I got soaked in only a ten minute
bike ride.

愛しています！ [I love you!]

カードん長老より
Elder Cardon