weekly mission email

In Tsu with Elder Miole: 

We have a new Service Activity—a dope weaving place! I guess some lady reinvented the loom so that even a child can learn to use it. Right now, this place hires Handicaps and funny old guys to make things like jackets, hats, mufflers, socks, and even wallets. A member, Sister Okubo, referred the place to us. It was way cool! 

 On our way out, we each received a cat coin purse. I Will buy a muffler before the end of this. 

Zone Conference was last Thursday, and it was held at a ward super far away, so we had to stay the night at a checkpoint apartment with the Elders in Yokkaichi. The Ise Elders also joined us, so we had eight elders sleeping squished on the floor with a single mat and blanket each. Great fun! 

On the trains up there in the morning, we all had to fight the Morning Rush crowds with our overnight bags and such. Not so much fun. Funny thing though, on a transfer to a subway line the crowd was so bad that the conductors were sectioning off people and then jamming them into the trains which came every five minutes. Our group just happened to land at the end of a section. We all go in pushing for that extra centimeter of space, but then Ise Elder Mossman was left remaining on the platform. No more room, but his companion was on the train, so something had to happen. He decided to hop aboard. 

Remember, this is a big, Hawaiian football player plus his size-able overnight backpack. I distinctly remember hearing several gasps as peoples' feet left the floor. 

Japan train crowds. Real thing, not as fun as they’re hyped up to be. 

This week we also had a fantastic Halloween Party!  We actually were put in charge of a game and the drinks, so we decided on a toilet paper mummy-wrapping race and a huge cauldron of root beer. People loved it! Except the root beer. Well, it was split: Love-hate thing, kinda like natto. The small four oz bottle I had made 5 gallons, so... 

well, in the end we split the remains between people that wanted it, and gave away approximately 10 liters. I think it was still worth it. 

This lady who we called “Wonder Woman” last transfer (because she didn’t give us her name the first time we knocked on her door) is actually quite the wonder woman. 

Maegawa is just the best. 

She came to church for the first time yesterday. The sisters have been working with her for a couple weeks now, and you can tell that she’s been completely prepared by the Lord. She asked about giving up any specific foods, teas, or anything before the sisters had even taught their third lesson. We got another call from Temple Square asking about her, and they practically squealed when I reported that Maegawa had accepted a BOM, come to church, and set a baptism date for 11/19 (which was set on her first lesson). 

Everything is perfectly fine, and she’s completely on track to receive baptism on that date. She’s been fellowshipped nicely, and is so accepting of everything. She actually came up to me after the Gospel Principles class yesterday and inquired about receiving a personal copy of the Triple I had let her borrow for church. Wow! 

Looking forward to the day we all go up to the baptismal font next month! 

愛しています！

カードん長老より

Elder Cardon 

food blog

First day at church and Elder Miole gets two cans of sardines from members.



We made a chocolate sheet cake to celebrate our safety



Also, meatballs over rice

weekly email

This week in Tsu:

Transfers 

 I actually had to go with Reis up to his new area for two reasons: 1) I had no available tachiai (temporary member companion) for like 6 hours and 2) my new companion had not only sprained his right wrist, but also broken his Samsung Tablet by default when he forgot his password, and thus needed a new tablet from HQ. 

But that was good because I got to see Elder Wesemann, the mission’s Recorder! #MTC comp

It was an Adventure. We went way out to Toyota first, met an Elder Cutler, then I picked up a quick guitar tune and then we took a fancy tram back into Nagoya, where we walked to HQ and met an Elder Ilg on the way (a new missionary from Brazil who didn’t know his trainer yet. He’s actually from the same, countryside place as Elder Reis so they had a good time catching up. Elder Reis thought for sure that he would train this guy ..but the Lord works in other ways). 

Elder Miole's tablet was broken, and HQ couldn’t fix it. They couldn’t give him a new one, either. So

we had to get an iPad! Oh, Man.. so disappointing! ;) ..we set it up, got out, arrived at the station and then realized that he had forgotten the charger. To add to that, Elder Miole forgot his iPad password already, somehow, and we had to go reset his iPad again! 

But back on our feet, first week in Tsu, one afternoon we were headed out to a service project referred to us by a member. Ooh, service! Ok! 

We got lost amidst the Inaka (countryside) highways and barely made it slightly late ...to the wrong place. Wow. We must’ve biked 14 Km to that place! But it’s ok! It has potential for the future. We checked out the new place and it seems to be opening up a neighborhood Eikaiwa class soon that they would love to have native speakers to volunteer at. No efforts wasted. 

Later this week, we were hit by a typhoon. It rained buckets for three days. But, you can’t let a spot of water hold you back from work, so we headed out as normal to find some new investigators. We wanted three in one night. Miraculously, we were blessed with that. 

It kinda happened like this. We walked down a ways from the station towards a LA whom I’ve never met before, tried to meet them but only got the answering service of their 10 year old daughter.  Then, we decided to just knock on all the doors of the apartment complex in which they live. It’s a huge complex. There must have been about 20 gigantic buildings there. 

That night, on the hunt for 3 People, we were expecting to find a lot of people from the Philippines because it seemed to be that type of foreigner's place. But after getting rejected by some, and only receiving sketchy appointments from others, we finally came across one Philippine lady who showed solid interest in the Book of Mormon. There's one! 

Go a little further and there’s this one older Japanese lady who opens up to us. We shared a message about Family History, something the Mission has been trying to push for a while now but nobody has a clue what to do for, and the lady actually showed interest! She gave us all her contact information, asked us to come back next week, and then politely wished us safety home. There’s the second one! 

I wasn’t settling for the earlier, sketchy appointment as an actual investigator, so we go on again until a door opens up to a young, high-school aged Japanese lady. She was chill! Way prepared. I have no idea what approach to use for these kind of people, but just by opening my mouth I sensed that it was filled with the words she needed to hear. I talked about Christ and why he is known around the world. My companion gave excellent support, and the lady said we could come back next week. Even amidst the rain, when you don’t feel like much, the Lord will bless you with guidance towards your goals! 

Loving this area. The members are all fired up now that Elder Miole, a Philippine missionary, has come. He’s probably the first, maybe the only, Philippine missionary that I know. How lucky I am to work with him here! The Member missionary work is going to explode this transfer. I’ll probably get some very interesting tastes of Philippine culture along the way. Anyone ever heard of Balut? 

Typhoon 

愛しています！

カードん長老より

Elder Cardon

xfer calls

weekly mission email

This week we were bouncing all over the place between exchanges. On the exchange with the Zone Leaders we ran into this guy who was all a missionary ever asked for. The conversation went something like:

“Good evening, how are you?” (“”=Missionaries and    =guy)

I’m fine, thank are. Are you guys from America? 

“Yeah! We're volunteer missionaries for the Christian Church around the corner.”

Really? I love English, I really want to learn. Would you be my friend? 

“Of course! We are actually teaching English tonight as a community service. Would you like to come?” 

Man, I can’t tonight. Sounds good, though, do you offer anything for the weekends? 

“Well, we can do private lessons for 30 minutes in exchange for a 30 minute introductory explanation about our church. Would you be interested in that?” 

Jesus Christ? I traveled in Europe once and saw all the beautiful Christian churches, and have been curious about Jesus ever since. Yeah, I’m interested. Actually, do you have thirty minutes right now? I’ll buy us drinks and we can talk about it. 

And then we continued to set up a 30/30 appointment and such. It was cool. He was practically asking us for the lessons. 

This weekend in Tsu was a huge お祭り (festival) that happened to land exactly on the street in front of the church. It was great! We did a lot of prep, including:

— Printing and Posting the church name on the windows upstairs so you could see it across the street and over the small shops parked out in front 

— Putting up some street signs pointing people towards a Free Toilet! Wow! 

— Setting up the church lobby so that people were immersed on the way to said toilet. MoTab playing in the background, a BOM display with an array of about 10 different languages, huge posters containing the basic Plan of Salvation pamphlet on it, and such. 

— Opening up the chapel doors, for anybody to walk and take a rest in. A quiet place, and we just happened to have General Conference playing on a TV up front. Some people walked in only because they were curious what the Japanese voice on the TV was saying for the American speaker.  

And then all the missionaries were out front handing out flyers and pointing people to the church. Man, so many people! I’m pretty tired. I haven’t walked and stood for so long in my life. 

愛しています！

カードん長老より

Elder Cardon

 Look at this! I ate a fish on a stick!

food blog

Don’t even ask．



What a mess of a curry
 

Hawaiian LocoMoto 

weekly mission email

Lots going on but here are the highlights. 

We bike around the college a lot, and found a couple chill students who are interested in the message and agreed to meet again in the next couple weeks. I love talking to young college kids, they’re so open and funny. 

There was a big hiking event that a member took us to, and we met a guy who ended up talking to us the entire time! What better time to talk about the church than when people are too tired to run away because they’re climbing a mountain? 

Interviews with President Ishii are always a pleasure, and I can see the increased trust he has in me just by how my interview is conducted. The mission is trying to push for Family History Finding, but the problem is that nobody knows how to use Family History for finding ...so we need to come up with some creative ideas. We'll do our best!

愛しています！

カードん長老より

Elder Cardon