Back to the blog…two good letters, and you need to read them both.

Readers: Brad asked us not to do the blog for a while, but now has asked to start it up again. Here are his last two letters. You need to read the first one to understand the context of the second one, so I've posted them both here. I'm sure he'd love to hear from you!

24 November 2014

Hey mum and dad,

Well another week has past in Shonan. This past week I had an

interview with President Wada. It was really interesting. Half way

through he just looks at me and says, "Do you know what you need Elder Davies....a mikan gari"

"A mikan gari?"

"Yes, a mikan gari. Are you telling me you don't know what a mikan gari is?"

"I know what a mikan is."

"A mikan gari is orange harvesting, here enjoy the fruit of our labor."

He then goes and grabs two mikans from behind his bag and hands me one, and starts peeling his. I'm kinda sitting there confused with a

mikan in my hand. And he continues, "Go on and eat, they're just a

little tart. It's actually the perfect season for mikans right now."

He then pulls out some pictures of him, his wife, our area seventy and

his wife picking mikans. And tells me how fun it was and how it would

be a great activity to do with the ward and our investigators. At the

end he said "well I may not have broken bread with you, but it was

great to break mikan with you Elder Davies. I'll close us with a

prayer." Weird how inspiration comes to some people. But you don't

ignore advice from your mission president so I've started organizing a

mikan gari, hope it turns out well.

After that we still don't have any investigators so we haven't done

much teaching. We found a referral for the sisters this week who wants

to hear the first lesson. Her name’s Miki and is the same age as the

sisters so I think that's gonna work out really well. We also found 2

high schoolers that we had a really good conversation about how the

Book of Mormon can help us in our day to day lives that we might be

able to meet again.

I did have one really cool experience this week. I met a really hard

core atheist from America and for the most part we had a nice

conversation. He didn't understand how I could consider myself a

scientist and believe in religion. But we did get to a point were he

was bringing up a lot of unfair things. And for the most part I didn't

really care about the things he brought up because it all had to do

with a lack of faith. But he did say one thing that kind of bothered

me and after our conversation was over. And it was just kinda sitting

inside of me really bothering me. And the next day during language

study, I was studying random scriptures and explains the context of

them. And the first one I did when I went and read the rest of the

scripture so I could explain context, explained the very thing the man

brought up. And this was about slavery in the Old Testament, not a

very general topic. And the answer was very specific. To me this was

an example of God taking care of his servants, he knew I didn't need

that moop on my mind and provided just what I needed.

Love you tons,

Elder Davies

1 December 2014

Hey Mum and Dad!!!

Just got my transfer calls. I'm staying with Elder Pettit in Shonan! This will be my second companion that's lasted longer than one transfer. I also got the Halloween package today. That's a really long story about why I'm only getting it now. But let's just say getting it from my old area to my new area was a challenge. But thanks so much for the package. I'm just running out of stuff from the last box, so came just in time.

Christmas is just around the corner! I love Christmas. It's a really good opportunity especially in Japan because no one know the Christmas

story. I think Elder Pettit and I are going to try and make a short 10 minute presentation to be able to share with people with pictures and songs. If you have any suggested pictures or hymns let me know or send them to me.

And speaking of Hymns. I would love to hear dads project. I don't know if you can find a way that I can just open it in my mail app. I think that's gonna be the best way.

This week wasn't super eventful. Highlights were we did a small service project for one of our English students. He moved to a new house recently and needed some landscaping done. Mostly transplanting some bushes. So after being delayed by the rain for a bit we got out and did the job in like two hours. Moved 7 bushes I think, it was fun.

Then to prepare for the mikan gari we bought 2 mikans for every family in the ward. Then we made a little slip of paper on each. On one, the members that shared Lehi’s experience so the members invite their friends. The other an invitation for a friend. I think it went overreally well.

Love you two,

Elder Davies

latest update

Hey everyone

So I didn't get a letter off last week, but unfortunately that doesn't
mean double letter. But I did have some pretty cool things in the last
two weeks. One, as some of you might have seen, is I can use Facebook
now. It's something that they have been slowly integrating into our
mission and has finally been oked  for all the missionaries to use. If
I remember correctly we are the first mission over seas to start using
Facebook.
The other really cool thing was Elder Cook (one of the 12 apostles of
our church) came and gave a talk to the missionaries here. He talked
about how we can become better missionaries and how we should look at
missionary work as building wards and branches. It was really cool to
listen to him speak.
Also got to go to a music concert at one of the close churches. It was
really good. They had one guy called Jet Edwards come and sing a few
songs. He's a base player and singer. He was accompanied my other
missionaries playing drums, piano, guitar, and sax. There was also a
recent convert who was trained in college to sing opera, she sang Ave
Maria. It was fantastic. There was a really good turn out with a
couple hundred people.
Other than that there isn't much going on. My companion and I are just
doing our best to talk with as manny people we can a day.

Love

Elder Davies

Getting going in the new area

It was my first full week in Yamato, and we spent most of it exploring and meeting people. Right now we don't have any solid investigators and both me and my companion don't have a huge understanding of our area. We don't really know where we can find a lot of people so we did a lot of exploring. We tried going to a new park and unfortunately we didn't find anybody, we did find though a secrecy path that led to a farm with Easter island hedges. I'll send a picture. We also met a man this week with some fairly interesting beliefs. We couldn't completely understand what he was saying but to sum it up he might think himself to be some kind of prophet. We also found close to the house a future Pday activity. We have at a park close to our house a place that let's you go fish in stocked pools. There's a variety of different fish but the biggest is probably carp. We might go do that one day in the future. Well, that's all about happened this week. I think next week I'll have more to write about. 

Love, 

Elder Davies

Transfer to new area

Hello everyone!

So my new area is fantastic! We have a few bases in the area, so I have this nice mix of working with Americans and Japanese. The ride there was a bit of a journey. I was carrying a gym bag a suitcase there. On the way to the station another elder had my suitcase. Well I find my train and notice it's going to leave soon. Like really soon. So I take my gym bag and throw it on the train, and while I'm quickly turning to grab my suitcase and put it on....the doors close. But fortunately my bag got off a couple of stops later and I was able to pick it up. It was pretty funny. We were all freaking out because we thought the Japanese people on the train might be a little worried that some foreigner threw a black back on a train just as the doors were closing. Not the best image. One thing that's great about having a military branch in the area is that we get a lot of meal appointments here. We helped one family buffer their floors and after got to go to Taco Bell. Tell you what, probably the best Taco Bell have ever had.  A really nice family also had us over for Mother's Day dinner. It was really kind of them not only because they fed four missionaries, but they also let an investigator come.

Anyway I'm running low on time.

Love you all,

Elder Davies

Getting transferred!

Hey everybody! So this was the last week of the transfer. Unfortunately I got everybody else sick so we still had some inside days. But we were able to get a few dinner appointments because people are afraid that one of us is getting transferred. And as it so happens I'm getting transferred! I'm leaving lovely Kohoku to go to Yamato. In Yamato I'll have the pleasure of serving the Zama Military Ward. It's exciting to be able to work with some military members but I'm really nervous that I'll loose all the Japanese that I've picked up since being here. My new companion is named Elder Gammon, he will be transfer 2 so I'll be finishing up the last half of his training. I'm pretty excited to go and work in a new area, but I will really miss Kohoku. The ward members here have been really nice and it will be sad not to work with them anymore.

So I'm really excited for today. We have a lunch appointment with a college student that we met a few days ago. And besides the fact we are going to the best tsukemen place ever (like ramen but broth and noodles are separate and you dunk the noodles) he's a classmate with the stake president’s son. I think we're gonna have a really good time and maybe even do a church tour after.

Well I wish all the mothers out there a happy Mother's Day!

Love,

Elder Davies