An amazing week - and technology in Japan

28 January 2014

Last week was an amazing week. It was our first week actually succeeding in the power of ten that President Wada expects of us. And we ended up meeting a lot of good people. We met two people who asked us if they could come to church. One is this little old lady. She used to live in America and joined a Baptist church because she loved the Hymns. She really wants to come to a sacrament meeting so she can hear some hymns. We also met a younger man on a run. He lived in Canada and attended a Catholic mass that he really enjoyed. After seeing our name tags he asked if we held a mass, we told him we have sacrament meeting at 11:30. He seems really excited to come. We also set up a lot of lessons for this week. We have 7 lessons this week. That’s actually a really high number. I think I may have had 7 lessons total my last transfer. I’m fairly excited for this week we have a lot of good things going on. 

A couple of weeks ago we met a really nice guy. His name is Tomonori. Tomonori works as a chemist and when we first met him he said he didn’t have any knowledge or interest in religion. We invited him to a tour of the church and told him if he still had no interest we would let him go. He had a church tour, we scheduled an appointment for him to take the first lesson. He took the first lesson, we scheduled an appointment for him to take a second. The thing I love about Tomonori is that he takes Christ’s invitation of  “Come and see.” Each time we meet with him all we really do is give him the option to “Come and see” and each time after he wants to meet with us again. He has the mentality that he can’t say no till he’s tried it. We really love the guy just because he is so open to at least try.

Question:

1. How are you using technology to do your missionary work?

    I’m actually not going to answer this question. We have a really big change coming this week that I think will answer this question better. So you can read about it in my next email :D

2. What kinds of devices to Japanese people use most?

    Probably Cell Phones. Most people always have that in hand, and a lot of people wear them around their necks.

3. Have you seen anything that was different than what you've seen in the US?

    In terms of technology not really. You see a lot more grown men with Nintendo DSs but that is fairly normal. And a lot of then use them as Blackberries or Planners as well.

4. In comparison to Americans, do Japanese people seem more or less connected to their personal devices?

    Much more connected. Most people always have their phones in hand. Not using them 24/7, but always in hand. 

5. In terms of technology, have you seen anything that surprised you? 

    I’m not sure this is true. But apparently there is an app that they have here that they can use for their metro pass (the tap on and off thing) You see a lot of people taping their smart phones to get in and out of the metro. I thought they just put the pass inside of the case. But I have had a lot of Missionaries insist that there’s an app that allows it.  

How we meet people.

This week wasn’t super eventful. It was actually the week with our lowest amount of contacts in a single week this transfers. But we did a lot of good work :D We have a less active member who we were talking to, and he doesn’t feel like he can feel the spirit at home because it’s such a mess. So we responded with a “well, lets clean it up.” So we’ve been doing mini service projects at his house to make it a cleaner place. 

We had a really cool baptism in our zone last Sunday. It was a daughter and mother. The daughter is a professional opera singer. During Christmas we had an Open House at the oldest Church where we first came to Japan. She volunteered about 4 hours each day and sang hymns in the upstairs chapel. And then there was a culture sharing night at another church and she performed a song. Before the song she introduced herself and then announced that she was getting baptized in the next few weeks. It was great because the event was put on for the community so after all the missionaries were getting asked “what’s baptism?”  

Today was a temple P-Day so I got to take the train all the way up into Tokyo to go to the Tokyo Temple. It’s always super nice there. We got to go to an all you can eat Mexican place for lunch. Apparently Elder Allred became such good friends with the workers there that any time missionaries come we get a discount. It was really good, but really the only thing they have is fajitas. But I love fajitas so it’s ok. 

As a quick side note. This week I had the chance to listen to the CES devotional. Here’s a link. It was broadcasted January 12th and the talk is by Elder Tad Callister. If you want to learn about the fundamentals of not only this Church but Christianity as well I recommend giving it a watch. 

The questions of the week.

1. How do you generally meet people?

    Usually on the street, on trains, or passing out flyers for English class. Our mission president’s big thing is called the power of ten. We are expected each day to have at least ten meaningful contacts a day. If every missionary was to do that every day in 15 years we would have talked to the entire population of our mission.

  

2. How hard is it to get Japanese people to talk with you?

    It’s pretty hard. Most people don’t want to be bothered. And as soon as they find out you are Christian (which is fast since I’m wearing Christ’s name on my shirt) they usually want to leave you.

3. What’s their general first impression of you/do they have any idea what you are doing?

    Well old ladies always try and talk me into marrying a Japanese wife. The old men usually say Christians shouldn’t fight and walk away. The younger generation will usually want to try and practice English. And most of them have no idea the exact detail of a mission. I think most of the people here think we make money.

4. How would you say people generally treat you?

    Most people completely ignore us. And it’s a fairly harsh ignore.

5. Do you do any door-to-door tracting? If so, how does that go?

    I have buzzed one house my entire mission. We really don’t house. Most houses in Japan have a gate with a box. At the box there is a camera and speaker. Most people will not speak to you or will just tell you to go away. To say the least it’s not very effective.

We're walking a lot

12 January 2014

Things are really going well in the mission. My companion and I get along really well, sometimes too well and we have to refocus, and we’ve really started doing a lot more work in our area. It’s been really weird this week that the majority of people that we’ve met this week have been Christian. One does not find many Christians in Japan so to have found 3 in one day was really amazing. But we haven’t just been running into Christians but a lot of people that have had questions about life that they want answered. And though we haven’t heard back from any of them yet, it feels good to know there are people here who would want to hear our message. 

My new companion is really trying to prepare me to be a trainer by next transfer. I don’t know if I want to train yet or not but I really don’t have much say in it anyway. In the mean time I think in his letter to our mission president, he’s written to make me a trainer. So who knows, I might have a new companion again after this transfer.

We’ve been walking a lot. Before with Elder Johnson we either biked far or stayed really close to home. With Elder Crain we walk everywhere we go and we go really far out. I actually prefer it that way. It gives us the chance to talk to a lot of different people. But I think I’ve almost worn through the first pair of my shoes. 

My Dad has started something really cool with me that he does with Christina and that’s ask 5 questions for the blog so here they are:

1. How much time a day do you spend studying Japanese?

         We spend an hour a day during our language study time. But I feel the majority of what we learn comes as we talk to people.

2. What do you focus your studies on?

         Mostly I study grammar. It’s easy to pick up on words while talking to people, but much harder to learn grammar from just talking.

3. What’s the funniest mistake you’ve made so far?

         I haven’t really done any funny mistakes. I make a lot of mistakes but nothing that would cause a laugh. 

4. What are the hardest things for you to understand?

         Two things are hard to understand. Passive sentences, because I don’t recognize when I say them in English. And listening to people. Some people are really hard to understand.

5. How did studying Japanese in school help you? 

        It gave me a lot of normal people talk. A lot of missionaries speak church talk really well but not normal things.

I placed my first Book of Mormon

This week has been a little crazy. I got a new companion for one thing. He is way cool though and we are really getting along. His name is Elder Crain and he is from California. I think I talked about bit in my last email, but we are really getting along well. His Japanese is really good. And we have a lot of common interests. We have a lot of goals and are working hard to push each other to reach those goals. One thing is that I carry the phone now. That means I also have to take all the calls. This is probably the scariest part of my day. We depend a lot on our phone and I really want to make sure that I don`t mess up any of our appointments. 

The cool story of the week though was meeting Ryan. Ryan is a volunteer for the Peace Corps and is living doing service in Africa. He came to Japan for vacation to meet up with some of his friends. We ended up meeting him on his first day. He felt really lost in Japan. He had pretty bad luck with the trains and couldn`t find any English speakers. We saw him coming out of the station and called out to him. He was super surprised, and we talked with him for a while. And helped him find where he was staying. He came 2 day earlier before his friends and our next day was P Day so we offered to take him around. The next day we woke up and got a call saying that he wanted to hang out and we had an awesome time. We went out for yakiniku for lunch and then went to landmark tower and a big temple. Then in the evening we headed back to our church and ate his first nato (fermented beans) with him. I wanted to share a bit of the gospel with him but I didn`t want to bring it up and make the whole day weird by making him uncomfortable. But as we sat down to eat lunch the first thing he asked us is ``Why is your church different`` We ended talking all 2 hours of lunch about church. By the end of the day he told us his entire idea of Mormons has changed. And said that he wanted to read the bible and other scripture. I ended placing my first Book of Mormon with him.

So these next few weeks our focus is meeting a lot of people. I hope next week I have stories about all my new friends.

Elder Davies