November 23, 2015

A whole lot of busy happened this week.

First of all we had a special meeting in Kamisugi 上杉 about the use of iPads and the does and don'ts of how to use them correctly in our everyday lives as missionaries.  I was a really good meeting.  However the really cool part was what President Smith said about the iPads.  He said that missionary work has been done for years without iPads and they were still successful.  And I'm not saying that they are not helping hastening the Lords work, but the fact that missionary work can be done with out them.  haha Just ask anyone in the ward that served.

They all did them without iPads!!!  President Smith said something really interesting when he were at the meeting.  He called it "save the generation"  he said that one of the big points of having the missionaries have iPads so that they know how to correctly use them when we all finish our missions and return home to our devices and the world wide web.   Along with hastening the work with the iPads, it's also helping the individuals at the same time.  It's not just a thing were while you are a missionary you don't do these things because you aren't supposed to and then when you go home we all go back to the world being unchanged.   Its the old saying, "the mission will change you if you let it do so".  He talked about the practices, qualities, and traits that we practice and become masters that will help us become better people and Fathers, Mothers, Daughters, Sons, Husbands, and Wifes.

Another really big topic he focused on was the practice of being one by working with your companion to become closer to God.  He related it to when we become married, with our spouses as we work with each other to come closer to the Lord, we will become "As one".  Not just husband and wife but with Heavenly Father as well.  The man is a flipping genius.

I wish I recorded the presentation haah.  A long story short, he applied all the rules and guidelines of missionary life and work to prepping us to become better people in the future.  All in turn coming closer to God as we do it all.

I dont have any more time to write cause we are in the middle of a shopping mall and people want our seats.  haha Love you all and have a good week!!!愛してます頑張ってください

 

Elder Halverson and Anpanman

 

 

Elders Mcnaab and Halverson

 Met up with the MTC crew at conference

 

Notes

 

Elder Mcnaab and Halverson will stay together thru another transfer

 

Nothing big happening for them on Thanksgiving.  Just another day in Japan.

 

Foot is good

Biking is tiring but good also

Teaching a lot of less actives

People stare all the time and this time I was on a split with Elder Larsen and we walked into McDonald's and all these high school girls were looking at the two of us and I yelled HELLO and they all starts to freak out and blush hahaha



November 29, 2015

So this week we had transfers.  All the missionaries that were transferring had to go to Kamisugi for a big transfer party.  Even though I wasn't going to transfer, I still had to go to the meeting because there was also a "New Missionary Training" that I obviously missed because of my foot and being delayed.  So the plan was that we go Tuesday and leave later the next day.  But as soon as we go to Kamisugi we find out that the new missionaries plane got delayed from LAX to Tokyo and then again when they were trying to go from Tokyo to Sendai.  The meeting that I was to attend was pushed back to later on Wednesday.  That made it so Macnab Chourou and I had to stay at the honbu (mission home) for an extra day and wouldn't be able to return back to Izumi until late Friday night.  So therefore my comp and I could do almost zero work in our area.  All in all, the meeting and the orientation was really cool.  A lot of new things I learned about missionary work in Japan and Japan in general.

 In Japan it is really complicated to throw away garbage, it has to be separated from plastics, bottle caps, cardboard ... just to list a few. And we have to take it out every single day.  It's really taihen (troublesome).

 We gained two more elders in Izumi.  Their names are みまき長老と村上長老(Mimaki and Murakami Elders).   Both of them are 日本人.  They both are so cool and really good missionaries.  It's really nice to have two Japanese native speakers in the apartment in case the Macnab Chourou and I have questions about Japanese and such.  Oh I almost forgot they both make really good Japanese food on top of that all!!!  I am really happy with that haha.

 Cool Experience time:

Yesterday Macnab Chourou and I were heading to the church early to catch a meeting and as soon as we get to the church the bishop greets us saying what are you doing here??  We say "we have here for the missionary meeting" he responds "oh man I forgot to tell you that it was cancelled this week."  Well shoot then, I guess we will just do our studies here at the church.  As soon as we start our language study, the bishop comes in again and says there is someone here to learn about church and God.  So we sit down with this guy and we figure out that he is from Vietnam, speaks no English, little Japanese, and really only Vietnamese.  So now we basically have two Vietnamese investigators that know little Japanese and little English as well.   It was very interesting to sit down with this guy and try to communicate with him.  While my comp talked to him and tried to figure out his beliefs and such, I had the iPad in my hand with the google translate app opened up, translating from English to Vietnamese and then showing this person.  After a while we figured out that his is Christian and he google searched a church for the sole purpose of coming to praying.  Our church in Izumi was the first place to pop up and he just randomly showed up yesterday morning.  We "gave" him an Vietnamese Book of Mormon,  by gave I mean we downloaded the gospel library app on his phone and changed to the language setting to Vietnamese and he just started to read.  He stayed at church for the whole 3 hours and just read from his phone because obviously all of meeting was in Japanese.  So really he didn't understand really much of anything.  It was really quite interesting to say the least, hopefully he becomes an investigator because he really seemed to enjoy it.

Another story from yesterday.  There is a family in the ward that is American.  They are from Sandy, Utah actually.  Again, they don't know Japanese very much at all.  So I had the incredible task of translating for Brother Chapman!  All I would say is this "I think he is talking about this but I am not sure" or when I thought I had an idea "Oops never mind, it's not at all this but it could be this instead" Haha it was fun/interesting. As time went on, I got the hang of it.  The language is coming along slowly.  Anyway the Chapman's are a great family.  Wee had Thanksgiving at their house on Thursday.  It was so good haha just like home, I stuffed myself.  Mashed potatoes, gravy, turkey, stuffing all that good stuff haha.

So again I forgot my journal for all of my stories and what happened.  But have a good one, I love you all!!!

 Elder Halverson

November 22, 2015

A whole lot of busy happened this week.

First of all we had a special meeting in Kamisugi 上杉 about the use of iPads and the does and don'ts of how to use them correctly in our everyday lives as missionaries.  I was a really good meeting.  However the really cool part was what President Smith said about the iPads.  He said that missionary work has been done for years without iPads and they were still successful.  And I'm not saying that they are not helping hastening the Lords work, but the fact that missionary work can be done with out them.  haha Just ask anyone in the ward that served.

They all did them without iPads!!!  President Smith said something really interesting when he were at the meeting.  He called it "save the generation"  he said that one of the big points of having the missionaries have iPads so that they know how to correctly use them when we all finish our missions and return home to our devices and the world wide web.   Along with hastening the work with the iPads, it's also helping the individuals at the same time.  It's not just a thing were while you are a missionary you don't do these things because you aren't supposed to and then when you go home we all go back to the world being unchanged.   Its the old saying, "the mission will change you if you let it do so".  He talked about the practices, qualities, and traits that we practice and become masters that will help us become better people and Fathers, Mothers, Daughters, Sons, Husbands, and Wifes.

Another really big topic he focus on was the practice of being one by working with your companion to become closer to God.  He related it to when we become married, with our spouses as we work with each other to come closer to the Lord he will become "As one".  Not just husband and Wife but with heavenly Father as well.  The man is a flipping genius.

I wish I recorded the presentation haah.  A long story short, he applied all the rules and guidelines of missionary life and work to prepping us to become better people in the future.  All in turn coming closer to God as we do it all.

I dont have any more time to write cause we are in the middle of a shopping mall and people want our seats.  haha Love you all and have a good week!!!愛してます頑張ってください

 

Elder Halverson