Elder Landon Paskett's Journeys in Japan: January 9, 2017

Wow that snow sounds crazy!! Things in Aomori have actually warmed up a bit lately. We have been able to ride bikes almost every day. We're not allowed to ride bikes if it's raining or snowing or if the ground is icy, but it has been nice weather lately. It's rained a couple times, so almost all the snow is gone. I guess it all went to Meridian!!

This week has been good, not a lot of dendo time though. Monday and Tuesday were no dendo days (still recovering from New Year's), we were able to go visit a Jinja (Shinto shrine) on Tuesday though. We tried to get a Nihonjin to go with us, but everyone we asked was busy, so we just went with the 2 of us and checked out a couple Jinjas. It was interesting to see everyone come and do the little prayer thing and ring the bells, it makes me want to learn more about how Shintoism started.

We make cookies with the Peruvian family on Wednesday! It was so good. At first it was awkward because me and Elder Hall were both using the bathroom when they came into the church! So I heard them walk in and they were just like, "where is everyone....is this the right place...?" And I could hear them but felt too awkward to say anything before I finished. But eventually I came out and got to know them a little bit. The Mom couldn't come but it was the Dad and 3 little girls! When we met the Mom we met the 8 year old and 5 year old, and it turns out they have another daughter who is 3!!! She is SOOOO ADORABLE. I thought the other 2 girls were cute, but man. Little H is the most adorable thing ever. They are seriously the cutest family.

We were planning to use that sugar cookie mix you guys sent (thanks so much!!!) so we brought over an egg and some margarine since we don't have any butter. But either that was a mistake or I guesstimated the wrong amount of margarine, because the dough was not forming dough at all. We just put all the ingredients in a bowl and let the girls go ham mixing it up, that may have contributed to the problem. Then, on top of that, we couldn't get the oven to work, the Dad was helping us read the kanji to operate it, but we just couldn't get anywhere.

Eventually we figured out that the gas was turned off, and fixed it, and I added some water to the dough to try and fix it. But, I added way too much because it turned into batter instead of dough!! Yabakatta. I didn't really know what to do so we just put plops of batter into a pan and put it in the oven. We tried using the snowman cookie cutter but it's pretty hard to cut batter into shapes. So we just put 3 plops by each other in three pan, hoping that it would cook into a rough snowman shape.

In the oven, the batter all cooked into one big cookie, and it was sticking to the bottom pretty bad, so after scraping them all out they were definitely nowhere remotely close to a snowman shape. But, the girls put eyes on them and had fun decorating them like snowmen. It was actually super funny, the cookies all looked like half-melted snowmen.

So even though pretty much everything went wrong, we had some good bonding time with E (the dad) and the 3 girls love us now! Then at the end, the mom came, and we shared the cookies with her and it was great!

Right as we were eating the cookies, S came in (early to Eikaiwa) and enthusiastically introduced himself to everybody and started showering the Peruvian family with random treats and snacks!! And he was just shouting out nonsensical English the whole time, not knowing that E speaks Spanish and Japanese but very little English, and they were also confused because they had no idea who he was or why he was there. It was literally total chaos for about 5 minutes.

As they were leaving, we were able to give them a family: proclamation to the world and just explain it a little bit, she said she would read it and she said they all wanted to come to Eikaiwa on Saturday! They are just the most precious little family.

We had a lesson with S that same day, and tried to make it as interactive as possible to keep his attention focused. It wasn't the first time we had taught the plan of salvation but it was the first time he understood it all! We are gaining ground, it's great. So he is at least comprehending everything, but it's hard because he just tells us which parts he believes and which parts he doesn't believe. We talked about reading the Book of Mormon and praying to know if these things are true, but I'm not sure he really understands how important everything is yet.

On Thursday we went down to Morioka for the new missionary training meeting, and we just barely missed our bus back to Aomori!! We had originally walked to Indo Curry restaurant and found out it was closed, then walked to a karaage restaurant and ended up starting lunch late, then our bus to the Eki hit so many red lights and took way longer than we expected, and we just barely missed it. We ended up having to buy Shinkansen tickets in Morioka to get back up in time, and we actually got back to Aomori before our original bus did.

On Friday after our zone training meeting we went to the Nokkedon fish market and someone had the bright idea to see how many wasabi packets we could down (...it was me). I only downed two packets, and I quickly realized that even though my mouth and nose could take a little more fire, my stomach was severely offended. Those two wasabi packets wreaked havoc in my digestive system for like 4 hours. The Zone leaders were in pain too. Somehow Nathan Choro downed three packets and it didn't affect him at all? Wakaranai.

On our splits on Saturday both companionships got stood up for both of our lessons! There were originally 4 lessons planned for that day, but both companionship ended up having 0 total lessons for the day. We did have a new student at Eikaiwa so I guess that was the silver lining of the day!

One cool miracle was that we ran into the beard man on Friday! We had just barely tried to visit his house, but no one was home. Then probably 15 minutes later, we totally ran into him on the street! He proudly showed us all the Sake and cigarettes he bought. He also called us handsome, said we had faces like movie actors, and told us we could definitely get Japanese girlfriends if we wanted to. Probably the weirdest compliment I have received. I think he was a little bit drunk, but he told us he would like to come to church again eventually, and he probably has time for us to stop by and teach a lesson in February. As long as we don't ask him for his money.

On Sunday we (the 6 missionaries) sang in sacrament meeting and I got to bear my testimony for the last time in Aomori! We got our transfer calls that night, and I am going to Yokote in Akita ken. Apparently it is a branch of about 15 members, there are just 2 Elders in that city. It will be sad that I don't get to stay with Elder Hall but I am way excited for Yokote!

Love you so much, thanks for the email and for all you do!!

パスケット長老

Elder Paskett