Andrew in Japan Kobe Mission

Hey guys!

So two days ago marked one month on my mission! It's been probably the
craziest month of my life! Leaving everybody, going in the MTC for a
week and a half, and then being out in the field for the past 3 weeks.
I've also only got about 2 weeks left in this transfer and I'll be on
my 2nd transfer out of 17 haha. I'm not sure if it's gone by fast, it
seemed kind of slow... The ZL's and my companion keep saying that the
time goes by faster transfer after transfer. Elder Pace told me that the days are long, but
the weeks go by fast, and I'm starting to believe him. I did a こうかん with somebody in
my doki (somebody that I was in the MTC with) named Tanaka. He's way
cool because he Japanese but has an American personality . We were
roommates in the MTC.

I actually miss Beebee a lot. Like there's all these billboards
and posters with Dalmatians and I'm constantly thinking of her haha.
Missouri is lucky to get Chase! He's going to do really good. Plus,
there's a couple people from school who are down there too. That's
awesome!

I've met most of the ward now and all I can say is that they are
awesome! Elder Stanger was trying to find someone and described them
as "Funny, Crazy, and Always late." That describes the whole ward! It
reminds me a lot of Meito, kind of nostalgic. There's only about 80
members though. Here's a scary fact. Right now in Japan there are over
120,000 members, out of 180 million people. However, only 10,000 of
them are active! There are about 267 congregations in Japan, with that
there should be close to around 400 members in each congregation.
Less-active work is huge in Japan right now and there's a huge push to
re-activate them. With that's, we have found 3 types of less actives.
The ones that don't come because they are too lazy, the ones that
don't come because they don't like the church anymore, and ones that
didn't even know they were baptized...

The bishop of our ward is so cool. He loves rock music! We had dinner
at his house last night and he had close to 20 guitars and a room
dedicated to Rock and Roll. We talked about how
missionaries went on donut runs to Mr.Donuts in the middle of the
night. You know, waking up around midnight and taking all the
leftover donuts that they throw out for free. Haha apparently thanks
to you, dad, your generation of missionaries made all the Mr. donuts
put up a signs that says "Mormon Missionaries, STOP TAKING OUR
DONUTS." I'll try and find a picture of it. Now we can't go out in the
middle of the night and get free donuts.

There's also a couple places where they had the challenges of "if you
can eat this in under 20 minutes, you'll get it for free. We got those
banned and now those restaurants also put up a sign that says "No
Mormon Missionaries." I think we're leaving a legacy. A legacy of
missionaries who can eat a ton of food. Later we're going to do the
すきや challenge where you eat a mega. It's two king sizes which is
already huge!

This past week was pretty slow. Mostly because we got our
new iPads and they want us to upload all the information from our area
books into the area book app we have. That's all information on past
and previous investigators. There are thousands of teaching records we
have to upload because it dates back 20 years ago! So this week that's
mostly what we've been doing. The good news is that we have had
sunshine and clear skies all week. Great weather! It's just the calm
before the storm though haha rain seasons about to come...

Today we're going up to Arashiyama and seeing the bamboo forest and
wild monkeys! I'm pretty excited since I haven't been there forever.
I'm going to try and get a selfie with a monkey on my back because
somebody in the ward here had a monkey jump on his back and just stay
there. Next Monday were headed to kiyomizu-dera or however you spell
that. The big temple that hangs over the cliff in the mountains. Plus
I'm getting a free haircut from this person that loves the
missionaries.

So far, Kyoto has been good. It's been really fun. I should be here until at least the 21st of
May. That's when the second transfer is. I'm most likely going to be
staying here but I could gypsy(when you only stay for 1 transfer.).
Haha my missionary たんご is improving. I'm learning all these missionary
slang, well for Japan, like to kill and elder (when your companion
goes home), or to die(go home). Haha
all these random terms.

I'll send you some pictures of what we did this week. I saw this ultra smart car on Tuesday night! I think I scared the girl inside when I ran behind it to get the picture.

I had a zone conference today and saw some of my close friends. love these guys!
Elder Whartons on my right. Elder Barney is the tall one, and Jackson
is the one with glasses.

Me and Tanaka's adventure. We're both 1st transfer missionaries but we
did pretty good on our own for one day. I didn't realize that when you
do a companion swap you spend the night with them too so it was pretty
fun just the two of us. We tried to have a Yakiniku part that night
and found some cheap Dr.Peppers. I think we drank 3 cans each.