Hey guys!

So this week we start the first week of June! I already want to skip
the summer since its so freakin hot! Can it just be winter already?

This week was a lot better then last week. Last week felt so long, it
was pretty miserable. But this past week went by so fast. I think what
helped was we had more success and we decided to go finding in
different locations now instead of the same old boring street we
always walk across haha. plus, we were finding all day like we had
been last week. Jennifer has done really good this past week. She
couldn't come to church but we handed her a Book of Mormon last
Wednesday and she read up to 2 Nephi by Saturday. She seems like she
will make her date on the 21st. I don't know if I've mentioned Chō
before but he's helped out a lot with her. Chō is a recent convert
since last year who Elder Pace found and baptised in his old area. For
school he moved up to Shimogamo, Hes so funny and is a genius! We
always try to do stuff with him since he's one of our favorite people
to be around.

Other then her, we don't have any real solid investigators.  
We went through our phone and area book and just dropped more
the. Half of our teaching pool since they won't call us back or keep
cancelling lessons. They sadly, dropped themselves... So right now,
we're kind of starting fresh. Trying to get a new teaching pool to
draw from which is why we've been going finding a lot these past
couple weeks. 

I didn't feel the earthquake. I might of been asleep for it... Haha
was it big? I saw that Nepal had a huge earthquake last week. Was it
because of that one? I feel so left out from the world as a
missionary. I have no idea what's going on in the world now. I did see
that L. Tom Perry passed away. He declined pretty fast after they
found out he had cancer last month. I would of never though he would
be the one to pass. I was always thinking Elder Packer. I wonder who
the next apostle is going to be now.

Anyway, this week was pretty good though, it was a lot better then two
weeks ago which was nice.

I hope you guys have a great week! Love hearing from you guys. I'll
send some pics of the week.


Love,
- Elder Durrant

Hey guys!

Alright, we get into month #3 now! How's everybody doing? We talk a
lot about Disneyland at night and I've realized that I wish to go to
the land where dreams come true. So we started our new transfer this
week and it's been a hard week. Since we had our baptism 3 weeks ago,
our investigators have slowly gotten weaker and weaker. I think it may
be because we worked so hard to get Sato baptized and we made him a 
priority over other investigators. This past week, we taught 2
lessons. Two! The rest of the time we were finding all day. This past
week felt so long. Hopefully we do better this week.

We got a new investigator from China and she's way golden. Her name is
Jennifer and It's kind of funny how we met her. About a month and a
half ago me and Elder Pace wanted to take a picture with some other
guys and we asked this random girl on the street to take the picture.
That random girl turned out to be Jennifer! We handed her an Eikaiwa
flyer and she walked off. Then about a month ago, she came to Eikaiwa
and said she wanted to learn about Eternal Families so we started
teaching her. She already has a baptism date for June 21st!

On Sunday and Saturday we had Stake Conference and President Welch
spoke at it. It was pretty good. Elder Maynes from the 70 came and
spoke as well. He told a funny story about how him and Gordon B
Hinckley went to dedicate a temple. They had 4 dedicatory events for
both Saturday and Sunday. president Hinckley was around 92. After the
dedications, they flew a plane back to Salt Lake and Elder Maynes sat
in front of President Hinckley. He fell asleep but out of no where he
was awakened by several loud thumps. He turned behind him to see what
made that noise and was all like "Who would make loud thumping noises
and wake the president up?" So he turned around and saw President
Hinckley, exercising. He had a band around his thigh and had it
connected to his arm so he was raising his legs every time he raised
his arm. The thumping noise was made because his foot would drop and
hit the ground.

Haha so Tom Brady was cheating! Oh well, I'm still glad the patriots
beat the Seahawks though... Maybe the Broncos can beat the patriots
this year... 

 I think being late is now the thing that annoys me the most. The ZL's here
 are always late haha.

So I've been thinking, I really want to get the summer over with and
get into winter! Kyoto's too hot. I need cold.. Right now,
I'm still a beanchan. I'm a 2nd transfer missionary now and am not at
the bottom of the totem pole! Just right next to the bottom. I get to
kill Elder Pace this transfer though. 

I hope you guys have a good week too! Sounds like mom was bust this
past couple weeks! You guys finally went to lagoon! Haha cannibal
failed it's safety test? That's scary!
Love you guys lots and miss you!

- Elder Durrant

Hey guys!

This week has been pretty fun. We got to eat out a lot because members
took us out for lunch or dinner. We went to this team house that sold
Kobe Beef. 200 grams for $100. We had different steak instead. It's
not as good as American steaks, but it was one of the better attempts
of an American style steak. I just hope I can eat Kobe Beef. 

So transfers are coming up in 2 weeks. We get our transfer Mail on the
18th, and the transfer is on the 21st. 2nd transfer here we go! Yes!
 I hope I stay here. I like Kyoto. I wouldn't mind being here for the summer! 
Sadly, my companion is going to die in July so I hope I'm with him next transfer too.

Mother's Day is next Sunday! We can't Skype on Sunday so I can skype
at 10:00 am on my Monday morning, which is like 7 pm in America. We
have to do a 3 way Skype right? I get an hour to talk! 

I guess Ashton's birthday is this Wednesday, right? Haha tell Ashton I
said Happy Birthday! Dang I saw the pictures mom sent me, miss all you
guys a lot! We got this Skype, then 3 more and we can talk in person!
We watched this Mother's Day video and I died. I miss you mom so much!

Today, we're going to Kiyomizudera! Last week we went to Arashiyama
and saw monkey and the bamboo forest. I got some pictures I can send.
We climbed up this hill to see the monkeys and we got to the very top
and you could see all of Kyoto! I'll take more pictures today for you
guys too. I don't know. The days are long, but the weeks are fast. It
feels like P-day was like 2 days ago! I love how much I used to not
like Mondays and Sunday's that much but now those two days are my
favorite! Like weeks go by so fast but there's still like 98 weeks to
get through haha... Not quite sure how fast months are, this past
month felt kind of long. They say it gets shorter transfer but
transfer, I'll be soon to find out.

Here's a good story. So the leprechauns struck again! This past Sunday
was fast Sunday and the green people returned! The last time we met was 
last month and we got them a pamphlet. I guess they felt like they needed to pay us back because
they brought us all these wrapped gifts. So we took them home and
opened them and we were slightly scared. They got us a used bottle of
mayonnaise, honey, and BBQ sauce! Like the used it all and tried to
clean it out and then give us these empty mayo bottles. It still had
some mayo smudged to the side. So gross! 
There are these Gaijin foreign exchange students from BYU that also
came for 2 months last week. Only one went to Japan for his mission so he's really good in
Japanese. The others are studying so they aren't very good... They
helped us do a service project on Friday which was pretty fun. We
helped a lady in our ward clean out her farm, then we had backyard
Yakiniku which was really good! We ( as in the missionaries) all
decided that all these students were Otaku's. One wanted to translate
manga from Japanese to English and another was practicing the art of
the broads sword.  Me and my companion decided that we got called to Japan to level out the ratio of gaijin
that are Otaku's and aren't. Just kidding, I like gundams.

I'll email you guys again next Monday, even though we're still skyping.
Love and miss you guys a lot!

One other thing!

We got a baptism coming up this Sunday! Actually 2, but one of them is
ours! His name is Sato and he's been a kinjin for the past month. He's
so golden. He just has his interview and he's set to be dunked! We
want a member to baptism him so we're thinking of who could do that. I
think our only concern is him making friends, but in this wars, it
shouldn't be a problem.
I'll be sure to send you pics of the baptism.
Love you lots!

- Elder Durrant

- Elder Durrant


This is the river we cross everyday.

Here is our church:

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.

The new way I tie my ties haha

I miss you guys a ton! Love you all!

-Elder Durrant

Hey Guys!
So today for our P-Day we went down to Osaka and hung out with some
other Elders. They are both football players for BYU. One of them was
with me in the MTC. His name is Elder Griffitts and he's a backup QB
for BYU. Gotta love Griffitts. We used to hang out a lot in the MTC together.

Anyways, so we went down to Osaka to see them and had lunch with a
former investigator of theirs. The missionaries originally dropped
him, but the former investigator loves the missionaries so still likes
to do stuff with them, just not hear the gospel. He took us 4 to lunch
and we ate トンカツ. It was really good and they had a curry bar. All you
can eat curry.  

After we ate we walked around downtown Osaka for a bit and went to some stores. One of
the elders, Elder Baldwin, was looking for a samurai sword and we
couldn't find one. We told them to come down to Kyoto in a couple
weeks and we can easily find one there... Haha I think we're planning
on meeting up again in Kyoto in 3 weeks.

This Saturday marks me gone for officially one month! I'm not sure if
it went slow or fast but I guess I enjoyed it so far. There
have definitely been hard times but there have been more times where I know I want to
be here. The fields a lot different from the MTC. It's a lot of hard
work but it's good work and it's a lot of fun. That's the key I think.
 I'm really thankful I got a trainer like Elder Pace.
Kyoto has been good. It rains almost everyday which kind of sucks.
Plus it's getting more and more humid everyday. Today was horrible
because we rode the train a lot and it was so humid outside so I feel
pretty gross. The でんどう has been ok. Right now we have 1 recent
convert, 2 baptisms coming up, 9 investigators, and 3 potential
investigators. Hopefully by this week we will have 12 investigators.
We're shooting for 3 new P.I's every week, which is kind of a stretch
because one is ready hard enough.

This past week, we saw a bunch of guys protesting against the military base in Okinawa which
was pretty lame. They were all in their 50's, 60's, and 70's and all
had these stuffed animal hats on. I'm pro military so it was kind of
funny. They will be sorry when North Korea attacks. Haha.

 I had to give a talk in sacrament meeting yesterday. I was so surprised to see how
small the ward was. Ward membership is only around 80 but only like 50
people showed up yesterday. I gave a little introduction about myself
and ended with a short testimony on the Book of Mormon. 

So I saw the pictures, lots of snow! I would take snow over rain any
day. How did Ayumi do on her recital? I heard she did awesome! Wish I
could of seen it. I saw a picture of all the frogs and of dad mowing
the lawn. Is that really a lawn mower? The lawn looks good though. A
lot bigger then Nagoya's!

I can check emails anytime I have wifi but I can only send emails out
on P-Day.  Let's see how this next week is! Oh, and could you send me
the ring please? I'm so excited to see how it turned out!
Love you guys and miss you lots!

Elder Durrant

P.S: Here is a pic of a member who was in the Yakuza. He left that life and now is a strong member of the church and a good friend of ours.