Yay P-Day! Ice cream! And an 🐙!

First Pictures...


Takoyaki party with the Chiba's
Takoyaki is ebelskievers with octopus.
Murphy's - you know what to do!

This is a bird I saw. Yup













Hey, look what I can read!

Wow, we have a lot of
 hot chocolate!

Might go to this concert, but probably not.
It is 12$ away.

Ok, now the other stuff.

Today is p-day and we are just going to stick around Shonandai. I will be finding a scarf soon, because it is cold! And the sun rises at 6, sets at 5ish, and is behind clouds a lot. I cannot wait for snow! Or a storm. Either would be fun.

So, since last week, I have been a senior companion, duped by an old man, eating strange things, and biking.

Tuesday: went to Tsujido to meet O! He has had so much improvement over the last two transfers. We also got in contact with a PI from Nepal. He was so excited and invited us to a Nepalese party in Hodogaya, but that is way out of our area, we had to reassign him to other elders, so that was too bad, but he will be better taken care of there.

Wednesday: Kinjin?!( Golden investigator?!) we met with a man named Hayashi and he has been trying to meet with us for a long time. He was awesome. Really excepting of the Restoration and all of that. But, there were some fishy things about him. He knew words he shouldn't have known. We were confused. I met a crazy British person at the Eki today. It was not the first meeting with our district. Not fun. Very rude and anti everything.

On Thursday was the new missionaries Facebook training, but Porter and Dowdle Chōrōtachi were sick with a cold. I got to take McDonald Chōrō all of the way to Kichijoji and be trainersama for a while. I was the only one of my doki (transfer age), there. I saw Battaglia Chōrō! While I was telling him how things were going, Hayashi came up. He then proceeded to tell me exactly what he looked like and his life story. That's right. We have a senkyōshi troll. This guy floats around the two Tokyo missions and wastes missionary time by taking the lessons and then disappearing when he progresses. I was so disappointed. We called the president to see what we should do. He was down for us snapping a picture at our next lesson, but then he tuned into the spirit and said that we should just stop meeting with him. So if you ever hear about any missionary in tokyo with an investigator who looks like Willy wonka, it is probably Hayashi, or kobayashi.

Friday: sports night and Book of Mormon class. We had an investigator and an old investigator come to Book of Mormon class. It was great. Really helped set up for the next lesson. By the way, I teach the advanced Eikaiwa class and most of the students used to be investigators. It is sometimes awkward because we try and mention the church in conversations, but they were all not interested before. They are super nice though.

Saturday: we cleaned the church today. We weeded and pruned the outside bed. It took an hour for 8-9 people working on everything. That was a mess. But afterwards, we had curry with the high priest group. They are super funny old people. It isn't like at home where there are younger people in the group. Afterwards, we checked out the city festival, or Machimasturi. It reminded me of the Preston Pioneer Day celebration. Tiny with a lot of people everywhere. That evening, we went in early because Dowdle Chōrō had a cold. He is getting better now and I haven't caught it yet.

Sunday. Sunday is a special day. A day for members to strengthen each other. Because there is only one ward in the building, the members don't get pushed out by other people, so they are able to comfortably talk to each other. Yesterday after church the festival had a parade, so some people weren't able to leave on the roads. We had a dendō meeting with the bishop. He is super cool. We figured out that our teaching capacity per week is about 200 lessons, but only if the ward brings us people to teach. The ward is really active in wanting to help the work move on, but they just need to open their mouths. They will get there though. The Lord has promised that Japan will be a great place for the Saints if the members will make the change and talk to people. We had a takoyaki party with the Chiba couple. They were married last month, takoyaki is basically an ebbelskiever with octopus. It is actually pretty good. We had to bike there, it was 45 minutes both ways, which was fun not fun. We looked like a biker gang or the sandlot crew going to the field. It was funny.

I love you all. Miss you!

Any day is good to send me emails, and I don't care how long they are. 愛しています！

マーフィー長老

I forgot to tell you about the ice cream! Today was a 31% off at Baskin Robbins. It was good. Then we walked around. And sat. That was pretty much our p-day. Here is us last night on bikes.
The ice cream is Love Potion and Vampire Kiss. They are full of Raspberry! I miss raspberry flavors. We decided to stop on the side of the road for this picture.




Bonus part of letter to William:

Japan is treating me with a cold shoulder, mostly because it is cold right now. My favorite food is skemen, which is a upgrade of ramen.

Love you too, don't be too dorky, but don't not be too dorky.







Pictures Plus

Connor has sent us all several pictures this week.  We enjoy seeing his 'handsome face' (as Gretta refers to it) and some of the beautiful area where he is serving.  In addition to the pictures we have added parts of letters he sent to each family member this week.  Enjoy!





Connor's District in Fujisawa with some members

View of Fujisawa from Enoshima

We are noticing a theme...

Beautiful!

Gretta's letter

I love you too Gretta! I met some people your age this week. They are all just as goofy as you, but not as cute. I have the pink ribbon you wanted me to put on my luggage on my bag and everywhere I go, I get to tell people about you and how important family is. I love you Gretta-goo!  (Gretta loves sending her animal drawings to Connor.  He sent her this special picture.  She is going to try to draw this for him this week)

Dad's letter

 

So, I am going to send my last planner home, maybe that will give some insight to the day to day stuff, but I am going to try really hard this week to make note of all the tiny stuff that I do this week. I am doing my best to serve the Lord. I won't be able to write a big weekly this week, just pictures, but here are the highlights. First drunk investigator, Enoshima again, it was good, lots of meals from members, so full. Heard about the earthquake in Kobe mission, hope they are all right. Love you and appreciate all that you do.

 

more coming soon.

 



My really fast week

Wow! This week flew by!

OK so a review of two weeks ago which I forgot to do last week. Everything was pretty much the same. We picked up Dowdle Chōrō and went to Eikaiwa. I taught advanced class with McDonald Chōrō. Then we had General conference. That was really good I watched two sessions in Japanese. That was interesting. We watched it with an investigator. We had Temple P-day. That was really fun. My companion lost his temple bag on the train. He was sad. We still haven't found it. But we will! We had a fiesta on Saturday. That was really fun we had real tacos and it was so delicious. I miss tortillas. There was zone conference. That happened. We had Halloween candy. Some ward members had us over for dinner twice this week. That was really tasty. My favorite part about the iPad is how you can just talk to it and write your email for you.


Today we are not really doing anything because it is raining. We are writing emails and laughing. We are getting ready to go shopping. There are a lot of really funny videos on the Gospel Library.

This week we are going to Tokyo to listen to Elder Bednar, and we are doing an activity with the young men, and that's pretty much it. Our investigators are doing well, thank you for all that you do. Miss you all!

Transfer 2

First, here are my pictures of the week. We have zone meeting, temple p-day, general conference, and a familiar looking samurai, and my new companion is Dowdle Chōrō from Montana.

Ok, so in a flash, here was my week!
Monday: Enoshima. I told you all of the fun stuff last week.
Tuesday: we did some housing, didn't find anyone though. Had a lesson with two old Buddhist ladies. We also cleaned everything. I went through all of the paper area books from the apartment and that was weird. There was stuff from about 1994 to 2013. That was crazy.
Wednesday: Our last day with Muranaka Chōrō. He is in Kōfu now. We dendōed.

I have to go now, sorry for the cliffhanger. I really wanted to talk to you all. Hopefully next week will be better.

Last week of transfer 1

So, I am going to try a new format this week. Wish me luck!

Monday: P-day, I told you all of the important stuff last week, but just in recap... Bowling and the start of splits with Gonzales Chōrō.

Tuesday: was interesting. We biked over by Fugisawa through the countryside, but I didn't have time to take any pictures, sorry. It was really nice. You don't know a peaceful bike ride until you are in a rice field and the wind is blowing everywhere. We went to do service for a member who got married on Saturday! We did our 12 weeks training with him because he is an RM. That night, we had a dinner appointment with some high school students. We sat down and literally the fist words out of one of their mouths was "the Book of Mormon is a great book, but it is a little hard to read sometimes". We looked at each other and then we taught most of the first discussion to them. It was probably the first time the Spirit has been brought to a carousel sushi place.  That was awesome.

Wednesday: was crazy. Muranaka Chōrō and I somehow ended up in Atsugi to teach Eikaiwa, and they wanted me to spend two days there, but I was not ready to do that and I have had the only complete area book for about 2 weeks. That was a hard day.

Thursday: Eikaiwa and weekly planning! Yeah! Not the funniest afternoon. I had to do monthly planning for my area and that takes forever! Eikaiwa was really fun. There was a new student who got a chirashi, flyer, during our first blitz. Guess who gave it to her? Yours truly, that's who! I was so excited. Hopefully the sisters can turn her into an investigator. We had 11 in our class, which is pretty big for an advanced class. The game of the night was this:
it worked out perfectly in the end, but it was just a bunch of Japanese people saying random words. That was fun!

Friday: transfer call eve. So the dendō of the day was streeting and housing. The service of the day was helping set up Chiba Kyōdai's wedding. Also, I don't know if I have said this, but when you have an area book, there is a small group of investigators and about 100 potential investigators. We do a lot of follow up recently. The previous elders didn't do a lot of cleaning up of paperwork, so we get to. There are some good leads, but no new investigators yet. Soon. Very soon.

Saturday: transfer calls. Transfer calls come in an email. I am staying in Fugisawa, and my new companion is Dowdle Chōrō, who is basically my second trainer, we were on splits so much this transfer. The only person to leave Fugisawa is Muranaka Chōrō, who is going to Kofu. Porter Chōrō is going to be a trainer for a new missionary.  We started a new housing plan today. The area that we live hasn't been housed in a while, so we are going block by block looking for those the Lord has prepared. Funny things that happened during that: we found a catholic priests house, I gave the first half of lesson one to a door because I didn't know that they hung up, and we found a member. Next week will be better.

Sunday: highlights of today: a normal missionary Sunday, meetings, stats, and Nanbei (Domingo). We were hoping that an investigator would come to Nanbei because it is a better time for him, but we ended up just going with a less active youth. Other than that, we walked from Fugisawa to Fugisawa Honmachi after trying to visit a less active part member family. That was fun...

Monday: P-day! We finally went to Enoshima! This is the island at the bottom of our mission. It is really Buddhist, but there are Triforce signs everywhere because that is a Japanese family name. There are hawks everywhere and it was a lot of stairs, but not as much as at the end of Star Wars. I didn't buy a sword. I have been told to wait until I go to Kamakura for that. I did find a lot of glass animals like the ones mom has. I will have to get some one day, like a dragon or two. We went to the beach. It was fun.

Well, I will hear from you all this week, and watch conference on Sunday with the rest of Japan. Here are pictures. They are pretty cool I think. Love you all!

Elder Murphy

 

Super Typhoon Chaba update from www.accuweather.com.  As of this morning it will not be bad for Connor and the rest of the Tokyo South Mission but your prayers will not be wasted on behalf of them and the rest of those in the path of this storm.

Super Typhoon Chaba will threaten lives and property across mainland Japan and South Korea this week after lashing the Ryukyu Islands on Monday night.

Chaba reached super typhoon status, strengthening to the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane, on Monday afternoon, local time.

Powerful winds, torrential rain and rough seas around Chaba's center will pose significant danger to shipping interests across the East China Sea through Tuesday night.

Residents of southern mainland Japan and southern South Korea need to prepare for Chaba to make a direct hit or pass dangerously close on Tuesday night into Wednesday.