Kamakura

Hello World!

Welcome to the Crash Course of Elder Murphy’s Week! Thanks for coming! Don’t Forget to be AWESOME!

(Warning: May contain Rest and Recuperation.)

Tuesday: We rested for the Morning, and Afternoon, I am studying a lot of stuff right now. There is an old copy of the Articles of Faith by Elder Talmage, which they used to use as a missionary teaching tool, but is now just on the same level as Jesus the Christ, so incredibly detailed and yet incredibly eye-opening. At Night, because it is Halloween, we went to a set of Ekis, Kanazawa-Hakkei and Kanazawa-Bunko. There are supposed to be lots of college students here and we didn’t really meet any until we were almost to Oppama, the last Eki in our area (maybe). We went and ate Baskin-Robins because it isn’t a 31st without 31% off Ice Cream. I almost got bumped into by an Indian guy who was biking, but we talked after that and he was really nice, he works next to the Baskin-Robins, and I think that he would be open to getting a pamphlet and Book of Mormon. He is from near Kerala, so shout out to Jicky.

Wednesday: Long day. We studied in the Morning and went to the Church to do District Meeting. It went long. We needed to start an Advanced Class, so I had to negotiate a way to that and then when I said that we need to do Level Checks, it was time to put my negotiation and persuasion skills to the max. We ended up doing Level Checks and having a huge group discussion time while me and Casper Chōrō and Cranston Shimai were doing interviews. It was a long day. To finish it off, I watched the movie Legacy, which helped me get some ideas for the district, so that we can achieve our goal of a baptism by Christmas. Phrases that Came to mind: Are you building a Legacy of Faith?; Where are you on the Journey of Life?; etc.. Really good for the district and our investigators.

Thursday: Morning Studies, Afternoon Weekly Planning (the style and method will be changing soon, so it might get better), and an evening of R&R. Before we came in though, we went and visited an old Investigator to see how he was doing and he was kind of sick, but wants us to come back after he is better. We invited him to the Halloween Party and wished him well.

Friday: Morning Hill Climbing towards Negishi. We went up and down so many hills that we could have gone around. We were heading towards the Eki Negishi, but Elder Casper had never been there, so we just started to go with our offline maps and our hope that it was the right way. Very long bike ride there, very short on the way back. We went to a park on the top of a vista, (see pictures), and it was very good. Lots of people because it was Culture Day. Families, workers with their dogs, Gaijin, and beautiful weather. But sadly, it is not in our area. It is in Yamate. So we biked back, learned that, and went to Konan-Chuo, an Eki 5 minutes south of Kamiooka. It literally means Central Konan, which is the Ward in Yokohama. We went to get some volunteer opportunities, but because it was Culture day, it was closed. So we started to street and this guy calls out to us literally as we walk away from our bikes. He says, “Hey guys! Hey, how is it going?” We are really confused because normally when this happens the person is either drunk or crazy. But he is not! He is from Mongolia and wanted to know if he could come to church and meet with us. Kiseki! Miracle! We tell him where the church is and that is all we have time for because he had to get back to work. Then we went home to R&R. At Night, we went on Splits and I took Elder Hattanda to go and visit a member family with a son who turned 14! He was not that excited that we visited, but his mom was. It was just the 2 of them celebrating when we got there, so we sang him Happy Birthday and gave him some Kit-Kats. Then we went and visited a Less-Active Brother who was sick and talked to him for 2 hours about his work, his anime, his health, his opinion on Hokkaido and how empty it is, and more about anime. He was way interesting, but nice. We will go back and help him move a bunch of recycling that he always forgets to put out.

Saturday: For the Morning, we went to Idogaya to participate in the Green Birds initiative. This is picking up garbage in the city. There was a ton of garbage. They needed us to take pictures of the garbage, so most of the pictures this week are of garbage, so as missionaries say: “ that’s a ゴミ写真！“. There are 40.... what more do I need to say. Except that we got 3 new PI’s. The people that were there serving ranged from us to normal people to city officials to shop owners to a previous congressional candidate. One lady laughed when she found out that we were 20 and 23 and missionaries. It was a good opportunity to show some people that missionaries are a good thing. They were all normal and wanted to trade contact information, so were said, “Yeah we want to be your friends!”. Hopefully we can invite them to an event to get them aquatinted with the church and then from there, they will be Investigating. Then we went and did studies for an hour, so 30 minutes of Companion and 30 of Language and went to the church to set up for the Halloween Party. It was really fun, all of the seats were full, we had piñatas, the donut game with donuts on a string and you have to eat it, but they only pulled to package off, a round of trick-or-treating with the classrooms (Hattanda Chōrō got pulled out by his cape by an older Primary girl) which was really cute and hilarious. Then we ate food and really good pumpkin bread. I thought it was fun. After we had cleaned up and ended splits, we wrote DCS and we went home for R&R.

Sunday: Elder Casper was super sick, so we called the Bishop to tell him that we wouldn’t be there, and gave the other Elders the Progress Report for the ward. When he was sleeping, I took a nap too, read more of the Articles of Faith, PMG, the Life of Jesus Christ Bible videos, and waited. Then when it was time to go and submit stats, we went and did that, tried to watch some Online training videos, and came home. We made dinner, and then I made a sign for #Light the World. I also decorated the apartment for Christmas. Then the day was over.

I love you all and hope that you all will have a good week!
Things that will happen this week:
•Interviews with President Warnick
•Stake Conference in Hakuraku
•Not much else

Have a Merry Christmas!
 愛しています！
− マーフィー長老