Drunk sleep message stuff. I'm so tired. In fact I'm so tired I didn't realize until just now that I forgot to go do!

Otaru District Missionaries

12/21/2014

Hey everyone

So yeah I'm in Abashiri right now (see map below). This week has been crazy, so I'm going to give you a run down of each day. As the subject says, I am super tired, so if my enlishs doesn't make sense, or if it isn't spelled right, good luck. And don't shoot me.

Monday: My last Pepraration-Day in Otaru. We finished emailing, and then went and bought groceries, and ate yummy food, and then we went and visited, for the last time, Watanabe Kyodai (kyodai means brother, and prefixes are suffixes in Japan) (he is one of the Less Actives that is now reactivated) It was a somber meeting. I'll send pictures. He's way cool though. He makes model tanks (which will be in the pictures) and they are really good. Those are also in the pictures

Tuesday: Last day in Otaru. We had District Training Meeting (DTM) in the morning. We had a testimony meeting for that, because it was the last DTM for 3 of the sisters in our district, and 2 of us elders were transferring. It was cool. Way awesome to get to hear dying missionaries (returning home) testimonies. I have pictures of our district too that should send. After that, we went and visited another member to say good bye, as well as a less active who is still less active. They were both really cool, and I was sad to say good bye to them, but had to move on. That night The Sakumas fed us dinner. Bishop Sakuma  couldn't come, because he was sick, but Sackuma shimai (sister) and their kids came. It was a lot of fun, and I was able to say goodbye to them. It was kind of a solumn day. I cried on the inside alot

Wednesday: Transfer day. Hey just kidding. Don't know if any of you have been following weather in Hokkaido or not, but on Wednesday and Thursday, there was a blizzard hurricane type thing. It was insane. Some people died from it. That morning, we got a call from our district leader that told us to stay inside all day. Turns out the storm only occurred on the eastern side of the island of Hokkaido, and most of the missionaries were in Sapporo, so no missionaries got hurt. Nothing even happened in Otaru. There was a fair amount of wind but that was all. We stayed inside all day. I made sure I was fully packed, and ready to go, and then we played Japanese Chess, we cleaned, I watched the washing machine wash clothes, Best day ever. (#actuallastdayinotaru #veryboring)

Thursday: Actual Transfer day. Got up early this morning, and got all of my stuff put together, and we headed for the Sapporo Train Station. We got there and started meeting with all the missionaries, when Boom. There's Elder Spurling (my new companion). He's so much shorter than I thought he'd be. But he is so awesome. He's so hippster. He pulls it off too. He is way cool. He has an amazing voice too. And I'm killing him this transfer (his mission ends in February). Yup this is his last transfer, and I am going to kill him. How fun is that. So yeah we met up and went to the city of Shinoro. Because of the Storm, we couldn't go back to Abashiri yet, so we went and stayed in Shinoro, and Dendoed there for a little while. We got to meet some of Elder Spurling's old Investigators, and member friends (he was in the Shinoro area for a while). It was fun

Friday: Also in Shinoro. Met this cool american that has lived in Japan for 10 years. He still can't speak squat. And his wife is Japanese. I don't know how that works, but apparently it does. He was cool. But yeah once again we were in Shinoro all day.

Satuday: We finnaly got to go to Abashiri. We woke up early in the morning, to go to catch a bus for a 6 hour ride to Abashiri. Soooooo long. I slept for some of the ride, and then sat there bored for the rest of it. It was long. When we got back, we spent the rest of the time making cookies, and a musical number for the Christmas party, then we went to the Christmas party. We had a lot of fun, but it was small numbers. Abashiri has a branch of about 22 members. It's so much different from Utah. But yeah that happened, and it was fun

Sunday: So Abashiri got hit by that storm, and that's why we couldn't go back yet. There is quite a ton of snow. It's higher than my head. But the biggest problem, is the Sun comes out still. It melts the snow, and then it goes down, and it FREEZES. There is solid ice all over any road that isn't a main road. I slipped 4 times. I really hurt myself on one of them. It's pretty insane. but we still had fun. I got to bless the Sacrament for the first time on my mission (in Japanese) it was fun. We went and did some Dendo after that. It was so sketchy. I hate ice I've decided. It's the worst. Ice just straight up sucks. but yeah. Then the Ward Mission Leader and his Wife fed us that night because it was Elder Spurling's BIRTHDAY. HAPPY BIRTHDAY. he just turned 21, and his birthday is on the 21st. Lol. Golden birthday. He's so old...

So yeah that was my week. Sorry I am so tired, and dead. I can't even think straight enough to write stuff. This will forever  be known as one of the worst messages I've ever sent. Oh well

Merry Christmas to all. Love you all so much. See you in what seems like a long time but actually wont be sadly enough.

Bye

Elder Eliot

Sapporo Mission Areas, Kelson is in Abashiri (north coast)

This is the beach, not Santa Cruz!!

This man makes army tank models

Last goodbye to Otaru missionaries

Funny, English sign

Transferred, Already!!

Kelson's Dad here, so as you will see below, Kelson has already got transferred to a new city.  That was fast.  Don't know any details other than all is well.  He loved where he was at in Otaru and his attitude is good about his new journey!  He is going to Abashiri. It is a city of 40k on the northern part of Hokkaido Island on the ocean again.  It has less snow, but is much colder.  Good thing we bought him those boots!

Shawn

The Abashiri Frozen Ocean

12/14/2014
So yeah. If you do bother to read the subject lines (which I believe are hilarious, but you know in janai) you would know that I got my transfer call today. No need to worry. It's perfectly normal. Rostedt Choro (elder) is still awesome, and I'm not being taken really quickly because of some weird thing or something like that (can you tell my brain is sort of fried/in shock right now?) The mission office just had trouble getting tickets for the dying missionaries (those going home) at a certain time, and so all of the transfer stuff is a day early this transfer, and a bunch of other reasons I don't understand. So basically I'm going from one beach to another (speaking of beaches I'm sending a cool pic of Rostedt choro on the beach with a guitar in the snow.) Clear across the island. Around mountains. I'm going to see Icebergs. So yeah. I got a call this morning from the Japanese AP (Sato Choro) and he said a bunch of stuff in Japanese of which I couldn't understand because it was on a phone, and it was fast, and then I got told I'm going to Abashiri with Spurling Choro. I don't know anything more than that so I will tell you more next week.

Sadly however that means that it's time for more missionaries to die (go home). Including one of the Sisters that has been in Otaru this transfer, who I kind of look at as my mission mom (Rostedt choro being my dad, because he trained me, and therefore Roopinia choro (Elder Rostedt's trainer) being my grandfather), because of the help she gave me. She was way awesome to work with, but now she's dying (going home). If any of you ever meet a Sidney Horne, tell her from me that she's awesome. We'll all miss her a lot out here. She was a really good missionary. 

So yeah now I get to cry about her leaving, and me leaving all the awesome people in Otaru. 

Oh well I can get over it. The Lord wants me in Abashiri, and I'm going there. He gave me my preference in the beginning (of being in Otaru), and now I've told him to go with his preference. So that's where I'm needed. 

Well I'm sorry I can't think of anything else to write about this week.

Just remember to always where your pajamas on the inside of your suit and not the outside. It's really weird looking when you have in the other way around. 

Love you all.

Until next week.

Final farewell from Otaru.

See you in Abashiri next week (sort of since I won't actually see you)

Yup

Bye

I'm really done

I'm not stalling.

Bye

Elder Eliot

"Lime"

Snowy Otaru Canal

 12/08/2014
Yup! another one of those subject lines that I can't think of a subject for. Classic. Therefore I hereby dub this Subject line "Lime"

Hi everyone. 

It's me. 

Yeah that guy that's in Japan.

Yeah I know that you kinda forgot about me. I mean seriously it's been like 2 months. Or wait. 1 week. Yeah that's about the same. I don't know if I've ever said this before, but I totally agree with the guy that hosted me at the MTC. On your mission, the weeks feel like days, and the days feel like weeks. So yeah another week has come and passed. How did that happen.

Oh by the way we got snow. Wow we got snow. One night it just decided to dump. There must've been a foot of snow. I'll take a picture sometime of the roads to send, but the Japanese people don't care about it. They leave the snow for the most part. They will plow main roads, and the few roads that they can't plow, but need the snow gone, are you ready for this, they HEAT THEM. They have heat systems under the roads, but for the most part the roads are all ice, and not asphalt. It's very adventureful. 

I keep getting reminded all the time that my companion is not from Utah. We were out one day and found a public staircase that is fairly steep. It had not been walked in yet (and in this area there was more like 3 feet of snow) and so I knew that it was dangerous. I go out and grab the rail and start to slowly go down. What does my companion do? He jumps. He dives and rolls down the snow. I was in shock. Why would you want to do that? For one thing it's cold, for the next, it's dangerous. 

Another example. The other day we were about to be late home, and we were already running on the ice. I was still having a hard time, and knew we weren't going to make it, already had slipped once, and he looks back at me and says "we can make it if we sprint." "NO" needless to say we were late, because I refused to sprint on ice. He's going to get himself hurt. I have to teach him Winter Survival Skills. 

But yeah that's a pretty good summarization of what our week was like. 

Well I'm out of time, (and can't think of what else to write. Saved by the bell) 

I hope you are all doing amazing, and having fun this Christmas time. BTW everyone read the Dec. Liahona/Ensign. It has some amazing stuff.

Love you all. I promise to send pics next week (I didn't take any this week. Oops)

Till Next week (month)

Elder Eliot 　

Short but sweet!

Eating Sushi (not sure red photo problems)

Raw Sushi

11/30/2014

Cool story I'll share very quick, about Enduring to the End, and then I'm sorry, I needed to send other people things, and don't have time. I did send a bunch of pictures though so hopefully that will be good.

Story.

So on Wednesday we decided to go out to part of our area that we don't get to go to very often, called Boyodai. As part of this excursion we go out to an area near that called Shinko. Well we got to Boyodai, and Elder Rostedt wasn't feeling to well. I was thinking that we were probably going to wind up needing to go back earlier than we wanted to go back. But he was able to tough it out all the way to the end, and in the very end (litterally that last guy we visited) we picked up a new investigator that seems fairly Goldenish. About as Golden as Japan can get. We had met him and talked to him the last time we went out, but this time he invited us in. We were able to teach him about prayer, and the restoration, and God. The comment he kept making was "Shukyo" which means religion. It seemed hard for him to grasp, but he was very friendly and seemed like he wanted to try. He took some of our pamphlets, and said he'd read them, and we got an appointment to come back. We'll see where it goes. But yeah moral of the story is to endure to the end, and God will Exalt thee on High.

 

Well time is up. Love you all.

Till next week.

Elder Eliot

These are Daikon, they are very big radishes.

Some answers to dad's questions.My comp is like an Australian. He works me fairly hard. Not to hard this week though. He was sick. Lol.

No turkey :( but we did have a special Thanksgiving English class. We taught people Thanksgiving vocab and had a potluck, and someone brought rotisserie chicken from Costco. 

A fair amount of people know enough English I can communicate with them, or I do just know enough Japanese to be fine. 

Church is a lot different here. The whole ward (congregation) only has about 40 people that come to church. We do a variety of different methods of Dendo (contacting people). Currently we only have a few Investigators, and some of them we don't get to teach very often. Most of our time is spent finding though. We do try to visit less/not active members quite a bit. 

My day is wake up at 6:30am, Shower, breakfast, study, lunch, dendo, dinner, dendo, planning, sleep. 

Otaru is literally Elk Ridge, on steroids, in big city form. I would never want to live here, but it's a cool area.

Elder Rostedt cooking, something

Is that fried Spam?

English Class Thanksgiving Dinner

Another yummy dinner

What can I say?

Yubari Melon, yum!

Faith and Works!!!

Making cookies for our friends

Otaru Chocolate Factory Tour for P-Day

City from the Park

Otaru Park

Sea of Japan in the distance