氷のように水がお手に滴る

Hey everyone! How are things back in the land of freedom or wherever you are? I'll tell you that things over here in the land of the rising sun are doing great! We wake up and stand everyday. What a blessing am I right.

This week was a little bit slower because of some meetings and random stuff we were obliged to do. However we did still have some really cool things happen. But before I say anything, last night my companion just keeps randomly mentioning sushi and how good it is. Now I'm a skimp when it come to money sometimes so when I wear the pants we eat rice, never go out to eat, and live as poorly as I can. By nature, "live broke, and occasionally buy big things" that's just how my brain works. However, my companion talked me in to going to Hamasushi which is my favorite conveyer belt sushi place and wow after 2 transfers without,  I remembered the happiness sushi brings into one's life and thought of a world without conveyer belt sushi and it got dark really fast. Alright end of story. So on Wednesday we had lesson with Sunagasan and taught him the plan of salvation. He is never really to inclined in the lessons but I told him that we want him to read the book of blue and pray about it and come to church again. He said he just wanted to continue as friends so we had to drop him. I'm so tired of finding people in Japan that just want to be friends. It sounds boastful but we could walk down the street and befriend every single young person we see (yesterday we stopped some guy and he goes wow crazzy cool ikemenne (handsome) it's probably embarrassing for you guys to walk beside me) I'm just trying to tell you about Jesus dang it. Haha anyways that's not why we are here and I just want to find someone that will take the lessons in an environment the members can join and someone we can watch progress. Sadly that is proving quite hard to find amongst the Japanese but we have been pretty straight forward with everyone this week whether for the better or not. 

I don't know if I already said but we did get an Eikaiwa class started up here but participation is still pretty small and its tuff but we do have Iwashita Kyoudai and we can rely on him every week for a member haha!

So we got a referral last week😱 my mind was blown. Its a member that lives in Oizumi which is the Brazil of Japan and we get in contact with this family from Brazil and they are like there is a soccer event in Ota lets talk there. So we go on Saturday morning and find them. My companion does everything cause I can't speak Portuguese but it turns out they are super interested, wants to meet, and come to church. Huge miracle and then we look over and see the Matsunumo family who are the most beast members you will ever meet and they run over and are like oh my goodness the missionaries are here and in a panic run around to every tent and buy us loads of food and are like here here take it. And then they met the people we were trying to teach which was golden cause now they already know some members. Anyways after, their daughter who speaks decent English comes over with her friend who lived in New Zealand so she speaks English too and tells us that everyone here goes to a English only school and can speak English so after we finish up with the referral we walk around and meet someone from Zimbabwe, Kenya, Iran, Nepal, Singapore, England who were mostly the teachers and obviously lots of Japanese. It was a blast and really good exposure to a small part of the community. Anyways after we are walking back to the station and the members tell us to hop in and they will take us to the station cause it was about a 35 minute walk. Yeah well they didn't take us to the station haha they took us to get food, then a foot spa, then a drive up the canyon, then to a museum, haha. They said to tell President sorry because they "kidnapped us". Later in the day my companion picks up a fire extinguisher and goes "what is this? " I asked him if he didn't have them in Brazil and he says "have" and proceeds to start spraying it like he had never seen one before. It was pretty funny I'll admit.

Anyways another transfer rolled by and me and my comp are gladly staying here in Kiryu which I am excited about. We are setting some good goals and plans to achieve them. We've figured out the area decently well too and are hoping to see lots of miracles with the area as well as the language. I can feel the prayers, like  seriously I know when you forget to pray for us so please don't stop. Thank you!

The atonement is real, Jesus Christ lives, and the Book of Mormon is his scripture.

Until next time -

Elder Parker 

Oh How the Adventures Have Begun

 Oh wow, things are really getting good let me tell you. I knew summer time would go crazy but it's already starting. Let me explain. In America by the time I left for Japan I had settled in well with so much confidence to go and do anything as a missionary. There was no fear. I was stopping everyone and their dog to get yelled at half the time by some Baptist that thinks he's met Jesus before of something. However, when I got to Japan the language and cultural things made me crawl into this little pathetic shell again. The language progression takes time. It was slow. Then came winter which let me tell you I have really grown some anger towards. Makes me want to carry a flame thrower with me all day just to burn things out of spite. Anyways time progresses and the weather is still cold but we are reaching those no jacket afternoons and God has helped me so much and I feel like I'm starting to get back a lot of that America confidence again, a very day and night difference. I'm honestly not sure if it is the weather warming up or if I'm just at a comfortable enough level with the language or what but this week I had the the absolute funniest time talking to so many random people. Our area is progressing so much where we are forgetting who is who in our contacts. I finally feel like I know how to bring up the gospel in Japan and teach the lessons well enough and talk to people and make them laugh which let me tell you is a blast when you pull out a little picture of God and relate him to anime characters. Short story short, me and my companion who has no Idea what's happening most of the time but whom I love so much have been going crazy in stores, trains, restaurants, etc. I've made it a goal to make sure every single person that lives in our area to know us. I have had an absolute blast with so many random interactions this week and can't wait to see where things are gonna go from here. It's taken a while to learn how to present myself in the right manner and how to approach people in Japan and to make things work and now I feel like I finally can.

Alright so I'll go ahead and share our best find for the week and a funny experience. 

Starting off with a lesson we had with someone named Kagarisan. We ended up going to an all you can eat place. They have a lot of them in Japan and they are the best because you have a secluded nice stall to eat at and how it works is you have a time limit of for example 120 minutes and within that time you can eat as much as you possibly can. You just spam everything you want on the tablet and depending on the place either a person or robot brings it to you. Oh and you cook the food yourself using a grill, skillet, or a broth depending on the restaurant. Anyways this one was one for mouji and okinomiya and a bunch of other stuff and we absolutely died. I've eaten lots of food at these places before because you have to but this time was the worst. I nearly passed out. It was awesome. Anyways none of that matters because what matters is we where able to help Kagari feel the spirit and progress. However afterwards it was already about 8 o'clock and dark at the station. We found out that apparently the Ota station which is actually a pretty big city's station is popping at night. We where walking and we saw a crowd of all self proclaimed gangsters. They where leaving cigarette buds all over out front of the station which I have never seen a cigarette bud on the ground in Japan ever until this point so I mean some hard core gangsters. Anyways I'm thinking to myself this is gonna be fun when my companion from Brazil turns to me and goes あぶないですから (its dangerous). Obviously I knew these guys were no tuffer that a noodle that's in between soft and hard in the mist of boilage. So we talked to them and I got to decide who looked the coolest out of them due to their wishing and got the whole lay down on the parties, clubs, and "underground" events for the next month if we are trying to get black out drunk and buzzed off cigarettes. So, we will not be attending. Right after in the station we walked up to another group and just told them we were bored waiting on a train and wanted to talk. We whipped out the God head on em and after, one of them came up to us on the train and thanked us for taking to them. It was awesome. Anyways that's the funny story. The coolest part of the week though was running into Jin. She's this 17 year old high school girl that was just for some reason so interested in talking to us. No I'm totally joking it was guy and he was really shy and just got home and was parking his bike. Like I said he, was really shy but wasn't scared. We ended up teaching him the restoration and giving him a Book of Mormon to check out. He said he wasn't really sure if there was a God or not but had been thinking about it. I am very excited to see him again and talk. 

We also discovered a place called Ashikaga in our area that's only about a 20 minute train ride over and it's a beautiful decently sized city with a bunch of young people. We made friends with a lot of shop owners down there and also saw I think 2 Americans who were darker skinned riding in a tiny car bumping some jams who wanted us to get in with them. So we obviously did and... I'm kidding we did not. However I am really excited to see if we can get some work going over there too.

Alright that's all I got time for, we are going to Takasaki today for P day and have to hop on a train in just a minute. I hope all is well for those who read, you are in my prayers. Thank you. 

Until water meets rice 

-Elder Parker

Weekly yokotenkai!! Facebook post by President Cook

We learned about the breastplate of righteousness, contacting referrals, best practices, and miracles!

#amazingmissionaries

#lifelongdisciples

伝説剣はあなたの指が切るをご注意ください

 After a lot of hard work, some blood, tears, and a lot of praying, I think I have officially mastered and figured out how to take a nap while riding a bike! Honestly, Its been great. Unless we are taking an early train somewhere, every morning after personal study at 10 AM we leave the apartment and I get to take a nap as we go somewhere and then I just wake my couscous brain up again and am good to go. I tried it while driving once but ran into my mom who I was following with my car🤷 so maybe it's a biking only thing but I'd give it try. 

This week was fantastic let me tell you! On Thursday we really wanted to find someone to teach so we hit the streets at 12 in the most downtown area in Kiryu and we were talking to everyone experimenting different things (自転車を乗ってるおばさんにストープしてくださいと) and what not when I look over at the stop light and saw this guy and he looked over to us and talks to us and asks us what where doing. As always I reply with the うろうろしてる (aimlessly wandering around) which makes them laugh 100% of he time and we were able to teach him the full restoration on the street and hopefully will meet with him again. It was sweet and after we found a shop with clothes all from America which are pretty popular here and found a Sturgis bike rally hoodie. Now that blew my mind, I never thought I would see that in Japan. Anyways I've talked about Sunagasan before but yesterday was my companion's birthday and we leveraged that with an invitation to come to church and he did. Haha I was really worried the members would be scared of him as there are too many things at this point pointing to him being Yakuza or he's got some sort of interesting stuff going on haha. However it could just be that he's running an underground pickle business. I think he was scared at first but at the end helped us give cake to a bunch kids which was good. After, we told him we were going to go to the library to study and was like that's dumb In Japanese. He wanted to eat lunch with us in our apartment but we can't do that and I'm trying to keep were we live outside of his noggin. However, after eating we were able to learn some stuff and teach him a lesson. Then on Monday we ventured almost all the way to Maebashi on bike and we saw two guys playing soccer so I used my companion and was like he's from Brazil 😱 If there was a crowd it would have gone wild. Well turns out just cause your from Brazil doesn't mean you can play soccer cause it looked like he had never touched a soccer ball before. We talked with them, left, studied for a bit, and then they text us to come back so we did and ended up riding like absolute gangsters helmets and all on bikes going to some ramen shop and talking about anime as that was both of their apparently number 1 hobby haha. We tried to relate it to God as best as we could. 

That covers quite a review of some things! Thanks.

Language update -

Like a fish graciously flopping his scales in the air I burst out the door every day and get humbled. However, I have seen a lot of progress and feel comfortable in most situations. I can teach the lessons and talk to people just fine in almost all the conversations we get ourselves into but still have a long long way to go. I have pretty high goals and am working really hard to achieve them everyday. Studying harder then ever before. I feel I understand all grammar at this point. The thing that stumps me is words. There are still so many I need to know and is tuff but I am learning a lot every day and I feel like I can just start to see a light at the end of the tunnel. That light being me achieving my goals before I go home. And I will mention my goals are very very high with the language haha. Anyways please pray for me to have the gift of tongues. This is a hard language that takes most missionaries in Japan up to their 18 month mark to really feel fully comfortable in every situation and I don't have that time. I am working so hard to get there and need your prays. I will mention though that this time of my mission I think I can say I know the gift of tongues is true but it doesn't come easily. Self worthiness, obedience, and lots of self put in work are all a part of it. However when I am in a time where maybe a word has slipped my mind I never worry. Because within a half second period my brain realizes I have forgot something, then that there is no reason that the gift of tongues will not help and to not worry, and then the word comes every single time which has been very cool to see.  And for everyone who has been praying for me up until now, thank you. Because I know I would not nearly be where I am now without your faithful prayers. 

For people that know Japanese things and learned the language in his modern era which is probably not a lot of people.

N5-N1 Verbs, and katakana words are scheduled to be fully memorized by end of next transfer. After that working back through N3, 2, and 1 words will take more time than I have. Yellow book and all useful blue book grammar is good to go for the most part. However I am sure out of nowhere some random things concerning grammar may pop up in the future.

Thanks for reading, caring, and helping!

Until next time - パーカー長老はバイバイと申します！

写真だ！