Order E Progresso: Week 37 in Japan

This past week we had transfers happen and we've been blessed to live with some crazy Brazilian named Elder Siqueira. He actually served in this area a while back and built a lot of the area. He's on his last transfer before he goes back home to Brazil so he's really excited about returning. I love people from South America. He's teaching me how to play the guitar. Turns out there was a guitar in the Kofu church this entire time, who knew?!

Elder Farnsworth and I have decided that we need to start keeping track of the weather, because we've had to make long bike rides in heavy rain on 3 different occasions this week and got absolutely soaked. It was fun, but I'm still waiting on one of my suits to dry so we decided we didn't want to do this anymore. 

The sister's investigator, Judy, got baptized! She's from Taiwan and is super awesome! We're so excited for her and the baptismal service went really well. She's an absolute ball of energy and has a solid testimony. 

There's a section here in Kofu that is know to missionaries as The Spanish Lands and it's on the other side of town so it's always a fun bike ride there. It was actually found by Elder Siqueira last summer in an area called Joei where a lot of Brazilians live. Then Elder Farnsworth and I decided to go past Joei to a place called Higashi-Hanawa where we found more Brazilians and a bunch of Peruvians. Well this past week we decided to frontier the areas on the base of the mountains past Higashi, and we've found more South Americans! Yay Spanish! Except every time we go down there, Elder Farnsworth and I have weird dreams those nights that are in a mixture of English, Japanese, and Spanish.

Pero la obra avanza. Solo estoy agradecido por este oportunidad de ser un misionero!

Te llamo!

Elder Cuff

Hot Rod! Week 36 in Japan

Wowie that was a quick week. For starters transfer calls came in! Me and my amazing Mexican companion Elder Farnsworth are staying together for one more! (Although He's from an American family, he was born in Mexico and still has citizenship so we just call him Mexican.) We were hoping for this because things have been going well in the area and neither of us wanted to leave at all.

We met with our man Kazuki for lunch today, he was kind of late but had the most amazing entrance any of our investigators have ever had. He came in on his screaming Harley and when he saw us he just casually pulled up onto the sidewalk and parked it. We then enjoyed a nice lunch and talked about Rock Music, Cars, Bikes, and Faith. He wants to start a business so he can make more money in order to buy a 1972 Chevelle so we might work with him on the church's self reliance
program.

Dog Days with Kazuki

Japan's roads aren't necessarily the safest (by any means) and I had one of the most unfortunate crashes. Nothing got damaged, in fact I casually stepped over my handlebars because my front wheel fell into a slot on the road and piked my bike straight into the air. As funny as it was we had to get going so I had to pull my bike out of the road like Excalibur and we kept moving.

The bike in the stone!

We had an amazing opportunity to find some more people this week, including a Peruvian family! The kids prefer Japanese, but they all speak Spanish, which the parents prefer. I don't know if I've brought this up before, but for some reason everyone on the south side of Kofu knows Eldon, and he posts videos of us on Facebook sometimes, so now we're low key become famous there. Every time we meet someone within the ages of 18-30 they know us because of Eldon. So because of him we've had a lot of success with finding since apparently he's friends with everyone.

This week was jam packed with tons of other wild stuff but I'm gonna stop here... sorry.

Keep on keepin’ on!
Elder Cuff

Step Up: Week 35 in Japan

Alrighty, so to start things off, our homie Eldon is getting baptized this August! He's such an incredibly prepared guy who's really been
finding a lot of joy out this Gospel. It's been such an incredible blessing being able to teach him. Also he's gonna teach me how to do some hip hop style dancing so I'm pretty pumped about that!

We had a member this past week who took us to his family shrine. He's a bit older but the rest of his family is Buddhist and he still holds
on to a lot of Buddhist values like being kind and working hard, but not much of the belief. It was a really cool moment though while he shared some stories about his ancestors at he shrine.

There's a place here I might have mentioned in a previous email called Bonchi. It's very well known here in Yamanashi Prefecture because it's cheap, and have ridiculously big portions. Like bigger than a mass majority of American restaurants. So being the the smart people that
we are, we decided to take our mission president and his wife there for dinner after we had interviews. 'Twas a good time had by all.

We met a guy this week who had tats all over (tattoos aren't common in Japan) owns a clothing shop in downtown Kofu, and is part of biker gang. Loves American teenage hardcore rocker rebel culture. Bought us some drinks and is meeting with us for lunch on Wednesday at a brand new Soba shop. Loves what we do as missionaries and wants to talk about rock music with me more. Apparently he really likes Frank Zappa and Rage Against the Machine.

That's one of the cool things about being a missionary, even though people might not necessarily interested in religion, most of the time they respect what we do. Not all the time, but hey, different strokes for different folks. But it's such an amazing opportunity to be able to bring this light to the people of Japan. They're a wonderful people and I'm still so incredibly stoked to be here.

愛してるよ！
Elder Cuff

Daft Funk: Week 34 in Japan

Sorry, temple P-Day really wrecked our time since we have to travel back to Kofu, I'll be keeping short. 

We hosted a fiesta this past week for our district's investigators, we had an awesome turn out of about 40 people. My good friend Elder Jones and I DJ'd the entire night away using a ward member's sound equipment. Who knew missionaries could scratch such mad rhymes and zesty beats. 

Homie helped us DJ!

We've been working with a guy who originally had a history of crime and has been turning away from it. It's amazing to see the humility and the overall willingness he has to listen about his Savior and brother Jesus Christ. Every time we meet with or hang out with him I get so incredibly excited. Even though he likes to post embarrassing videos of us screwing around on Facebook...

It's Momo season here in Japan! (Momo means Peach) One of the ward members owns a giant peach orchard and gives us tons of peaches every week. They're huge, delicious, and just make me so incredibly happy. I love peaches.

We had splits in Hachioji which was an absolute blast, plus I got to see my good friend Misu Kyodai! He just got back from a trip to America and gave me a bag of reeses minis! Bless that man's heart.

Due to the humidity here I have a layer of sweat on me at all times, my shirts are starting to turn yellow, and it's the best ever.

While writing this email on the train back to Kofu I met a guy from Georgia who lives in Shinjuku. He's a professional boxer and we had a great conversation. Really respects what we do as missionaries. Said I should come back after the mission and go for a career in fighting sports in Japan. Apparently he's only boxed for a few years and said it's pretty easy to get a well paying job as a pro fighter here. So who knows, maybe I'll come back to Japan and become a cage fighter. 

That's pretty much it for now,

Love you all!

愛しています、

Elder Cuff

Children of the Corn: Week 33 in Japan

This has probably been the fastest week of my mission so far. Last week we had a lot of success finding, which meant this week was all teaching lessons. I love teaching so much, just being able to sit down and share this joy with others has been such a blessing. I'll probably say it a million more times, but being a missionary is the best.

We had a wonderful opportunity to help out a member his week in her corn field. The rice isn't quite ready yet but we'll probably help her
with that too when the season comes around. Anyways we spent the day cleaning up her corn field and throwing corn husks to each other like
footballs while we worked in the field. Japan has a lot of big bugs and frogs so we had a lot of fun chasing those around too. Afterwards she drove out to her orchard and brought us back a bunch of fresh picked peaches and Sumomo's, which are super sweet Japanese plums. They were soooo good and she gave us a bunch to take home. The sister missionaries made this incredibly good jam out of the extra plums and
now our fridge is filled with a bunch of peaches and corn.

We had a day where we had a lesson and a meal appointment right after the other which is pretty common, except the lesson has on the
southern side of town and then the meal appointment was on the west side of town. We ended biking this huge triangle around the majority of Kofu. After getting back to our apartment we mapped it out and it turns out that biked 26 miles that day. Besides the sweat it wasn't too bad, Japan's really pretty and I've been trying to cut down on some weight anyway.

The last meal appointment was on the outskirts of our entire mission boundaries. We could've walked over to the Nagoya mission. It was on
the north western end of our area in place called Kobuchizawa which is tucked way up into the mountains. The clouds were low that day so it looked like a scene from your classic Kung fu movie. The place overall had a really relaxed vibe to it and I would not mind living there.

Stay sweet,
Elder Cuff