Bikes!!!

April 17, 2016

Yep the title does not lie. We have bikes again because 95% of the snow here is gone! It's still way freaking cold and windy as it can get, but now we can bike baby! It made our missionary work time increase so much. Before bikes, we had to walk an hour to our area and an hour back every day. Now we can bike there in about 15 minutes. Plus, my companion did a lot of mountain biking before the mission, so he is pushing me to my limit. Sometimes I feel like he's training me. We have this massive hill to this area called 春光台 and he bikes up it in 2 minutes and then waits at the top for me to come in 30 seconds later. Now is about the time I'm wishing I had a bike the last 15 years of my life ha.

This week was awesome for missionary work. It was a bit rough at first because we couldn't get in contact with anyone. A lot of people didn't answer their phones, a lot of people were sick, too many people are busy, etc...

That gave us a pretty solid amount of time to do some finding and seek out God's children who are in need of our saving. Finding isn't my favorite aspect of missionary work, based off the fact that I had little to no success the from finding the first 6 months of my mission. However, it is one of the best feelings when you find someone interested or willing to talk to you. You spend the rest of the day talking about how 金人 (kanji for golden investigator-meaning lots of potential) the person was, what we should teach them, etc...

We found 3 new people this week! It was awesome. I didn't find 1 for the first 6 months here in Hokkaido. This week we found 3! I know I repeated it, but it's just because of how awesome it is to add people to the pool of investigators we are trying to help.

Cool experience of the week and I'll wrap up.

There is an investigator named takeuchi San. He is in his 50's and is Buddhist, so not a whole ton of interest right off the bat. He's a volunteer and is super busy. (Lots of Japanese people say they're busy, but he is legit way freaking busy let me tell ya) here's our game plan: what we're trying to do with him is just punch him with our testimonies, make him feel the strong presence of the spirit, and then bounce out of there super fast. We want him to feel the night and day difference of feeling the spirit when we talk with him and when we leave. We want him to desire that feeling we bring him. So of course we visited and he was busy, but my comp has never seen a Buddhist shrine, so we literally said the same thing I said the first time I met this guy. "I've never seen ..... Can we come in and look at it" he let us in and we talked a bit, but then someone came to the door and he got really busy with volunteer stuff again..... His wife came home as he was about to kick us out and she told us to sit down. We got served coffee, which led into a lesson about the word of wisdom, which led into who we are, what we're doing, about our families, our beliefs, etc... We taught her so much, and she literally has so much potential. We prayed with her before we left and she told us "that was an awesome feeling. I really liked that" Funny thing is that the husband was sitting right behind the couch the whole time doing paperwork. He didn't even try to listen our participate. So, we taught our investigators wife with him not listening in the room haha.

Well, that's it. This church is true and I'm loving the work. I can't believe how fast time flies. I'm starting to get into that middle range where I'm not a young or old missionary anymore. I don't

really like it haha

Love you all bye bye

敬具 (sincerely yours)

ー  シャイト長老 (Elder Scheidt)

[I love this guy. Literally the nicest person in the world. I've never met anyone nicer up to this point in my life.]

 [This is called melon pan. It is my life. Freaking America needs to get its act together and sell this stuff!]

Training is pretty sick no lie

April 10, 2016

Haven't done a good breakdown in a while, so here's a mediocre one

Monday: once again did our bistarai bistari Nepalese curry run like every Monday. Might be the last for a while because I weighed in recently and boy was I surprised. I got up to 165, so I'm actually on a strict diet right now trying to get back down to 155 before I regret anything. (Let's be honest I can't do it) Visited an awesome less active and introduced my new companion. Basically all of missionary work lately has been introducing my companion to everyone because he literally has been here less than 2 weeks now.

Tuesday: had a zone conference and had a bean shower for my bean. Bean is this mission's common term for new missionary. Every time we have a new missionary in the zone, everyone buys something cool and we attack the bean after ZTM with goodies, toys, candy, etc... My comp. has been chowing all his snacks from his bean shower like its no one's business haha. Makes it even harder to lose weight.

Wednesday: did our normal Wednesday routine and went to the old folks home for 2 hours. Those little old ladies never get visitors and it is just awesome to watch them light up when we walk in. The literally wait all week for us to come visit them every Wednesday. We sing songs together and just talk about lots of things. One lady always brings up religion and will ask you what religion you are probably 5 times in 10 minutes. She doesn't like being the only Catholic in the old folks home. They forget things after 10 seconds so sometimes I tell her I'm Catholic too and then she'll say something like: "so sad it's just us two. We're the only Catholics in his place." She then forgets and asks you for the 9th time and you tell her you aren't Catholic haha so fun.

Thursday: we stayed in suehiro to dendo (missionary work) and met a less active at the church named Brother Uchida. I feel really bad for him because he just moved, is looking for a job, in his 40's and not married, and just seems really lonely. I've really come to love him a lot. It's awesome when you start to love the people you interact with because you really do 100% forget yourself and there's nothing better in this life than 2 years of devoted, selfless service. Right now we're just doing our best to show him Christ like love and be his friend.

Friday: it's days like today that I live for on my mission. We taught two people at their door (in their room in front of their door called the genkan) and had 2 awesome lessons. One lady has had a lot of deaths in her family so we emphasized eternal families after this life and it really got her excited. I could see her progressing a lot from her on if she really commits. The other was the message of the restoration (Joseph smith, Book of Mormon). The spirit was so strong and just made everything awesome that day.

Saturday: basically spent all day sitting in the church with another group of missionaries watching conference. I got lucky to be watching it with other English speakers. Some missionaries watch it alone because they're the only American for miles. Glad I had the opportunity to listen to our beloved prophet. Truly called of God.

Sunday: basically like yesterday, but watched Sunday conference. It's cool that Japan gets everything a week later because if you want to, you can read a long with the talks because they came out just before we started watching conference.

I'm already loving training. Believe it or not, I learn a lot from a new missionary with a lot of what we call "dendo fire" he wants to work hard, and might be working me more than I thought I could haha. He loves yelling out "konnichiwa"or "hello" to everyone we walk by. It's the first time I have really been talking to everyone I see and not just the people that are easy to talk to. I've seen lots of miracles out here and every day is getting better.

Love you all

敬具 (sincerely yours)

ー  シャイト長老 (Elder Scheidt)

[Had a meal at probably my favorite member since coming to Japan's house yo!]

[First Mexican food in over 9 months baby!]

[This is the bean shower.]

I can't believe it either

April 3, 2016

Yep, so transfer calls came, and it was probably the most shocked I've been since coming out here.

To say the least.... I went trainer. I just moved on to transfer 6 and for this mission going trainer on 6 is pretty dang fast. Most people go trainer around the 8th to 10th transfer range. The second youngest trainer this transfer was a transfer 9 Japanese missionary and the youngest American besides me was transfer 10. Looks like our mission president has a lot of faith in me. Let's just hope I don't screw it up.

So, I got the call on Monday and was not expecting it at all. Freaking scared me to be honest haha. Went to Honbu on Wednesday and met my companion. His name is Elder Conover and he is from Apline, Utah.

Side note: he is my 4th companion from Utah. Keep in mind he's also my 6th companion. Typical Utah. More than half of my companions are from Utah.

We get along super well and I can definitely see why I am the one training him. Our personalities are basically identical. He went to BYU Idaho for a semester before the mission, so that might cause some problems (jk) but it's all good. The only problem is he's way freakin tall, so I feel like he's training me all the time haha.

Basically this last week was going to the mission home and me trying to make Japan an awesome first experience for a new missionary. He has never been to Japan before, so I'm showing him all the cool stuff the cool kids are doing and just having a blast watching him soak everything up. He loves the mission so much. Sometimes I think he has more missionary fire than me, so honestly I'm already learning a lot on how I can be a better missionary.

It's nerve racking because he looks at everything I'm doing. I'm his first impression of missionaries in Japan, so my missionary work and obedience needs to be 150%. It's good for me because I've been making sure I'm doing the literal 100% best that I can do recently.

We are going to need many prayers for the next 12 weeks because let's be honest. Only studying Japanese for 9 months is not enough to get by. His Japanese is what you would expect from how much you learn at the MTC and I'm still a young missionary, so I'm still getting there too.

Thankful for this opportunity and I guess Heavenly Father really is humbling me over this 2 year period. I think it's good for me. Missionary work is the best, and this gospel is true. No doubt in my

mind.

Hope everyone has a good week! Love you all

敬具 (sincerely yours)

ー  シャイト長老 (Elder Scheidt)

[Me and my bean (only pic we have together sorry)]

[Made this sick iPad case with one of the sister's investigators. Doraemon is a kids show in Japan]

[ Everyone that was at the sewing party. Investigator is bottom left.]

[Got a pic with the Nepalese worker (bisatrai bistarai) we treat him like he's famous hahahah. I love NAN!!!]