Lots of interesting things

February 19, 2017

Hello!
This week was full of lots of crazy events so I'm going to do a daily breakdown it's been a while.

Monday: had our p day and walked 45 minutes to bistari bistarai. Does anyone remember that place? It's the place where they have the all you can eat nan and amazing curry. I haven't been there in 4-5 transfers, so it was way nice to stuff my face until I couldn't walk home anymore. That night we also had interviews with the mission president which were only 15 minutes. Not a lot of time = not a lot of content

Tuesday: we had zone conference where we got trained by the mission pres. And his assistants. Butt........ The highlight of today was our lesson with Hitoshi kun. So, if you don't remember, he is the one who just has a couple commandment problems. Other than that he has already heard all the lessons, loves church and comes every week. We are working with him, but anyways... He couldn't believe that he was one of the only people that will listen to our message. We told him he was our most progressing and then He got this made fire to go out and proselyte. We walked around together for an hour and tbh he kind of worked the crud out of me. He was running around to every person he say and just yelled out: " hey we are teaching about Christ. Etc..." It was pretty intense and a way interesting experience for sure lol

Wednesday: had all day to work, but met a lot of people today

Thursday: nothing worth writing about lol

Friday: alright I'm just going to skip to Saturday cause that was interesting

Saturday: we had literally 11:30-9:00 of nothing planned. We don't have a lot of people to teach and needed to do some good finding... We planned to meet with Hitoshi kun for 1-2 hours, but he got busy and couldn't meet. We literally housed and found all day in the cold. I've never been so tired and discouraged in my whole mission. We couldn't even get 10 people to open the door to us. Walked around in -5 degree Celsius weather and only talked to maybe 8 people face to face.

My comp and I basically died in every way possible...... But! Don't worry we are doing okay. We got back to the apartment that night and were just depressed with the other two elders who had almost the exact same day.
We decided we needed something fun in the apartment and so we waxed our legs.

That's all I'm going to say and leave it all with the videos. As dumb as it sounds, it cheered us up a lot! :)

Have a great week everyone!

We got screamed at by a drunk guy foaming from the mouth last night in the little time we had outside. It was a good first experience! Love you all

敬具 (sincerely yours)
ー  シャイト長老 (Elder Scheidt)


[I'm sorry mom. I just wanted to feel the pain women feel.]

[Here is hitoshikun with us after church. Sickest guy I've met in Japan.]

[Bistari bistari]



[Snow festival in Sapporo. Can't go this year because I'm in Kushiro :/ oh well]

久々メールします

February 12, 2017

Hello everyone. As the title says... Long time no see

Sorry for now emailing for such a long time. Here has been lots of stuff going on lately and I've been a little stressed and busy, but things are okay now.

So i have some interesting news! An emergency transfer happened and I got a new companion. My old companion elder Yamaoka had a bit of a hard time recently and I don't want to go into too much detail (especially over email), but the transfer was for his health and things should be getting better for him from now on. I loved him and learned a lot from our 9 weeks together. My new companion is elder morse from North Carolina. He came to Japan only a month and a half after I did and it's his first time going zone leader. He's a super awesome missionary and we are just having a blast. Joao see is stellar and we are getting by lol.

To be honest, because of lots of things occurring lately it's been hard to get out and work 110%, but now that things are resolved I'm back working super hard outside and it feels amazing. We got rejected so hard for 8 hours the other day! I loved it! I try to think of rejections as a good thing. It's like the blessings/ miracles are waiting and to receive those blessings your rejections stack up and eventually just burst and all the blessings come. I know that didn't really make sense, but it's okay. Just know that I'm doing great and loving life right now.

We have a zone conference tomorrow and will be trained by the president, his wife, and the assistants to the president. Looking forward to learning a lot. We are going to be trained on how to find people to teach for one section. I'm super excited! We are struggling to find people to teach and I am more than willing to try new ways other than knocking doors all day. I've found it isn't necessarily effective/ but it is necessary to some extent in missionary work. I've been brainstorming a lot and we will see what comes from it.

We are still testing hitoshikun who has basically heard all the lessons and has already finished the Book of Mormon. He's onto the bible now and I swear his knowledge is too high. He is asking hard questions that sometimes I don't even know the answer to haha. He is super close, but just has a couple more commandment problems (like we all do). If everyone could please pray for him... He needs the blessings.

Thanks so much for all the support I get out here. I couldn't be out here without the sacrifice lots of wonderful people have made in my life. Recently I have been reflecting a lot about how amazing my family is and how I would only want to be part of my family. I'm so grateful to God for such a wonderful family. I love everyone so much and would do anything for them.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Love you...

敬具 (sincerely yours)
ー  シャイト長老 (Elder Scheidt)


[Me and my buddy elder kashiwa. Probably the last time I will see him before he goes home :( nooo]



[We both said " oh shoot I need a picture of you for my family/ friends." did this to each other. Not sure what I look like in the picture he took, but whatever]

Transfers!

January 22, 2017

Hey so we got transfer calls and I stayed in the same area with the same companion. It's the first time I've done that my whole mission besides training (which is almost 9/10 times 2 transfer together). I was pretty surprised, but I love the area and the people here, so I'm excited to work hard.

Basically the whole week was spent taking/ picking people up from the bus stop and figuring out what we will do for the zone/ area this transfer.

Sorry I don't have a whole ton of time or details, but I'm doing good and still alive.
My motivation for writing these mass emails decreases every week along with my buddy Dallin, but I'll feel a little guilty if I don't at least try, so here is my attempt for this week.

We have some meeting about all the changes to mission work worldwide and so I will be in Sapporo most of the week. Yes, it's a 6 hour bus ride from Kushiro to Sapporo. I finally get time to nap and not feel guilty as a missionary. :)

Have a great week. Hope you enjoyed the egg video last week!

敬具 (sincerely yours)

ー  シャイト長老 (Elder Scheidt)

[No new pics, but these are my new puppies. Aren't they cute?]

Sorry for the last 2 weeks

January 15, 2017

Alright I wasn't planning on sending a weekly email this week either, but both my parents asked why I haven't and I felt a little guilty.

To begin, I don't have much to report on. I hurt my Achilles in the beginning of this transfer (5-6 weeks ago) and have mostly been sitting in the apartment resting. The doctors say if I don't rest and stop walking so much it won't heal, so I have been trying to make the best use of my time.

Here's what I've done a lot of in the last transfer:
- make tons and tons of origami
- read a lot of the Japanese Book of Mormon (right now I'm in alma 30)
- Cleaned the apartment spotless countless times
- clean up the area book and do little things to make time better for dendo
- making lots of appointments at the church and meeting people there
- eating lots of food
- making cookies
- think
- play cards

To be honest, I just want to get out and work again. I forgot what free time is like and it's been so boring haha. But.... Transfers are this week and my Achilles is actually starting to feel better, so I'm excited to get back at it no matter what condition I'm in.

We taught our most progressing  investigator aizawa San and tried to make another baptismal date because the first date got dropped. Right now he's in the end half of alma and just doesn't want to commit to baptism because he's afraid of breaking commandments and thinks they are really strict. I believe he will get baptized sometime just not sure in my generation, 1-2 years, etc... He said he wants to finish the Book of Mormon and maybe the bible too before he decides any life changes like baptism. He's so cool I love him!

Hope everyone has a great week I'll look for some sick pictures or videos to send

敬具 (sincerely yours)
ー  シャイト長老 (Elder Scheidt)


[This is from New Years. We have a small branch and this is one of the three meals members fed us :)]


[Here's the squad]



[Elders need to find fun sometimes okay...]

Happy new year!

January 3, 2017

Hello everyone sorry I didn't send anything out last week. I Skyped my family and then didn't really feel like emailing, so I apologize.

So if you don't know already New Years is huge in Japan and that basically shuts down our dendo pretty hard. It's not really worth trying to go out and talk to people, so we try to stay effective in other ways as a mission. We had one day designated to cleaning and another day designated to reading the Book of Mormon. Along with that I have had some Achilles problems causing me to be in the apartment every other day of the week. Yep, I was almost in the apartment studying, folding origami, cleaning, losing my brains, etc... All week.

Our investigator aizawa San has a date for January 7th but it's not looking like he's going to make that day. He's still having some word of wisdom problems and then something sad kind of happened. It seems to be a pattern with my whole mission, but man I hate jobs/ work. Aizawa San found a new job and it's looking like coming to church on Sunday's might start getting hard. He told me: "Elder Scheidt if I could just follow the word of wisdom I could get baptized. Oh wait! Btw, I might not be able to come to church because of my new job." I was crushed and praying this doesn't happen because he's so close to making that first step. He just needs to actually start acting and show faith. We are working with him a lot. He's an awesome guy and studies more than anyone I've ever met. I love him a lot.

We have a meeting in Sapporo this week, so that will basically take up the rest of this week.

We had a couple dinners with members, but it didn't seem to me that the missionary/member relationship is very strong. Only 3 families fed us and the others don't really seem to show interest in us that much. I really feel like one reason I came here was to improve member/missionary relationship. I want to visit lots of members and see what's going to happen.

Crazy I'm on the last 1/4th of my mission. Trying not to think about it and just work hard.

Anyway, hope everyone has a great week! Love you.

敬具 (sincerely yours)

ー  シャイト長老 (Elder Scheidt)

[There are these things here called chocolate eggs. It's a chocolate egg with these little cool Mario trinkets inside. I've bought over 12 now. It's becoming an addiction and I can't count how many times I've gotten Luigi golf haha]

Long week

December 18, 2016

This week so much happened I don't even know where to start jeez! Haven't done a daily breakdown in about a year so I'll do one today of what I remember:

Monday: p day and we are this famous sushi in Hokkaido (Kushiro is known for some of the best sushi) at this place called 祭り屋. It was legendary

Tuesday and Wednesday: we had 12:00-8:00 both days and we just walked a lot and taught a lot of people. It was basically just me meeting all the investigators. There are some awesome people here. I forgot how much nicer the people in the countryside are than the people in the city. We taught lots of people and it's been awesome to have the opportunity to testify again. Last transfer we didn't teach barely at all, so it feels really nice.

Thursday: so we have this investigator named aizawa San and he wants to be baptized. Right now he has a date for the 7th of January. It is one of the first times on my mission I've met someone who is close way close to baptism and really wants to hear the lessons. Usually it's me trying to push people to get moving, but this guy is different. He comes to Eikaiwa every week, came to church 2 times already, meets with us 4-5 times a week. He studies like its no one's business. He literally pounds through the pamphlets/ Book of Mormon and just has so many questions it's kind of hard to keep up with. Haha He's basically at the level of a member in knowledge, if not better, and now we are just trying to help him have more spiritual experiences. We don't want him to just study for knowledge. He needs the spirit. He also has some commandment problems and those might take some time, so please pray for him. He wants to grow closer to Christ so much!!! It's been awesome.

Friday: nothing special tbh (we had zone training meeting and I gave a 30 min. workshop on loving your companion :))

Saturday: was our ward Christmas party. We had lots of people come and the youth were in charge. We had lots of skits, performances, etc... And then had this huge potluck. I pounded it pretty hard no mercy I'm American.

Sunday: church and helping aizawa San as much as we can. Also, took the sacrament to a member who has cancer and can't come to church. Nice act of service for sure :)

Things are going great love you all!

敬具 (sincerely yours)
ー  シャイト長老 (Elder Scheidt)


[Idk why my face looks so fat, I swear I'm not putting on weight!]


[Check the elder on the right haha]

Transfers

December 11, 2016

Sorry I really don't feel like sending a long email this week, so I will sum things up very short.

Transfers came and i got transferred again. Moving on to my 7th area called "Kushiro" first time going out into the countryside and first time I will get to see the ocean. I had to take a 6hour bus ride from kotoni to Kushiro and then had mission leader conference on Saturday so here's what went down.

Thursday: took a 6 hour bus to Kushiro, taught enlglish class, slept in Kushiro.
Friday: took a 6 hour bus back to kotoni to stay in Sapporo the day
before the conference
Saturday: 6 hour meeting and then a 6 hour bus ride back to Kushiro

I'm sorry but man I'm exhausted lol. However, I'm excited to work here because there are some awesome members and some even greater investigators. So excited!!

My companion is elder Yamaoka a missionary from Tokyo. He was my district leader for three transfers back when I was in asahikawa about 6 months ago, so things should be pretty good with us.

Hope everyone is doing well. Enjoy the Christmas season!

Bye bye

敬具 (sincerely yours)
ー  シャイト長老 (Elder Scheidt)


[Here is us. He said wait, I took it, and he attacked me haha]