BYU Hawaii Choir Concert

 Yep, we're staying! :D It's been a blast so far.  We're starting to connect.  I've gotten very familiar with the process of a companionship simply needing time to become strong, and so I'm just waiting for the day when without either of us realizing it, Elder Taylor and I are best friends.  In fact, on the topic, you'll never guess who I saw yesterday!!

There was a massive concert put on by the choir of BYU Hawaii that missionaries from our entire missions AND the Tokyo South mission came to.  It was an amazing experience.  I haven't been to a concert in a year and it put me into an utter shock: I FORGOT HOW MUCH I LOVE A GOOD STAGE!  One of my favorite things in the world.  And man, they were amazing performers.  Beyond that, they invited the spirit so powerfully, it was just something else.  I love every minute of it, especially their rendition of "Homeward Bound" which is still one of my favorite songs (it's one of everyone's, I know.)

After the concert I ran into Elder Clark for the first times in somewhere around 8 months and it put me into shock.  I hugged him and didn't have nearly enough time at all to talk, but it was just so good to see each other.  I still consider him an amazing friend.  He was so kind to Elder Taylor, just as I knew he would be!  Not only Elder Clark, but all of my MTC district was there!  Sister Riggs, Sister Moore, and my twin Sister Chinain!  It felt just like the MTC and we were all overjoyed to be reunited for even just under a minute (everyone was very busy taking care of their friends they brought!)

And then, after the concert, guess who came to spend the night at our apartment?  None other than.... ELDER SHION LI. I'll send the pic next week when he gets it to me, but man, it was possibly the funnest night of my mission talking to him about our investigators and where they are, what's changed, what we've both been through (especially him on that little island,) and what the future holds for both of us.  He's my brother, and one of my all-time best friends.  I didn't think I'd see him for another 3 or 4 transfers, but it was a wonderful surprise.

Another thing that happened at the concert!  We learned that Shingo hasn't been able to meet with us because he's been meeting with other missionaries.... WHAT!?  We had no idea!  We met the Elders from Tokyo South at the concert with him, and talked about it.  Haha, it was awesome, we all had fun talking about our wonderful friend, and Shingo seemed enchanted with the clashing of worlds we didn't know existed for nearly a year. We hope to see his testimony progressing as we continue to work with him!

Xia.  He's from China, his Japanese is pretty good, but he doesn't do English.  He's coming to the japanese ward, even though most Chinese members are in the English one, and so we do lessons with him AND the missionaries from that ward who are both from Taiwan (Elder Cho and Elder Lin.) They are so fun.  We've gotten Ramen and played Ping pong with Xia, and just gotten to know him.  He's so funny and sweet, and he loves the gospel and knows God is there.  He is particularly excited to learn how to create a relationship with God!

Kiwamu and Hiro are best friends who we go out to lunch with once a week after Eikaiwa on Saturdays, and talk about the gospel with.  They both love it.  Kiwamu hopes to become fluent in English, and prays multiple times a day for that help, and Hiro has seen many tragedies in his life and has become interested with what happens after this life and how he can be reunited with those he loves.  They are both so golden and not only do we have fun learning together, we're just really good, true, friends.

All of the wonderful people I'm working with I will continue to be friends with after my mission, and I can't wait to visit them and surprise them one day when I'm able to return! :) We will be friends for Eternity, and I know that without a question in my mind.

We had dinner at the Nailions ;)

You'll never guess who I said goodbye to on his last day as a missionary last week!!!! Elder Crosby and I will be good friends the rest of our lives! :D

Sorrry, I should've taken more... I'll try to send more pics next week!  I love you! :)

I saw an old friend from high school.

Alright, I've gotta go about now! :) Thanks for always caring about me and being the best!  I pray for you all the time.  It's going to be overwhelming joy for us to be together again for eternity.  But you know how important this work is.  Duty calls.  (Haha, that was cheesy..)

Alright, sorry I was late this week, we cleaned the temple yesterday. It was an amazing experience, but we had to move P-Day forward one day.  I'll write more promptly next week ;) I love you so much!  Take care!

スタウト長老! ^o^

Elder Stout! :D

"You and Elder Taylor are staying!!!"

So, this morning, just like what happens every 6 weeks, we all got together with the phones lined up and waited.  It's transfer calls.  Let me tell you, the transfer calls at The Flat are huge.  Depending on who leaves and who comes in, the fwank* is dramatically affected.  And the fwank is huge to our success.  Elder Morris, my district leader and one of my best friends (he honestly feels more like a brother to me than almost anyone else I've ever met) yogened (predicted) I would be leaving and Elder Taylor would have a new trainer.  He mentioned it so much that I'd begun to put a lot of thought into it.  To be honest, the prospect of only training him for one transfer made me feel like a failure.  Like God gave me a special chance and I let him down, so he had to opt me out and bring in an emergency repair team.  I KNOW that this line of thinking was not true, but it certainly seemed like a valid fear as every parent (haha, just kiddin', like I know anything about parenting. Trainer ;) probably has the fear they don't do as well as they should at their job.

       *"Fwank" is a funny misconstrued version of the Japanese word "Fu-ni-ki" which means atmosphere or emotional feeling of a situation or location.  The Japanese colloquially pronounce it "Fu-i-n-ki", which when said by an American tends to sound really unflattering.  Say this out loud: "FWANKY!" It's so funny, we just can't help over-dramatize it.

So, the call came, and all of Elder Morris's yogens were coming true: "Elder Frazier, you're leaving the flat and you'll be a zone leader with Elder DiCastri!" "Elder Cho, your new companion is Elder Han!!" "Elder Gonzalez, your new companion is... well, I don't know him... YOU'RE TRAINING!!!!"

Things were getting so exciting, and Elder Morris called every single thing.  At this point, the only question on my mind was: "Ok, where in Japan am I going next?  Send me to Nigata, it's gotta be Nigata..."

And then came the second phone call from our Zone Leaders.  "Elder Stout!  Hey, you and Elder Taylor are staying!"

I was overwhelmed with joy.  MAN!  That was just a massively solid example of how I need to not stress the things that aren't in my control.  That principle has become really dear to me lately: Don't worry so much about the things that you can't control.  I promise it'll make you happier.

Anyway, I did my best last transfer, but I can always do a little better at my best, so I am so grateful for this next chance God is giving me.  And on top of that, I'm stoked to spend another amazing transfer in Shibuya with my AMAZING companion Elder Taylor!!

The best comp in the world making us Yaki soba for dinner!  (Don't worry, I helped a little...)

The other day the Sisters came up to me and Elder Taylor and said, "HEY!  Were you in Hiroo earlier today??" we said, "Yes... how do you know?" and they showed us these pictures!

Dendo in action!!!!  He's such an awesome Elder, he never misses a chance to testify, to help others, or to speak Japanese.  He has big ideas on how to improve things in Japan, and we're trying to accomplish all of them one step at a time!  We love working out here together, I'm so lucky.

You saw that video??  You should share it and ask everyone back home to!  It's cool huh? :D One of the youth in Tokyo 1st ward had the idea.  We do the "Book of DOORmon" activity quite a bit, so he thought it would be a really interesting video to produce.  Hey, when you watch it, you're getting a feel for regular dendo in Shibuya :) I love this area with all my heart, we need to come back together.

Preparing to say the prayer for the video . . . needed to get the camera set up ;P Hey dad!  He just graduated, but before then he spent a great amount of time in the photography section of ASIJ.  Even in the dark room!!

We just barely met with a hilarious member named brother Kadowaki, and we have a dinner appointment lined up with the Miyazaki's (that's right.  Like Haiyo Miyazaki.  Like the guy who directs all the awesomest Ghibli movies.  K, not the same person, but close....) We've been working hard with Ikeda and Koji and Hamada and Chiba kyoudai, the Satous and Hasebe kyoudai... aw man Mama, I'm starting to love the work because we're really getting to know the ward members.  It always seemed so scary to get to know them and ask for help/ways we can serve them in the past, but now it's just the only way I want to do anything.  Future missionaries reading this: GET TO KNOW EVERY MEMBER IN YOUR WARD THE FIRST 2 OR SO WEEKS YOU MOVE IN.  Aw man, I wish I had done better here.  Not only does it make you happier, it just helps The Lord make you effective in actually serving people.  I digress... the work is going well. :)

Elder Taylor and I have consistently been improving!  I can't wait for the adventures that await us!  For now, I think that about wraps things up...

I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Thanks for all the emails, I cherish each one! :)

スタウト長老! ^o^

Elder Stout! :D

Temple under construction.... can't fool me Japan, I know it's not real!

Me under the biggest gate in Japan!!!  All the Americans got a laugh out of the random Mormon missionaries posing for pictures I think...

Sometimes this happens when you ask your new District Leader Elder Murakami to take a picture of you at Meijijingu....

United in wanting to serve The Lord to our fullest!

I am SO SO SO SO SO sorry that you haven't received an email from me in 2 Mondays.  Last week I wrote a really interesting, really long email with several pictures, and I just sent it to you the normal way, but I suppose for no reason in particular it just deleted itself instead of sending, because it isn't even in my outbox.  Something similar happened to Elder Taylor, and his family didn't get an email either (pretty much the worst way to end a P-Day.)  I'm really sorry and was super upset when I read your email and realized it just never sent.  I've never missed a week of sending you an email!  I guess you just missed a week of receiving one from me...  I'm sorry!

Ok, so, there's quite a bit to talk about!  Where do I begin?! I'll just begin with last week. Last week was amazing!  Lots of fun things, a couple sad things.

So, the sad thing.  First, we won't be teaching Daichi anymore.  There are a lot of really good reasons, but it was just really hard when I finally felt in my heart that we needed to let him go.  Let me explain: When Elder Li and I visited him some time ago, we learned that he lives in Nakana which is about 8 minutes from President and Sister Nagano at the mission home.  So.... he's not even in our area. He's also in the boundaries for a young single adult ward which would be far more fun for him to attend and would feel much more natural than our ward of young families and wealthy businessmen.  But, our Zone Leaders told us it is totally our decision what we want to do. After a lot of prayer and thinking, we decided it would be best to let the other Elders teach him.  So we biked down to the mission home that night, introduced them, and then said goodbye.  It was so sad.  He watched us leave and waved.  I looked back 3 times, and he was also looking back.  He's come to be one of my favorite people in the entire world.  I'm serious when I say after my mission I'm gonna find times to hang out with him when I visit Japan.

Other than that, we had SUCH a fun P-Day going to get Sushi with some

Eikaiwa students last week.  It was seriously a dream come true, Mama. This stuff was amazing and came out in these fancy wooden bowls.  The best was when I put an entire piece into my mouth only to find that the inside was lathered with wasabi, which felt like a small mushroom-cloud-explosion-flash of instant heat followed by numbness. I accidentally yelped out "WOW!" and got a lot of funny looks from the quiet Japanese people around me humbly eating their food. It was awesome, because we got to teach them about the word of wisdom a little bit!  They gave us these big fancy clay mugs of green tea and we said, "Sorry, we can't drink that!" and it lead to lots of talk about the church!

We've been doing GREAT with the members.  We visit them almost every other day and I'm beginning to make some really good friends.  More than just working well together, they are becoming my true friends, and it's one of the happiest and most satisfying feelings in the world.  Knowing that you're actually serving the people you're with.  In fact, sometimes on Sunday in this ward we hardly get to talk to anyone on Sunday before and after church because everyone is so busy, but as we've been reaching out to ward members so much recently, we were stopped by half a dozen members and invited to 3 different people's homes randomly.  (That's a big deal.  It means our ward members are beginning to trust us.  I only hope we can maintain and continue to deserve that trust!) This was two days ago at church and it boosted my spirits so much.

A wonderful experience from that same day happened with a brother in our ward named Kan Kyoudai.  So, he lives far away, but we had called him wanting to meet.  He said he doesn't want us to go to far, so we agreed just to meet with him before church sometime.  Well, Sunday came and we tried rushing out the door, but due to some setbacks got to the church late.  We weren't able to meet with him because of our ward mission meeting.  Just before church started, we came up to him and said, "Brother Kan, I'm sorry!" his response was, "I was here an hour early, where were you?" I tried to explain the situation, but he was really disappointed.

The worst way to destroy a relationship with someone is to start to gain their trust, and then let them down.  So we road our bikes to his house with a bag of treats and a handwritten letter in kanji.  Apparently he'd moved and it was the wrong address, so we brought it to church.  The look on his face was pure shock, and then came a big smile, and after reading the letter he hugged both of us.  He refused to take all the treats (but I made him take at least half of them). When we secured his home address we promised to visit him sometime this week, even if his actually house is a little farther.  Humbling ourselves and doing our best to make amends lead to an experience I will never forget, and a good friend I will have for the rest of my life.

Elder Taylor and I are doing great!  It's funny how so many things about us (his love for music, his love for Japanese culture, his love for movie soundtracks, Nintendo, Ghibli, movies, and family,) are super similar, and yet so many things are completely different.  We are always united in wanting to serve The Lord to our fullest, and so we're doing good things every day.  I hope I'll have a good impact on him in the end, I've been doing my absolute best.  He's an ambitious and funny one, and we have some wild adventures!

Seeing pictures of Hazel broke my heart, I was seriously thinking about her all Sunday.  I was really concerned that she might have a bad condition, but it's looking like just an eye problem?  At least her eyes are unbelievably adorable until third grade. :)

I've seen the Joseph Smith video recently and frequently reflect on him and the other pioneers.  I love having pioneer heritage, it's so cool!!  You should send me a story or two to tell people! :) I really want to start doing family history dendou, because I believe the spirit of Elijah is having a massive influence here in Japan.

Got Kebabs at Deniz!  Long story short, because of a missionary named Elder Ries, these people LOVE missionaries and the church.  It was like converting a nation, but just converting a kebab shop instead. Basically, all of the employees love us, listen to our message every time we come, and give us twice as much meet and sauce in our kebabs.

Got up for seminary at 5 and road the whole hour and a half in the rain.  When we got back I bought Elder Taylor a donut for breakfast and another Elder took these pics as we walked in the door.

We made lots of friends while talking to random people we ran into!  They all asked for pictures, so I asked for THOSE pictures.  J  Here’s a man who pulls people in wagons, and below is a man from Taiwan who doesn’t speak English or Japanese but was grateful we spoke to his family!

AWWWW!!  That birthday celebration looked so cute!  Shoutout to Megan and Hudson with their birthdays!! :)

So I was thinking about when we visit Japan together.... I can't wait to give you a tour from the perspective of an actual resident of Tokyo :)  I can't believe I can say that I've lived here!!  I have so many awesome little shops and places we HAVE to visit.  Namely: Narita church, Narita san, several ward member's, my whole Narita area, all of Shibuya crossing, Tokyo Temple, Go Hyaku En Ramen (500 yen Ramen,) Odaiba, Deniz.... too many places.  What are the odds of you maaaaaaybe picking me up so that we can hike mount fuji and such? ;) 

By the way, on splits I met a famous politician who did a conference in UVU a few weeks ago.  He met with many very successful people, including someone you might recognize....

Ok, I've written insane amounts this week.  There is so much more to talk about, but those stories are prolly gonna have to wait until a Sunday dinner some other day.

Elder Gonzales said that if I could eat more sushi than him, he would buy my lunch.  He ate 32 pieces.  I ate 34.

Today we went to “Asakusa” and I bought a really cool traditional banner!!!  I can’t wait to hang it up at the apartment!

My main man Martin!  He’s from Narita’s Eikaiwa, but he came all the way here JUST to see me!!  He’s like my Japanese Grandfather.  J

A view of Skytree, the second tallest tower in the world:

A big Japanese temple:  

スタウト長老! ^o^

Elder Stout! :D