I really can see the Lord`s hand in my progress

日本の冒険！ Adventures in Japan! Week 6.

Transfers! Guess where I`m going? haha just kidding. 1st transfers never get transfered. ^^ I`m not ready to leave 城陽　anyway! haha.

So we were not able to meet with either of our progressing investigators until Sunday, but it was still an excellent week!

So in order to know where the Lord wants us to go to find his elect, we decided to try 伝道 (translation? uhhh.... missionary work? I think?) in various places. haha. We biked over 40 miles this week. 32 of them were in 2 days. haha. We found some really good places, and some really good people. Taught a few people right there on the street! unfortunately none of them wanted the second lesson. blech. People are soooo busy!

We met again with the 小松 family. (the family we had sushi with earlier, at their home). We finished helping with English translation for the speech contest, had a meal (sushi again! woot!) and taught a short lesson. Unfortuantely, the less active father and son were not around for that part. They usually are. It was a good message anyway though. ^^ We got some really good referrals that we will meet this week!

We also met with some of the less young people in the ward and got dinner at an itailian place. Way good food. Had a great time, they are all way fun! taught a quick message, and it was a great experience.

Ok. So crazy day of the week story. So we went up North to check out good 伝道 spots. (Sorry, missionaries here just use that word and I don`t know how to replace it! haha.) We found 2 malls in extremely close proximity, where we can 伝道 between. Also there are lots of crazy high high-ways. like 5 stories high. The cross walks are like 3 stories high, as well, which is pretty cool. Wierd thing is, when you get up high you can see the 2 malls, but all around the 2 malls is RICE FIELDS. TONS of them. haha. Totally not a city-like area, but there are 2 HUGE malls just right there in the middle. Pretty weird. Anyway, after that we went further north to visit a less active we hadn`t met with yet, on the extreme north border of the area. hour and a half from our apart. by bike. We met with her at 8 PM, and had a great lesson. Then it was 8:40. uhhh....... a little late. Especially since we didn`t have dinner yet. So, instead of going back to the apartment, we called the district leader, and then we went north to his apartment, which was in the southern part of the area to our north. There we ate quickly, planned for the next day, and crashed. haha. Next day we had a morning appointment with the 小松 Family. haha. So we woke up early, biked 2 hours back to our apartment, showered, made some food to share, and headed over. haha. Pretty crazy day. I was way tired. But it was fun, I guess. Especially since Elder Henderson is getting transfered, so that was our last chance to see him. Hopefully our next district leader is as good as he was!

So last P-day we went to 奈良。 WAY cool place. I thought there were just like, a couple deer or something. WRONG. Tons of temples, shops, shrines, and millions of deer. Lots of 外人 as well, which was weird. more discription of the awesomeness in the pics.

Today we are going to relax from going to awesome places. write some letters. Study tons of Japanese. Etc. fun stuff!

By the way, I haven`t really mentioned how the Japanese is coming, have I?

So going into the MTC, I studied Japanese alone, and didn`t have much time to do it. The last 2 weeks I learned a ton.

First week into the mission, the new training plan focused on MASTERING Japanese. Not just getting pretty good.

So I figure the Lord wants me to figure out the language NOW, not later, and I am not opposed to the idea.

I have leared SO much these last few weeks, and I`ve begun to use appropriate honorifics and humble words and phrases, and its really making a difference.

Understanding is still hard, and even harder when they think I`m totally fluent. haha. But its also improving way fast!

I really can see the Lord`s hand in my progress. And through the progress, I am more able to push forward in God`s Work.

Anyway, Sunday we taught 二口兄弟。 Way good lesson. He has determined that he will continue to come to church Every week! even though it is really tough with his work. We moved his baptism date to the 16th of September, because his schedule has been rough and we havn`t been able to meet as often as before. The 16th though gives us plenty of time, and he is way excited to be baptized! Things are definately looking up for him.

森村兄弟 was too busy to meet last week, but we are meeting with him tonight. Should be good! He is progressing well.

Well, have a crazy awesome week!

皆さん、愛しているよ！＾＾
じゃあ、またねぇ！
オーライリ長老

Next week, on Adventures in Japan!
Elder O`Reilly meets with several new investigators, both of his progressing investigators, and meets tons of new people on the street! Also, A party is thrown in English Conversation Class, to which many people come and it is very successful! ^o^

So this is an outside mall. Pretty sick! and by sick I mean awesome.
 Not the vomitting kind. ugh. Yeah this is in 奈良.

So you buy these cracker things, and then the deer attack you until you feed them. That`s basically how it works. haha! The deer often wait right by the place you buy the crackers.
奈良公園！ there are TONS of little deer walking everywhere, in the middle of a huge city! Its so crazy!

A cool war god thing. Don`t know any of the details,
 but don`t make him angry!! Also in 奈良.

Cool temple in 奈良. Don`t really know the details, haha,
 there were a lot of them, hard to remember which one this was, haha.

COOL temlpe in 奈良. Biggest budda in Japan inside! WAY cool.
 There were tons of cool statues and models inside.

We aren`t Supposed to Explode Heads

Adventures in JAPAN!! Week 5:   \(~o~)/

So this week went by way fast. I`ll start from the start.

Last monday we took a chill day, went to the mall and checked out what they had. Mostly it was clothes, which is kind of boring but yeah. Then I caught up on my letters. Yep. That`s it pretty much. It was hard to find people to teach that night.

Tuesday: Tuesday was one word: AWESOME. so we went to a member`s home to help with an English speech thing. Which is super fun to help with and boosts my vocab quite a bit. ^o^ really helpful both ways. Afterwords we had dinner with her family. Guess what we had?!?! SUSHI! yeah. It was way awesome. SO much sushi. I feel bad for you guys. Just imagine the best meal you can possibly think of. Then multiply it by 10. And then remember that I already ate it and there`s nothing left for you. and it was thousands of miles away. Anyway, it was super good. ^^ The rest of the day was spent looking for people. That`s what we spend most of our time doing. Unfortunately, many days we don`t even find someone who will give us their number. Then one day we find like 3 or more. Seems to be pretty random. so we just keep working at it!

Wednesday: We had a district meeting. It was good stuff. Learned about using parables while teaching to add power. Its the way Christ taught. We now try to make up parables that can be applied to their situation in life so they can understand gospel principles. It works really good! After district meeting we taught English Class. Not a whole lot of people came, but it was still really good. We shared a message about prophets at the end.

Thursday: We taught a lesson! to 二口兄弟. It went really well. We taught about Faith. He is becoming more and more excited about his baptism! its coming up soon on September 2nd! Other than that we did our weekly planning session and looked for people. yep.

Friday: Exchanges! I went with an Australian Elder, who has been here about twice as long as me. My Language study ethic really helped us out. ^^ I was able to help communicate everything we needed to say. And he was able to help me simplify my contacting approach so I don`t explode people`s heads with information. Because we aren`t supposed to explode heads. Thats bad. haha (0.0) That day went really well, we set up an appointment with a new investigator right there on the street! we will meet with him on wednesday. Pretty exciting! ^^ We also taught 森村兄弟。 the lesson went really well! We set up a baptism date. He was really hesitant, he wants to strengthen his faith more, but we assured him that setting a date would strengthen his faith. His date is 9/9. So coming up soon as well!

Saturday:  We went to back to Fushimi to exchange back, and we stayed there a while because there was a party the members were holding and there were a couple non-members there. It was a really cool experience. On the way back we met the coolest guy ever! haha. We were standing at the train station, and my comp. turned to him and said, 「あついですねぇ！」 (its hot! isn`t it?) (everyone says this ALL the time, haha!) and the guy turns to us and we start talking. He said we made him super happy! haha just by talking to him! He wants to become a translator, so he was practicing his English with us. The train came and we asked if it was his train. He said it was, but he would rather talk to us! haha so we talked to him for about 20 more minutes. Unfortunately, he will be going to the fushimi English class, not ours. :( haha. We are always finding new investigators for other areas.

Sunday was also awesome. Aparently every 3rd sunday is a party type thing after church. so there was food and such. Both our investigators came AGAIN, which was crazy awesome. We also got a less active to come! I taught Futakuchi kyoudai and my comp taught morimura kyoudai. Well, my time is getting short.

Its amazing what can be accomplished with the Lord`s help. I am growing more and more confident in my Japanese every day. :D

Well its been a great week, and it will be another great week this week!

See you all later!

じゃあ、またねぇ！
オウライり長老

Next week on Adventures in Japan: Elder O`Reilly Goes to Nara Park and sees a ridiculously large Budda, Elder O`Reilly is unable to meet with his progressing investigators until Sunday beacause they`re `too busy`, and has to find other investigators, and Elder O`Reilly just has an awesome week in general!

My awesome bike. I call it the　黒い馬 kuroiuma. the black horse.
 which sounds like　車 kuruma, a car.

My apartment building (can you see all the parked bikes?)

 The Church building. good times in there! most of our lessons are there.

Pic on the way to the church.
Why yes, all of Japan looks awesome, what made you ask? 

 In order to enter a Shrine in Japan, you have to purify yourself. Pretty simple, pour water on hands, in mouth, spit it out, done. This one is a dragon water spout. Yeah, awesome. In a shrine 5 min from the apart. 

The shrine by our apart. 

 Yeah, more fireworks. Awesome pic,no? make it your desktop backround! haha 

The awesome Fam that made us SUSHI!. 
We helped the girl on the far right with her English. 
This is the Komatsu Family. Great family!

District meeting! (with zone leaders) 
On the right is Elder Henderson, on the right Elder Wycoff, a zone leader.
The middle? some awesome guy I heard.

 Other guys. Left to right: other zone leader,my comp, elder Allen.

Some sisters in the ward at the ward party in Fushimi

The Phoenix Palace, lots of cool people and fantastic food!

Hey all of my adoring fans, its adventures in Japan!! Week 4.

So this week was pretty much crazy awesome. I suppose I should start from the top.

Monday: 平等院。 byoudouin. The Pheonix Palace. And yes, it is as epic as its name. Its a super famous building in Japan, its even on the 10円 piece. Happens to be IN MY AREA. yeah. how cool is that?! it was actually one of my favourite desktop backrounds on my Laptop. So pretty cool to go inside (sorry, no pics were allowed inside, but just believe me when I say it was way epic) We rode our bikes a little over an hour to get there. apparently, our area is huge. like major huge huge. Like my companion who has been here for 7 months hasn`t seen most of it huge. Like you could bike all day in one direction and still be in the area huge. Most of it is countryside, but we have a lot of city-like areas as well, so I get to see both sides, which is way awesome.

I tried a ramen place for the first time, and I have to say it was amazing. Really good stuff. Your mouth should probably be watering right now. But wait, because that`s not the coolest place I went out to this week.

Our lessons with 二口兄弟 and  森村兄弟 both went excellently, they both had 2 lessons this week actually. They also both came to church! so great progress is being made there. We went (on friday) to a firework festival with 二口兄弟 which was way awesome. Japanese fireworks are the bomb. in the sky. haha ok that was kind of a lame joke, but laugh anyway, ok?

Of course we found lots of cool people again this week, for example some guy who was investigating the church 40 years ago walked up to us and talked with us. We`ll probably meet with him again this week. He doesn`t want to agree to anything formal, but if we just get together as friends he`s OK with it.

Because of some festivities going on this week (no, I don`t have any idea what they are for), the city was pretty empty. Don`t really know where everyone is. haha. Tuesday, we had nothing planned until that night, so we just went out to find people.  All day, we found maybe 5ish people to talk to, and we tried several different places. So that was different. That night a less-active family took us to a Sushi place. Way awesome place! sit down, take sushi as it comes by on a conveyer belt, order food on a screen and it magically comes to you on the conveyer belt, and its all fantastic. Had a great time and then shared with them a message about the atonement. It was a good night.

Last night, we went to the Bishop`s for dinner. Pretty great food! ^^ We had to take a train to get to his house though (since our area/ward is SOOO HUGE! like so huge that...) We had curry at his place, which was pretty awesome! ^^ We did a really cool message involving a candle, some coins, some water, and some magic vacuum effects, and it went really well. The bishop gave us names of people to visit, so we`ll be doing that this week.

Today We`ll probably just organize some stuff at the apartment and chill a little bit. Probably go shopping and buy a few things. yep yep.

Oh yeah! so we didn`t go on the exchange. That will be this week.

Anyway, I suppose that`s the highlights of the week and such. Feel free to read it over and over to your heart`s content. ^^

My arm I expect to be completely better by next week, I actually made some progress this week. haha. ^^

Love you all! yes. all of you. That means you.

王雷利長老。Why yes, that is my name in Kanji.　haha.^^

Next time on Adventures in Japan::  Elder O`Reilly goes on an exchange (for real) with another inexperienced Elder, Elder O`Reilly goes to several dinner appointments (Oh yeah!) and Elder O`Reilly finds 15 new investigators!! (Hey, it could happen)

Cool river in my area. Hour away from the apartment by bike. by 平等院。

平等院。 The Pheonix Palace.

Ok, same place again, but it is STILL awesome, right??

Pads of lily. I call them lily pads.

The guy who took us out to sushi  ^^ GOOD stuff.
CONVEYER BELT IS AWESOME!

All of us at the sushi place minus my comp.

Glasses day at district meeting. We have dist. meeting everyweek, did I mention that??
 its way fun, I look forward to it!

花火。 in Japan. OH YEAH!
Yeah. Fireworks in Japan are that cool!

Adventures in Japan: Week 3

So this week was pretty great! Less bike accidents and such... haha! Unfortunately my arm hasn`t made much progress.... it is healing really slow it seems. Perhaps it is because I don`t have the chance to give it a break for a day. I don`t know.

Anyway, the week started and ended with awesomeness, as it always must in the wonderful land of Japan. Since 二口兄弟 got in a car accident, we only met with him once this week. He`s doing really well! We asked if he would read the BoM just a little everyday, and he was like `` I already read it for 30-45 minutes a day, is that good? `` ^O^ YES! haha. He is already getting into 2nd Nephi! Which is really exciting. We are going to teach him tonight, right after we teach 森村兄弟。 Yeah, we planned another epic week alright ^o^ We have plans for every single evening already, which is exciting! Some of the nights are meeting with members and less actives and teaching English, but still it seems like we are going to have a very productive week as far as finding new people to teach.

Cool Contact of the week:

So we ran into this guy named Joe a while back, he seemed interested and he gave us his phone number. For whatever reason the phone number didn`t work. Last night we ran into him again. (what are the chances of that??) I personally taught him the first vision on the spot, and we got his number from off his phone. We gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon, and he was really grateful to us. So grateful, in fact, that he gave us both hugs. I took that as a sign that he took our message well. ^^ He is going to try to come to church this Sunday, and if he does we will be able to teach him and his family afterwards.

P-day adventure of last week: Fushiminari. it was sooooo awesome. hundreds upon hundreds upon thousands of tori, or arches. Waaaay cool to walk through. As we got further up there were just hundreds of shrines, I`ll send a picture of one so you can get an idea of how cool a shrine is ^^ .

Oh yeah! hello. most cool thing that happened this week. So I went on Exchanges this week! it was exciting. I had the district leader as my companion for a day. He is super cool! He is also majoring in Electrical Engineering at BYU and has studied Japanese at BYU! So it was way cool to talk to and learn from him. His Japanese is really really good, so I was able to learn a ton from him. I`m going on exchanges again on Friday after district meeting, this time with the district leaders companion.

Next time on Adventures in Japan: Elder O`Reilly journeys to the mystical place of 平等院 on P-day, an incredibly famous Japanese place. (duh, of course its Japanese) Elder O`Reilly goes to a sushi place where the sushi goes around on conveyer belts. (SO EXCITED!) and Elder O`Reilly goes on Companion exchanges, this time to the foreign land of the Fushimi area!

皆さん、愛しているよ！ (Everyone, I love you!)
オーライリ長老より          (From, Elder O'Reilly)

Big arch in the front

Woah! So cool! They went on forever...

Example of a shrine. These foxes were everywhere! There were hundreds of shrines!

Just a cool pic!

Dragon shine! way cool looking! ^^

Cool building

I went for a nice ride through the air (bike accident)

So this week was filled with a ton of stuff. I can hardly believe it was only a week. I guess I`ll start from the beginning though. Just remember that whatever happened in the past, I am currently doing well and feeling great. ^o^

So my adventures start with the lesson I had last monday. Or rather the journey to said lesson. Whilst I was traveling to the church to teach 二口兄弟(Brother futaguchi), I was cut off by a young kid on a bike, and so naturally I pulled hard on both my brakes. Unfortunatley, I had not yet adjusted the brakes, and the front brakes were perhaps a touch too tight. Meaning that when I pulled the brake my front tire stopped instantly and I went for a nice ride through the air, landing gracefully on my face. Luckily, i was covering my face with my hands. Honestly I don`t really remember that part though. From what I remember I picked myself off the ground and was shocked to see my hands covered in blood. and my shirt pocket ripped off. and my left arm not quite moving like it was supposed to. We had a lesson to teach though, so we proceeded to the church. I enjoyed a good amount of pain on the way. ^o^ 二口兄弟 was a little shocked to see me all poorly bandaged up (there was a first aid kit at the church) but we told him we would go to the hospital after we taught him. Since my arm probably should be able to move more than 80 ish degrees. So we taught him the lesson, and it was a really amazing experience. It was my first time describing the first vision in Japanese to someone. Afterwards, we asked him if he believed our message. He turned in the gospel restoration pamphlet to the first vision, pointed to the picture, and said, I believe this. We have met with him 3 times since then, and he is progressing very quickly! He is a chef, and insists on cooking us dinner as well, which is pretty much awesome. He came to church on sunday, but he was a little late because he was hit by a car. We forgave him. He`s pretty hurt, but for the most part OK. It wrecked his motor bike though. He lives 5 minutes from the church by bike, which is super convenient.

So after the lesson on Monday, we went to the hospital. A member drove us. Turns out I was OK, the muscles in my arm had just swollen around the bone or something like that. The trip exhausted all my emergency funds, but I should be reimbursed in about 2 weeks. (Could I have $300 on my card instead of $100 at all times just in case something like this happens again? When I get my money from the reimbursement I`ll probably buy the electronic dictionary.)

So basically this week we taught him and looked for more people (usually we look around train stations, where there are a lot of people). On Wednesday, we had a district meeting, which was really cool. We took a train up to fushimi, and met with 4 other elders, discussing all kinds of things about our district and how to improve. it was pretty great. Then we went to a 食べ放題, (a buffet). Pretty great food.

We taught English class to 4 people on wednesday, which was actually quite fun. We do that every wednesday. We also taught another investigator on Sunday, and we`ll be teaching him again on Friday. The other teaching appointments fell through, but they will take place in the near future.


I really enjoy describing/handing out the book of mormon. It is an amazing converting tool.

I already am feeling confident in saying most gospel related things in Japanese! in fact last night I completed a contact by myself where I described the nature of God, Christ and his earthly ministry and atonement, and the restoration of the church. The guy I talked to did not have any reason to doubt my Japanese speaking ability, which is always a good feeling. I was able to answer his questions and comments, and tried to set up a time to meet. He didn`t have his schedule with him though (everyone is so busy here!) but he said that he absolutely wants to talk with us and he will give us a call. Pretty awesome contact.

We had to spend half a day fixing a flat my bike had. We couldn`t fix it, so we had to take it to a bike shop that was really far away (we had to take a train and then walk 40 minutes), but now my bike is doing great. ^^

Alright, I`m running out of time. Today we`re planing to go to fushimi inari, a really cool place it sounds like. I suppose you`ll hear about it in next week`s adventures!

Oh, by the way, my arm is practically back to normal now. touching my left shoulder with my left hand is still impossible, and it aches a little, but its getting better quickly. ^^ I`d appreciate some prayers though! Thanks ^^

じゃあ、またね！
オライリ長老より

There are little rivers like this everywhere! so Beautiful!

New shirt please! (pocket just taken right off)

My hands weren`t that bad, I`m glad it wasn`t my face!

Lots of farm-land by our apartment.

Yes! I have made sushi in Japan!

Bugs are bigger here..... this is a 蝉. I don`t want to try to spell in it English. haha.

We could not fix this tire!! grr..... 

Japan is everything I`ve ever thought it could be and more

So I`ve been in Japan for 6 days now! Let me tell you, Japan is everything I`ve ever thought it could be and more. But more of that later.

Ok, so I have been assigned to the Joyo Area, in the Kyoto zone! pretty dang awesome!  being near kyoto, there are tons of really neat shrines and things everywhere. It`s a fairly large area, mainly country but it has some city-like parts as well, so that`s pretty cool. ^^  I was in Kobe at the mission home for 2 1/2 days, I bought my bike there! It was kind of funny, I bet the bike guys there love us. We come in, look at bike for like 10 minutes, and then buy some of there more expensive bikes after testing it out for a few seconds. haha. We always buy from the same place because they do a 2 year insurance plan for about $30. how convenient. ^o^. Anyway, while in Kobe we went street contacting with the more experienced missionaries. I went with a Japanese missionary, and we talked to a bunch of people from the way home from a buffet we all went to. it was really cool. Kobe is a really cool place. like seriously.

The next day we all found out where we were going and who our companions are. My companion is Elder Hale, from Brigham City, Utah. So he`ll be my trainer for the next 12 weeks. We are almost complete opposites but we get along well. haha. He is super energetic and social, talks rather loudly to everyone we see. haha. It`s pretty exciting. We do a ton of street contacting, which is actually my favorite way to find people thus far. If you go knock on doors, they usually don`t even open the door, all the homes have cameras and an intercom system so they don`t have to come to the door. Street contacting seems to be much more effective. The people are way awesome, too. We can usually get about 50% of the people to stop and talk to us, and they are always super nice and cool.

The first few days my bike hadn`t arrived yet (we shipped it from Kobe) so we walked everywhere. One day it poured rain like I`d never seen before. Buckets of rain. Literally. haha there was a bucket outside, like a 2 gallon size bucket, and it was filled in half an hour. so we walked quite a bit in that, haha. It didn`t rain too long, though. The weather here thus far is actually been really good. Its been overcast so its not too hot.

I went to the branch and gave my first talk / testimony in Japanese, that was exciting :D the ward is really awesome, there are about 28 members who come every week, but some less-actives come each week as well. We actually taught an investigator during the second hour, and he is really awesome! We taught him the Word of Wisdom, and when we said we don`t drink alcohol or smoke, he said he already stopped both of those. When we told him about tea and coffee, he was surprised, but he agreed to live the word of wisdom completely. Really cool experience!  After that we went to Elder`s quorum. There are 3 Elders in the ward, the others are inactive. There is no young men`s yet. Looks like our work is cut out for us! :)

So this area has some room for improvement....... that investigator is actually the only investigator the area had when I came in. We`ve been working hard to get some more investigators, though, and we have a lesson lined up for today actually! It`s P-day, but we`re desperate. haha.

Ok, so now I`ll tell you of all the cool stuff they have in Japan....... ready? haha.

Japanese stuff is awesome. Ok first, the doughnuts. imagine a krispy creme doughnut. now take out half the sugar and multiply the deliciousness by one million. Basically American doughnuts don`t compare. haha ^o^  All the toilets plug in to the wall. usually just for heated seats but sometimes for other stuff as well, I`m not completely sure what yet haha. The place we E-mail from is AWESOME. We have to pay per hour, but the computers are SUPER nice and they have big recliner chairs and unlimited drinks and ice-cream. Yeah. Ok really quickly, they have pens that erase with friction, each room has individual air-conditioning, the microwave is a one-button machine (there is a way to manually set it, but if you put something in and press start, it cooks it perfect everytime), the washing machine tells you how much soap you need, Melon-pan (bread) is to die for, and Japan is, just in general, awesome.

My companion doesn`t really like plain rice or fish or (it seems) Japanese food in general, so we usually eat different stuff. The ward is awesome, so we get a lot of food from them on Sundays for the week. A lot of it goes to me since he doesn`t like it, which is fine by me! haha ^o^.

Anyway, I`m going to see how many pics I can upload before my time runs out.

じゃあ、またねぇ！

オーライリ長老より

 A bunch of us from the International Branch

my district in the International Branch

My Japanese District

My Japanese Branch

Window seat!! Here's an artificial ksiland by Kobe. The flight was SOOO long. the buy next to me.... I don't think he spoke English or Japanese... he spoke Chinese and he had out his laptop the whole time. Didn't want to bother him so I o nly got up once the whole 11 hours. ouch!

Kobe

 We climbed up a mountain in Kobe, pretty awesome view. This is the whole group from the MTC that went to Kobe mission.

 Play grounds in Japan are awesome. (kobe)

Cool

 My new place. Its huge and pretty nice. (joyo)

View from our place

Long road. We walked a lot the first day

A cool bridge RIGHT outside our place

A cool mall in our area

My new companion, Elder Hale 

Money

That's what I'm talking about ^o^

 Me, E-mailing.

with Trainer, Elder Hale

with President and Sister Zinke