Happy 4th Of July!

(Elder Mumford Says: "Peace Out Everybody!")

Here's Elder Mumford's e-mail dated July 2, 2009

Dear Everyone,

Another crazy week, some highlights;

1. We picked up Elder Imai (he just entered the JMTC), but he got to spend 4 days with us in Shibuya while he was waiting to get in!  It was lots of fun :)

2.  Michael Jackson died?  Thats weird.  We heard about it from some guy on the train, so we didnt believe it at first, but then everyone kept telling us the same.  Wow.

3.  Some advertising person called us.  He said that his company has this stage in the middle of a train station where people preform.  He wants to give us several hours on the stage to do whatever we want!  Way nice! :)

4.  As for visiting NHK Studio Park, its actually not open right now (I think).  They closed it off to people because there is a huge mob protesting outside.  I cant figure out what theyre protesting, but they all look really angry.  We will try to visit it another day, when the angry mob is gone.

(The tallest building in Japan- The Landmark Building.)

Anyways, Shibuya is as amazing as ever.  Im sorry this is going to be a short one, because nothing out of the ordinary happened this week.

But, Im doing well here.  All 4 of us get along really well and are having lots of fun.  Its definitely harder to talk to people here than other places Ive been in though.  Biking is out of the picture, because there are so many people on the streets that your bike doesnt even fit sometimes.  In Yokosuka and Kawasaki, if we stopped 3 people, usually at least one of them would listen to us for a while, but here you get lucky if 1 out of 10 even stops for you, let alone listen.  Every single person is busy.

By far the most common response is 'Im in a hurry', because seriously, everyone is.  Every single person here is rushing to get to work or get somewhere else and they dont have time to talk.  Most people dont even have 1 minute to spare, so recently we've been asking people if they have just 10 seconds to listen.  Most of the time they dont, but sometimes people will listen.  Then we give a REALLY quick 10-second message and hand them a flyer or something, then they look at their watch and say 'Oh, 10 seconds is up, bye'.

Its ultra-fast paced.  Kind of scary and Im still adjusting.  Its so hard just to get people to stop at all, sometimes its frustrating.  We'll keep trying.

(Elder Mumford came across this giant robot spider that gets up and walks around.  However, it was "sleeping" at the time he snapped this picture.)

We also have some of the anti-mormon sentiment from the Americans/Gaijin here.  We get yelled at sometimes, which surprisingly is a first for me.  In all the other areas, people know absolutely 0 about christianity, let alone our church, so there are no angry people telling us to go home.  But here we get it occasionally.  It really makes me appreciate the missionaries in America, Europe, and pretty much the rest of the entire world who already start out with a bad image of us.  At least here you have sort of a clean slate.

(Visiting The Shrine of a Million Dogs)

Well sorry for my rant, it was a little negative, but it feels good to let it out. :)  Thats basically our situation now, finding anyone who will listen.  Well keep on keeping on.

Thanks everyone for the support!  Have a happy 4th of July!

Elder Martin D Mumford

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