Koiwa Continues

(Ginsu Mumford slices and dices vegetables for Mabudoufu)

Here is Elder Mumford's e-mail from Japan, dated June 1, 2010:

Dear Everyone,

It's good to hear from you all :) And no worries, the package(s) and letters all arrived safely. The cheese was just fine. Even better, we made tacos again. We actually were having lunch one day, and we had made Mabodofu (a chinese food with tofu, meat, veggies, and rice). We decided to just finish off all the taco meat from the last time and throw it into the mabodofu. It ended up completely overpowering the chinese flavor, and just ended up ttasting like mexican food anyways. So we brought out the tortillas and wraped it up!

VIDEO:

Click the "Play" arrow to view.

Also we've been trying a lot of new things, with the materials we've got. We've been having a lot of breakfast for dinner recently, with various kinds of pancakes. So a few days ago we threw in the reces pieces bits into the batter and fried it up. It was very peanut buttery.

(Frog Shaped pancake, created by Elder Mumford)

Also in the package, I was excited to see the pop rocks! Wow it's been a long time since Ive seen those. I had some, but then we had to go and so I left the open package on my desk. When we came back that night, I went to finish off the pop rocks, and to my suprise the humidity in the air had actually fried them all into a kind of goo that had fused into the package. Kind of cool I guess. They were always more of an 'entertainment' food than for actually eating anyways :)

Today before we came to email we had a mini-cleaning of the apartment (halfway through a transfer it gets really dusty and junk starts to pile up everywhere). So that was 'fun'. But I've really come to realize that I cannot live, I just can't survive without a garbage disposal. That is the one thing Ill never be able to give up in my life. You know everything that goes down a normal sink? Bits of food, crumbs, every scrap of crusty stuff on each bowl/dish? All of that goes down the drain and is caught by a handy little net/baggie thing. Which then fills up slowly with all the food bits and eventually turns into a putrid light brown goo. The sinks literally do not accept anything except for 100% liquid, so we have to use the nets or else the sinks will eventually clog. The hard part is changing the nets, but we pulled through it ok. Its just that that will be one of those simple gifts that Ill be happy to embrace once Im back. :)

VIDEO:

Click the "Play" arrow to view.

But this week we have seen so many miracles. Let me tell you about a few of them;

1. We were walking along the street, and Elder Williams talked to this guy who was just leaving a convenience store. He asked him 'why do you think people die? What is the purpose of it?', and the guy thought about it for a while, and said, 'I dont know, but come to my house and you can tell me all about it'. So we followid him to his house, we sat down and taught him about the Restoration. Which just blew his mind. He's kind of busy at the moment, but we're going to meet with him in a week or two to talk more about it. We was very interested in the Book of Mormon. His name is Sekino. He has a pet turtle named Leonardo (just thought that was funny).

(Turtles in the park, in Japan)

2. Elder Williams stopped this really old nice grampa walking dow the street. When he heard that we were voulenteers for 2 years here, he wanted to buy us coffee for some reason. Unfortunately we cant drink coffee, but he insisted on getting us somehting, so he bought us both strawberry parfaits. Way funny guy, but after a few minutes we could tell he really only had interest in talking to gaijin (americans) than really hearing about the gospel so we had to leave him with some information and say goodbye. Very nice person. He talked a lot about how in Japan no one ever hugs eachother or holds hands or expresses love in any way.

I wanted to show him that our Heavenly Father loves us, and so I asked him,

'you have a daughter, so do you love her?'

and he said, 'yes'

'so how much do you love her?'

and he said along the lines of 'maybe a little bit. kind of.'

which really blew me away because most people will usually say 'a lot' or something like that. So I wansnt really sure what to say to that, but we still told him more about God and how he really does love us because we are his children. It was just a very interesting experience

3. A few weeks ago (I forgot to tell you, maybe?) We were walking down towards the train station, and we stopped someone, who turned around. And he turned out to be from England, which took me by suprise because he looked completely Japanese from the back :) But we ended up talking to him all the way back to the train station, about what we're doing in Japan and what kind of message we share. He was curious about Mormons, because he had heard that we cant drink coffe. And he asked why we dont... if there was some sort of a reason. We told him that of course there are things like that that we follow, no alcohol, coffe, tea, smoking... but just by looking at that you might get the impression that we follow it for health reasons. But we explained that really, no one needs religion to tell them what is good or bad for thier health. You dont need God to tell you that smoking is bad for your body. You can get that information without believing in God.

But the real reason that we follow the word of wisdom, as with any commandment, is because it is just that... a commandment. We do whatever God asks us to do because it is a test of our willingness to follow him. And he wants to see if we are responsible enough to recieve the belessings that he has to give us. In reality, it comes down to 'did God really ask me to follow this, or did someone make this up? Is this a true principle, or just someone's opinion? If it comes from God we follow it, and we can all know, individually if it is true or not. Quite literally we can recieve an individual answer to our prayers, which will prove to us what is true. Because if this church is not true, there is absolutely no purpose in following its teachings.

So we explained that the most important thing in this church is for everyone to know for themselves whether it is true or not. We dont want anyone at all to be blindly obeying because their parents told them too, or because it sounds like a good idea, we want each person to know 100% with that assurance from God (not from other people, but from God Himself) that this is the best path we could be taking in life. Nothing short of that will cut it. And if you really want to know, and ask him, and are willing to follow whatever answer you may get God will tell you, guaranteed.

He thought that was pretty cool. Of course this was all in English so it was way easy to explain (I somehow doubt that I could say all of that in Japanese), but I htink he rocgnized that there was something important about what we were doing here. That we're not here to try and convince or trick or persuade someone to join our church. We're not here to promote 'good morals'. We're not here to make the church bigger. We are here to tell people how they can know (for THEMSELVES!) that it is true. That is the best part of being in Japan for me.

Anyways there was some other cool miracles this week, but I think I forgot them already. I hope that everyone is having a great time, enjoying themselves and working hard. Thanks for the great letters! I got so many at once due to the mailbox misunderstanding, but it was WAY fun!

Thanks for everything, I love you all!

-Elder Martin Mumford,

TOKYO JAPAN.

Mailbox Mixup!

(Elder Mumford finally receives his long awaited package.)

Below is Elder Mumford's e-mail dated May 25th, 2010:

Dear Everyone,

We are doing great out here in Koiwa. We have some very exciting things happening!

First of all, we just found out that we have been checking the wrong mailbox this whole time! Instead of 302, we have been checking the 301 mailbox, which now makes so much more sense why there hasn't been any mail at all for 2 weeks! So we opened up the correct one, and there were about 6 letters and 2 package slips. Well, at least it will be fun to get it all at once :) I just hope there was nothing too immediately perishable in the boxes :)

(Click on any image to enlarge)

Thank you for all the miracle pictures of everyone. It was especially cool because I could get a huge bundle of them at once due to the mail mixup. I loved seeing how everyone is doing. (everyone has really grown up since I left). Also Billy has a really cool jump picture. That's so cool to hear about Billy's mission! I'm sure his spanish will be mucho guapo! I remember when I saw the picture of the elevator going to Blair's office, it took me a while to figure it out. The reason being is that quite a few members actually live on the 13-20th floors of a huge tower, so I think I just ended up getting used to it. :)

Speaking of which.... We went to a 4-story Costco today.

It had everything the same as an American Costco, except that it was seperated into the different floors, and between floors were these really long 'cart' escalators. All the carts have intense magnetic wheels that lock on to the escalator, so no matter how much stuff is in the cart, it wont slide back when you're going up. Very fun. We went with Elder Lloyd (our district leader), and Elder Tangren, as well as 'Rocky' the famous english class student from the mission who has been coming for too many years to count.

(Costco in Japan)

We bought muffins, bagels, and butter, and a giant massive bag of pancake mix. That should last us quite a while.

With that aside, we have some fun things happening this week: All that hard work we did for the first 2 weeks is finally coming to fruition. This week, every single day we have an appointment to meet someone. I dont think I have ever had that happen durring any point of my stay in Japan. We are thanking God for the huge progress that has been happening here recently.

(Elder Mumford is ready to run with the fast paced missionary efforts.)

Some highlights:

Tuesday(today) - Meeting with 'Naoki' who we met with on the street and talked about real happiness. We're going to give him a Book of Mormon tonight.

Wednesday - Oyo, a chinese college student who has finally got some time to meet us.

Thursday - Hayashi, someone who has met with missionaries in the past, but now can meet us again after a several-month break.

Friday - Iwazaki, a 350lbd professional sumo wrestler, and college student. We're going out to eat, where we will also give him a Book of Mormon. Just imagine if he gets baptized. :)

Saturday - Ko, another chinese college student.

Other than these really cool people, we need your help in praying for,

1. Sho - our main man. He loves the church and the Book of Mormon, is trying to give up smoking, but this last week he completely dropped contact. We cant get a hold of him at all.

2. Inoue - likewise, we cant get a hold of him, he too wanted to meet with us, but its a matter of simply a really long game of phone tag. He can never pick up when we call, and we can never pick up when he calls.

(Elder Mumford dressed for showers! -rain showers, that is.)

But we're really starting to see miracles. In the pouring rain on Saturday, we were still able to talk to tons of people and even exchange several phone numbers. Who's to say that rain makes it harder to do missionary work? :) I honestly didnt think it was going to turn out that well, bt we just kept meeting one awesome person after another, and we had a nice long, really meaningful talk with this one person who asked us, 'If you could only tell these people one thing, what would you tell them? What is the most important part of your message?' Which I have never been asked before, but we were more than happy to answer. Really cool guy.

(Elder Matias drinks from the sacred pool, while the resident monk glances with disapproval.)

You'd also be surprised about how many computer programmers there are in Japan. It seems like over 40% of every working person in Japan does some sort of computer or IT job, which really is nice for me because I can tell them that that's what I want to do.

Also, just yesterday we had a Zone Conference. It was one of the best ever, and Ill have to summarize my notes and see if I can make a little list of things I learned for next week. But the coolest part was that on the way home, we accidentally messed up the trains and had to switch lines a few times. But on the way back I started talking to this really nice college student who turned out to be part of Happy Science, a new religion in Japan based on Self-Esteem. Kind of weird, but he offered me a book, which is like their scripture, and was happy to take a Book of Mormon in exchange. I really dont know much about it, but he was a nice guy and we both explained a little about our religions. turns out that Happy Science believes that their leader is reincarnated Buddah, and writes self-help books to bring peace to the world. (sounds kind of wacky, but we're alwasy happy to exchange materials, and It will be a fun read once I get back to America).

Anyways, Im sure there's more but I simply cant remember it all. The bagles and muffins are pretty heavy and the butter is starting to melt in my backpack, so we need to go so we can put them in the fridge as soon as possible :) I really think that things are just going to take off this transfer and the next, and that I'll be able to finish off my mission with a real bang here. Im so excited to see what will happen with all the people we are working with.

Thanks everyone! I love you all so much, have a great week!

-Elder Martin Mumford,

TOKYO, JAPAN.

Japanese Graffiti

(In America, we publicly profess our love for someone by carving our initials in a heart on a tree. They do a similar thing in Japan, only rather than hurting a tree, they write their names on a padlock.)

(Then they "lock" it onto a designated public place, such as this observation tower.)

(Click on any image to enlarge)

Now here is Elder Mumford's e-mail, dated May 18th:

Dear Everyone,

We are having the best time ever in Koiwa!

Let me tell you some of the exciting things that have been happening.

1. We have this really cool guy named 'Sho'. He's from China and is here studying politics. And he's the most awesome person I've ever met. We were trying to see if we could meet him sometime, and so the missionaries before me invited him to a Music Festival which was at the church on Saturday. We called and called but couldnt really ever get ahold of him to see if he was coming. And then the night before he called us back, and said that he was coming. But not just that, he had come to the church already on tuesday for practice - because he was going to be singing IN the music festival. It was really cool, he went up there with all the young single adults and sung that 'Sisters in Zion' EFY theme song. (Click here to see this song sung in Japanese by a group of Japanese Young Single Adults.) AND... he brought his entire family with him to watch it (6 people). And he went around afterwards introducing himself and his family to all the ward members. He hasn't heard any official lessons yet (there hasnt been time), but he heard about the Word of Wisdom from us and decided he wanted to follow it. He also saw a baptism last week and decided that he would also like to be baptized. So I think that if you could pray for him, that he would continue on at that great pace, it would be amazing.

(The Missionaries prepare for a recent music night.)

2. Koiwa is the best! We have a massive 180-200 person ward, the second largest in all of Japan I think. And it's just full of people who are willing to help each other and us. I think that after the music night, Sho introduced himself to, and became great friends with all of the young members of the ward. Everyone helps us out a lot, and we're doing our best to help them. Since Koiwa is right in the middle of the big city, (but slghtly less populated then shibuya), there are people everywhere at all times of the day. We can simply go outside of our apartment and talk to people all the day long.

(Busy Train Station in Japan)

In fact I have been very suprised, but there are actually a lot of Chinese people living in Koiwa. We have met som many Chinese couples and families here already, and they are always fun to talk to. From what I have heard, Christianity is actually getting very popular in China, so everyone that we talk to from China says they have a relative or two who is Christian and that tghey really respect that. But so far we have been working extremely hard, talking to every single person possible. There's simply so manhy people in our area that we could bnever possibly meet a decent portion of them. We ask each person we meet if they have ever seen us before, and pretty much 100% of the time they never have. There's just so many people. Its a bit of a shock actually, Im not quite used to it because it has been so long sincew Shibuya. But Im very impressed with just how many of the people we talk to actually listen to us. I thought it would be hard, because its a big city and everyone is so busy, but in fact the majority of those we talk to are willing to listen.

(List of missionary contacts)

3. We meet a lot of fun, interesting, and sometimes crazy people here. It is the BEST for cool stories.

-We ran into this genki old fellow who started talking to us about this crazy book he had just bought, about life and how people are spirits and can dream... just interesting things. But he was talking and talking, and woudn't even give us a break to get a word in. But then he offered us these little seaweed cracker things he had, and shuffled off. Wierd, but fun.

(Interesting Book)

-This man was just about to get into his car, and so we complimented how nice a car it was. He said, 'come here' and he turned on the engine and showed us the inside of the very very expensive looking car. The he talked for a while about how he races sometimes, and how fast he can gol. We didnt know anything about cars, but it was still fun to talk to him.

(That's a lot of headlights)

-We were talking to this older man about true happiness, and he went off about how there is nothing to be grateful for. I offered that becsause we have all our senses, we can see and that is something to be grateful for. He agreed, but then started off on how blind people cant possibly be happy. They might pretend to be happy, but they cant ever feel real happiness because they cant see. I think we talked to him for a while, but he was rather stuck on being depressed and 'woe is me' that day, but I think we were able to bring a ittle more happiness to him that day though that conversation.

Anyways, things are great here. Technicaly it's supposed to be entering the rainy part of the year, but so far so good! Not a drop! And today its still sunny :) I think that Im going to have asome serious 'tie tan' when I get back though. Where its so hot thatyou get a permanent tie-shaped white stripe on you :)

(Elder Mumford shows off his "Missionary Tan")

Alright, Im running out of things to say, I hope everyone is doing well, good luck and have fun! Ill see you soon! Also I have to apologize for the lack of letters/contact outside of email. We have been so busy. Ive never been this busy before as a missioanry, because every second we're really working to the MAX. But its so much fun. And tiring. Mostly fun.

K, love you all!

See you,

-Elder Martin D Mumford

-TOKYO,JAPAN

Koiwa!

Here is Elder Mumford's e-mail from 5/10/10:

Dear Everyone,

I have some big news! I have transfered to Koiwa ward in the Tokyo Stake. My new companion is Elder Williams from Sandy UT. He just recently came to Japan the transfer before this one, so Ill be his second companion. His trainer was Elder Macdonald, so up till now all of his companions have started with the letter 'M'.

(This is one skinny building)

Some interesting/shocking news, Shonan is being whitewashed, which means that BOTH me and Elder King transfered, I went to Koiwa, and he went to Kiryu. Elder Miner (who was in the MTC with me) will be coming to Shonan with a bean on Thursday. It was way difficult to write all the nessecary information, and I hope we didnt forget anything. We were desperately trying to get all the information to him. It's really sad to leave Shonan, especially now that it started to really explode on the last 3 days of the transfer. We ended up setting a baptismal date with the Higuchi couple. They are both set up to be Baptized on June 26 as it stands. And on the very last day of the trasnfer we recieved 2 referrals. So this is going to be a great leap start for Elder Miner and the new missionary. Im sure that they will have a good time and really take off with Shonan.

Ok, so let me tell you all about Koiwa!

Koiwa is a very heavily populated area. I feel like Im back in Shibuya, because there are just nothing but massive buildings everywhere, and there are people all over the place. Which is a bit of a shock to me, I've discovered. Up till now I've been wandering more around the country side of Tokyo, seeing a lot more farms than people, but now it's time to dive back into the fray and madness that is a major city. It's already been fun and exciting. (Koiwa is actually right next to Shibuya.)

The apartment here was previously inhabited by sister missionaries, so we got to move into a very clean apartment for once.

(Back to the big city)

Yesterday was my first day here, and we had an appointment for a 'mogi' (practice) lesson with the Tamada family. (That was a real treat. Its a way funny old couple, and she showed us her talking robotic cats and her night garden). But on the way there we were looking for the address, and talking about how difficult it is to find addresses in Japan (due to there being no street names). Then we saw a delivery man and asked him where the address was. He actually knew, and without even looking at a map or anything, he told us exactly which roads and alleys to take in order to get there. He had the entire section of the city memorized perfectly. He told us he had been doing that delivery job for over 10 years in the exact same area of the city, so he knew every single house by heart. Very impressive. His name was Koike, and we exchanged chirashis (flyers).

Anyways, this is going to be a great transfer out here.

So Im sure I can fill you in more about Koiwa next week, Im still kind of 'in transition' at the moment, but it sounds really good. (My luggage has not yet arrived, so I'm living out of my backpack until it gets here.)

From what I hear, our main man is going to be 'Sho', who is Chinese. He loves church and the Book of Mormon and would like to be Baptized. So we will be talking to him a lot this coming week. I cant wait to meet all of the cool people we are working with. The ward is HUGE as well. I think there are over 180 people coming to church on Sunday, so Im really going to have to work hard in order to remember all of their names. Im not so good at that, but Ill try :)

(The Elders with students from the English Class)

I think this email place (the one we use in Koiwa) is pretty stable. We should be able to email here every week without fail. So wooo! It's close... and free!

Anyways, I hope mom had a great Mothers Day, and Dad had a great 40th Birthday (again). Im sending a package, I swear! :) I still need to wait on my luggage arriving in Koiwa, but when it does Ill try to ship the goods to America. Ill throw in the pictures from last transfer as well.

Thanks for your help! Have a great week!

-Domo!

-Love Elder Mumford

-TOKYO JAPAN.

The End?

(Elder Mumford visits a famous shrine and garden in Japan.)

Now here's Elder Mumford's e-mail from 5/2/10:

Dear Everyone,

Once again, we reach the end of the transfer. Unfortuantely this is going to be one of the shorter emails, because right now we are actually in Odawara. Many places are closed but this one is open (woooo!) but we only have a little bit of time left.

There is a huge festival in Odawara today, and so we went with Elder Petersen and Crapo to see it (so we took P-day on Monday, and we'll just have a normal day on Tuesday). We'll be sure to take lots of pictures! :)

(Beautiful blooms in Japan during Sakura season.)

Anyways, we're having a great week. I very well might be transfered to somewhere else though. Generally people stay in an area for 2-3 transfers, but I've been here for 4 now so it's kind of 'girigiri' as we call it. It will be sad to leave behind all of the wonderful people we've been working with. I wont let them get out of contact, (I plan on continuing to write/skype our investigators even when I get back home). They have become truly great friends.

Anyways, the future is uncertain, but I know that wherever I may end up, in whatever situation, I can rely on the Christ to help me through it. And that I have helped a lot of people here durring my time in Shonan. I hope that they will continue on in the path that they have started to walk.

(Materials from a recent mission conference.)

(Click on image to enlarge)

Alright, we have to finish up soon, but in case I have to go quickly,

I love you all. I hope everyone is doing well and working hard. Here's a quote that I heard recently, maybe it will help some of you,

"Given the difficulty of the circumstances, failure is much more understandable. But success is so much more remarkable".

That's been hitting me really hard recently. Even in an extremely difficult situation, we shouldnt justify 'well, it's just so hard, no wonder Im not succeeding'. But people who think that contunue on not succeeding, and they get better and better at justifying, but never really improve. Those who apply new ideas to try and accomplish a level of success that has never been done under such hard circumstances, eventually do succeed. And how much better would it be if people didnt say 'ah, it's ok he failed, it was almost impossible anyways', but instead said 'wow, he's so good that he made it even though it was impossible'.

(Watching the sunset, from the window of the Shonan apartment.)

Im trying to not let up one bit this last section of my mission. I've also become good friends with Elder King and met a lot of good people this transfer.

So, I'm very happy about having been here.

Thanks everyone for the great support. I just got 3 letters at the same time in the mail from the seminary students.

I love seeing the pictures and hearing all the great updates. See you soon!

Love,

Elder Mumford

TOKYO, JAPAN.