Elder Martin D Mumford: The Chronicles of Koiwa

Japan is somewhat famous for their highly sophisticated toilets. Here are some interesting pictures of some of the bathrooms, taken by a fellow Tokyo missionary, Elder Wyman:

This is above the toilet in one of the nicer Tokyo meetinghouses. The buttons say (from left to right) "Stop"; "Rear end"; "softly"; "???"; and "Dry".

Squater style toilet, common in public restrooms, in the park or city.

Which one is the boy's and which one is the girls?

Yup, you can wash your hands immediately after using the bathroom. (Dont worry, the water goes FIRST through the hand wash, and THEN into the bowl :) It's actually quite an efficient use of water!

Now for Elder Mumford's E-mail dated 6-30-10:

Dear Everyone,

This week the rain has been a bit off and on, and the humitidy has been through the roof. Today we had a great P-day. While we were out on the streets the other day, we were looking for an address, and we stumbled across a little park with a lake. Then the lake turned into a river, with really cool looking Japanese-style gardens to either side. So we decided that on P-day we would come back and explore the park. So we woke up bright and early, and booked it over to the river. It turned out that the river was actually really long, and the park extended for quite some time, but we went the entire way by foot and took tons of pictures.

So this was a very fun P-day so far. :)

Also a few things happened durring the week that you should know about;

1. Many of our investigators decided to stop meeting with us. Unfortunate, but they didnt have much more interest, and so we had to say goodbye. Right now we are only really working with 2 people left:

1. Yoshida, who is going to read and pray, and wants to build his faith in Jesus Christ.

2. Shinobu, who is less active, and cuts our hair. We're going to get Elder Merrell's haircut on Friday, so we should talk more then.

And that's it. We could really use your help and your prayers for these people. They are in percarious circumstances, they both want to come closer to Christ but don't really know how to find that answer for themselves. That is both of their challenges, to know for themselves. If you have any advice we could share (especially with Shinobu) about how to know thast this church is true for yourself, I would love to hear it next week. He has read the entire Book of Mormon, and is working on the Bible, but still has not found a difinitive 'answer' that has proved to him that the church is true. We told him that the answer is not going to be found on a single, hidden page in the scriptures somewhere, but the answer will come depending on sincere prayer, study, and the timetable of God. Alright, that is the situation right now.

Thanks for all of your wonderful support on my mission so far. I have loved hearing from all of you. Im sorry I coudn't really give much of a reply, but Im sure that Ill be able to thank each of you personally when I return.

Ok, some interesting stories;

A. We were planning for our week together in the apartment, when suddenly the doorbell rings, and to our great suprise, there is a huge package containing... and Ice Cream Cake! We both opened it up, and it said 'Happy Birthday Elders!'. So Elder Merrell's parents had sent this cake, we were way happy. But we had a bit of a problem, in that our fridge is only so big, and it's already pretty cluttered. So what we ended up having to do was cut the cake into several squares, and individually wrap them in seranwrap, then freeze them. We have been trying to eat as many as we can each day, but it's actually very filling.

(Thank goodness the Merrells sent an ice cream birthday cake! This is what happened the last time the Elders tried baking a birthday cake.)

So we gave another slice to Yoshida, our investigator, and we're going to have to give several more to the Sister Missionaries, because Im not sure we can eat all of it ourselves. Very fun though! And it is so extremely good, after all this time of no sweet it actually overwhelmed me at first. Im not used to that much sugar at once :) Probably some foreshadowing for when I get home

Don't be too discouraged if Im not able to eat super sweet things, or even a lot of anything. I think my ability to eat a lot has gone down a bunch. But no worries, Ill try my best to regain all that :)

(This really was a SAD "Happy Birthday" cake)

B. We were returning home one night, and on the way the last person that we talked to was a nice Japanese man, maybe in his 50's. As the conversation progressed, we were building more and more of our hopes, because the longer he talked, the more he seemed to know about the church. He knew about every book and teaching, and he knew the history of the church in the city where we live, how it used to be a Branch. We were wondering 'who is this guy!? Was he studying a long time ago?' But then he told us that he was a member, and had joined the church 30 years ago. And from that point on it went downhill... He didnt want to ever come back again, but he was so extremely appreciative of us talking to him, but he said that we should probably spend our efforts and time on someone else. It was unfortunate, but he was really set on not coming back to church. He loves the Book of Mormon and everything about us and the church, but just doesnt want to continue I guess.

(Elders with the Higuchi Family)

But the real miracle is that on the way back, walking with him back to our apartment, there was this guy from Nepal who was handing out flyers for his curry restraunt. We were about to pass him, but then this member decided to take one of the flyers. And so we also took one, and started talking to him. It turns out that he has been in Japan for a while, and his name is Mohan. We gave him one of our flyers as well. That was all good and well, but then the NEXT day we saw another miracle.

He Called us at night, and told us that he had read our flyer. He said, maybe we can help each other out, because he had some friends who might be interested in our message, and we could help him by coming to his curry restraunt sometime. :) Well, we do like curry, so maybe we'll go sometime and check up on his friends :)

(Curry- Made by the Elders)

Anyways, Im going to send this letter off, and if there is anything that needs adding, Ill do so.

For now, thank you everyone. I love to hear from you. I love Japan, and I love the experiences Im having here. Ill try to share more and more of them with you each week. I hope that everyone has a good week and has fun! Thanks!