January 16, 2012

Popoki's
Sakanaka call to meet
Mori kyoudai new job
Eikaiwa with Oyama kyoudai
Sakanaka kyoudai plan of salvation
Mori kyoudai can't come to church
Single adult activity
Spanish branch
Church
Sakanaka kyoudai questions about book of mormon
Tsuchida and Morgan visit
Mori kyoudai drop
Takei shimai visit
Temple
Shopping
Package
Taikai
District leader splits
Outreach in yachiyo
Mizuguchi dInner
Bicycle
Scriptures/spiritual thought

Jan. 9, 2012

Dear Family,
I hope that all is well out there! How's your new year going so far?
It's been normal here... which means crazy! We've had so many things happen. I'll just start at the beginning...

Oh and I have a small package that I'm going to try to send out either today or sometime within the next few days. I'm guessing it'll take about a week to get to Hawai'i.

Anyway, Tuesday was another good day. We had our weekly planning session (which is normally on Thursday) because we were too busy the rest of the week. After that, at about 3:15pm, we left the apartment for Kaihin-Makuhari, my favorite place from last week. We got there around 4:00 pm because there was a whole lot of traffic... cars and people. It was the third of the month (last day of Shougatsu) and there's a jinja (shrine) along the road that we decided to take. So there was a lot of people coming and going to that. We kubari'd for a little over an hour, then tried to visit a few less-active members but none of them were home. We had a dinner appointment with the Yagame kazoku (family) at 6:30 so we headed out to their apartment, which wasn't too far from where we were. Dinner was around 7:00pm and was great... tempura, sashimi, gohan (rice) of course, some kind of miso-ish soup, snow crab, some yogurty tofu thing with shrimp, sobacha (barley tea), and ice cream. We shared a short message with them after dinner and left at 8:55pm. We're normally supposed to be back in the apartment at 9:00pm, but if we have an appointment or lesson we can be home at 9:30pm. That still wasn't too much time for us to get home by bike though, so we took the highway home. There's only a small shoulder on the highway so you have to go pretty fast to keep up with the traffic, or try to, but we got home quickly.

Wednesday we had a lesson scheduled with Kudo-San, who we found while streeting. He didn't show up, so I did a mogi (demonstration/practice) with the member who was there to joint with us. In order to earn an award the President has, I need to, along with a bunch of other dendo-related things, mogi every lesson and concept. We haven't been able to contact Kudo-San since, but we hope a seed has been planted and will sprout someday. After that, we called Sato-San (found housing) to see if it was okay for us to go see him. He said that he wasn't home but that we could come up that Saturday afternoon, so we set that as a plan.

Later that night before eikaiwa (English class), we had a lesson with Mori kyoudai (kyoudai=brother, so Brother Mori.) We had Whipple kyoudai (the other eikaiwa teacher along with the missionaries) joint with us. Whipple kyoudai actually may have called you guys recently. He was going to Hawai'i last week so he asked for your numbers.

Mori kyoudai was found through kubari'ing by Elder Casey about two months ago. A lot of people assume that he's a little crazy just by looking at him. Casey chourou thought so as well. But he came to eikaiwa and now we know that he's an amazing person. He told us a lot more about his situation during our lesson with him... He's 55 and about 11 years ago he had some sort of accident, we don't know what yet, and he had surgery on his brain. He was in a coma for 8 days and when he woke up, he had no hearing in one ear and his balance was off. Both of the reasons why many people assume that he's crazy at first sight. He walks a little funny because of his balance and when he talks he gets really close and speaks a little louder than needed because of his hearing. With Casey chourou and I, and at eikaiwa, he likes to speak English of course, which is really broken, and makes him seem not all there. But speak to him in Japanese and he's really smart. After his accident, it ended up that his wife divorced him and his family (his brothers) essentially disowned him. They essentially told him that they can't take care of him and be his family anymore. He told us that while he was in a coma, what he calls “dead,” there was a battle between God and Satan. He said that Satan was telling him that he wasn't good for anything anymore and that he should just die. God was saying, "NO! You have to live, there is more for you to do." And this went on for a while. When his wife and family told him they were leaving, he just told them, "Okay, I understand. But I'm going to live everyday and be happy and try to do what's right." He's a super spiritually sensitive person and has thought a lot about what is right. Small things each day are what make him happy... seeing someone pick up a piece of trash from the ground or standing up on the train for another person. And he notices a difference with the smiles of members of our church. He's just a great person. We had a Book of Mormon that Elder Casey and I had written notes in for him, so we gave him that and he said that he'll read a little everyday. He's an inspiration to us.

Thursday we had a Zone dendo blitz here in Inage. So we had 20 missionaries and 3 members all in our area. We did 3 45 min. splits/exchanges... so from the church, after a little training, we were assigned companions and told to meet at the eki (train station) in 45 min. We dendo'd for 45 min. and met at the eki where we were given a different companion for 45 min. and one more companion for 45min. after that. It was really fun and great being able to learn from each missionaries’ dendo style.

Friday we had my first taikai (zone conference.) It was with Matsudo, Saitama, Kiryu, and Chiba zones in the Matsudo chapel, which is nicknamed Matsudo shinden (temple) because it's HUGE. It's 5 floors tall with it's cultural hall/basketball court (not many of those in chapels here) on the fifth floor. There's only one normal size ward that meets in it... so as to why it's so huge, some amazing things are going to happen in Matsudo with the missionary work. The conference was great. There was a bunch of training as well as the returning missionaries (those leaving at the end of this transfer and the next) testimonies. Their testimonies were amazing. They are amazing missonaries.

On Saturday we had a lesson scheduled with Tsubaki-San, a man who was found during the dendo blitz. He ended up not showing up, and we didn't have any contact info, so that was a big bummer. We had a little open time because of that so we visited Takei shimai (sister,) a less-active member with a pretty cool finding story. She's about 50, and was baptized when she was in high school. After high school she got really busy with work and moved to another city (here.) She went less active and didn't even know that there was a church near her until Elder Casey and his previous companion housed in her area recently. She was amazed that they had found her. She's really shy, but she loves the missionaries, and has been to church twice now. It's really exciting and definitely a miracle!

After visiting with her at her door, we left for Sato-San's apartment. Just as we got on our bikes, he called us and said that he doesn't want us to visit with him anymore. He said that he can't have anything to do with the Mormon Church and that he can't meet with us anymore. We asked if there was anything that we could do, and he just said no. We just told him to follow Christ, and left it at that. That was hard... he's been studying with the Jehovah Witness as well, and they most likely told him that he can't meet with any other religions at all. It was a sad time for us, but we still had a lot of other work to do. So we went out and streeted a little before kubari'ing. Our first day without any dendo time turned into almost all dendo time! After our hands were too cold to kubari, we headed to the church. We had an 'Outreach' activity scheduled with the zone. Elder Casey and I had no idea what to expect because this was our first Outreach night/activity. It was just a game, spiritual message, and refreshments (that we provided since it was in our area.) It's meant for members and investigators to have a good time and fellowship, kind of like a family home evening type thing. We had a few investigators and less-active members come and it was a lot of fun!

Sunday was really great.

Mori Kyoudai
Sakanaka Kyoudai
Shinnenkai
Mochi tsuki

Doctrine & Covenants 10:5
5 "Pray always, that you may come off conqueror; yea, that you may conquer Satan, and that you may escape the hands of the servants of Satan that do uphold his work."

John 5:29
29 "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Mosiah 18:23
23 "And he commanded them that they should observe the sabbath day, and keep it holy, and also every day they should give thanks to the Lord their God."
I'll end with a few thoughts from one of my favorite sections of the Doctrine & Covenants... section 121. Elder Quentin L. Cook spoke about this in the 2008 General Conference. Joseph Smith was in the Liberty Jail pleading with God, saying,
1 “O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?”
The Lord's answer:
7 "My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflicttions shall be but a small moment;""

We all have hard times... but rest assured. Behold "the Lord God Almighty, maker of heaven, earth, and seas, and of all things in them... and who controllest and subjectest the devil... Stretch forth thine hand; let thine eye pierce; let thy pavilion be taken up; let thy hiding place no longer be covered; let thine ear be inclined; let thine heart be softened, and thy bowels moved with compassion." Because, "peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment."

This is truth. This is love. I love all of you so much. Take care.

-Elder Rindlisbacher

Jan. 2, 2012

Dear Family,
It's been a great week! Elder Casey and I have been privileged to witness many miracles! I'm so grateful that as missionaries we have so many opportunities each day to witness these marvels!

I hope you all had a great New Year's Eve !! Happy New Year!!

I guess I'll start with the beginning of this week... Tuesday. Tuesday we visited Sato-San. An older man we found while housing on Saturday. We think he's actually being taught by a Jehovah's Witness group as well. We found him on Saturday (Christmas Eve) and talked to him a little about the Plan of Salvation. We gave him the Plan of Salvation pamphlet and asked if we could come by again. He said that we were welcome back and that he was free every day. So we stopped by on Tuesday... He said that he hadn't read the pamphlet and that he didn't really want to. It didn't seem like there was too much more we could do right then, but we asked him if we could just talk about the Plan of Salvation with him instead. He agreed, so we basically taught him the entire lesson there in his genkan (doorway.) We taught him our method of prayer and prayed with him. We hope that he felt something different and wants to learn more. We're planning to visit him again tonight (Monday.)

On Wednesday, we met a man (probably about 26 yrs. old) named Kudo-San, while streeting. At first he said that he wasn't religious and didn't have any interest and he was about to walk away as we continued to share our message. Something he felt or heard, seemingly in an instant, changed his mind and he said that he could meet with us again. We were able to set an appointment for this Wednesday. This was a miracle. It is such a blessing to be able to have, “in the very hour, that portion that shall be meted unto every man.” This work is great. Wednesday we also had eikaiwa. We didn't have too many students because it was Shogatsu (New Year's) which is really, really big here. We didn't have an advanced class, just the beginning and intermediate. Shogatsu is actually from about the 28th of December to the 3rd of January. A lot of the stores/shops close down and a lot of people go back to their hometowns. Normally this is a really slow week dendo (proselyting)-wise because of that.

On Thursday we went to my new favorite city in our area, at least so far. It's called Kaihin-Makuhari and is about a 30 min. bike ride from our apartment. About 10min. of the ride over is next to the beach and on clear days you can see the Tokyo skyline across the bay. The people there also seem a lot more friendly and warm versus the areas closer to our apartment. We started with a little streeting and then kubarikai'd (handed out English class flyers) outside one of the eki (train stations.) We were able to get over twice as many flyers out as usual in the same amount of time. Most of the kubari'ing we do is at the station close to our apartment. The Japanese people are super rushed and shy, especially here in Inage, so many of them aren't willing to put a hand out to take a flyer from us. They mostly all either just keep walking, bow a little and walk a little faster, walk around us, or put a "kekko" hand up and not look at us. Though every few people will take a flyer, and sometimes we're able to get a good conversation going with someone. Other than that, we didn't have too much other dendo time on Thursday because Thursdays are our designated weekly planning day. So we tried to find a few less-active members at home then headed back to the apartment for planning.

Friday was a pretty normal day of finding as well. In the evening, from about 5:30pm to 7:00pm, we started at the top floor of an apartment building (this one was 12 floors) and worked our way down, housing. We knocked/kekko boxed 92 doors and only actually met with two people face to face. And only long enough to introduce ourselves. But, discouragement is not an option! And we know that through diligence we will continue to see and be a part of miracles. We're super motivated and eager to work!!

Saturday (New Year's Eve) we had a district meeting in the morning and dendo'ed the rest of the day until about 7:00 pm. We met up with the Chiba Elders, our neighbor area (kind of like Pukalani and Makawao wards), and the Chiba/Inage Sisters, who are responsible for both areas. We were planning on going out to eat Okonomiyaki... but when we ended up getting there it was too late for Tabehodai. So we went to a place called Gusto's... American(-ish) food. American food, but made in Japan... Kind of like Japanese food that's made in America. We had a fun time.

This Sunday (yesterday,) the first of the year, we received a self-referral. His name is Sakanaka-San and he's 57 years old. Other than this one, my companion has only heard of two self-referrals the entire time he's been out (20 months.) He called the church in the morning and asked if he could attend. When we met him that day at church, he was already wearing a white shirt, tie, and suit. From our observations during sacrament meeting, he was like a sponge, soaking in as much as he could. We taught him about the gospel of Jesus Christ during the second hour, with Brother Kinoshita, a great member in our ward. We learned that he had met missionaries at a train station about 40 years ago when he was in high school, and that they were only able to talk briefly, but that he was introduced to the Word of Wisdom. He said that he has been trying to keep this commandment! He asked if hot cocoa was okay and we of course told him that that was fine. He was very relieved because he had felt bad as he had had some that morning! He also says that he has heard a little of baptism before. After our lesson, he stayed with us for Priesthood meeting. Following that meeting, he thanked and introduced himself to all those in the Elders Quorum. After our church meetings were over, many members asked Elder Casey and I who he was, and were shocked to find out that he was an investigator. They said that they thought he could have been a member of the Stake Presidency! It was amazing to see that excitement in our members. This is truly a miracle, a gift from God! In our work as missionaries, we are so privileged to be a part of things like this!

On a side note, just as we began our lesson with Sakanaka-San, we felt the earthquake, which you probably heard of by now. It was a 7.0 magnitude on the Izu Islands, about 395 kilometers off the coast of Honshu (the main island of Japan.) It was pretty strong here in Inage. We felt it begin really small and grow until the walls of the church were shaking pretty badly. It wasn't enough for things on wheels to roll around. But it could have been enough to make it hard for some people to stand or walk. Brother Kinoshita, our member joint, peeked out the door to make sure everyone was okay, and we continued with our lesson. Everyone was/is fine.

Also, our Sunday church time changed from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm, so now we're responsible for a Spanish Branch as well. They meet at 11:00 am and have about 15 active members. They combined with our normal Inage Ward at 1:00 pm this Sunday because it was the first of the year. So, maybe I'll learn a little Spanish as well! ...probably just a little though! :)

This upcoming week, there will be a lot of great things happening. There's a zone blitz planned for our area. It's planned that we'll have over 16 missionaries, along with a group of members, all dendo-ing in our area (Inage) at the same time. This will be amazing. I haven't been here very long, so I've never witnessed anything like this before, and I know that so many miracles will be brought forth! It's really exciting! I'm also excited to begin teaching a man named Mori Mamoru, who's been attending our English classes each week. He's attended sacrament meeting twice and really enjoys it. We have a lesson with him scheduled for this Wednesday before eikaiwa. We'll also be going to my first zone conference this Friday. It'll be in Matsudo with the Chiba (us), Matsudo, Saitama, and Kiryu zones.

A goal that Elder Casey and I have set is to visit the homes of every active member in our ward. There are 42 families/homes and we are excited to meet and share a brief spiritual message with each of them. We want them all to know that we love and care for them. We'll continue to work with less-active members in our ward as well... So far we've been able to bring one less-active member to church.

Well, the work here in Inage is going great, and this week has definitely been really great. I'll end with two great scriptures. The first is Mosiah 24:14... The other is one that one of the elders I live with, Elder Eguchi, shared last night at dinner with the Eto Family: 2 Nephi 22:2-3.

Mosiah 24:14
"14 And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders,
that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in
bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me
hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit
my people in their afflictions."

2 Nephi 22:2-3
"2 Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid; for the Lord
Jehovah is my strength and my song; he also has become my salvation.
3 Therefore, with joy shall ye (I) draw water out of the wells of salvation."

I love all of you!! I hope you're all doing great! Take care. :)

-Elder Rindlisbacher
P.S. I got the package from the ward today. Be sure to thank everyone! I'm so grateful for such a supportive and loving ward. Be sure to always continue to love everyone and fellowship new members and investigators as much as possible! You are all so amazing. I love you!

Here is Elder Rindlisbacher's address for the rest of his mission. This is the Mission Home where all mail is received then forwarded to missionaries:

Elder Kaumana K.M. Rindlisbacher
Japan Tokyo Mission
4-25-12 Nishi-ochiai
Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo
161-0031
Japan

Konnichiwa,

Merry Christmas!! I hope it was great. It was definitely great being able to talk to you.

This week... so much has happened! I'm in Japan now, doing the work! For records sake, I'll repeat some of what I told you over the phone. I'm in an area called Inage. It's in Chiba, the big city behind Tokyo. It takes about an hour to bike across the area, so it isn't too big. My companion is Elder Helam Casey from La'ie, Oahu. He went to Kahuku High School and knows the Damuni family. He also worked with Hulali Delima at the PCC. Now that Elder Coakley and I are in Tokyo there are four Elders from the islands. My companion was the only one for a while, up until the earthquake. He's been out 20 months now... and doesn't want to go home. He's a great missionary, very hardworking, supportive and loving. A lot of people have commented on how interesting it is that the president put both of us together, both from Hawai'i. The Japanese people really like hearing that we're from Hawai'i though.

My companion and I live in an apartment with two other Elders; Elder Eguchi from Fukuoka, Japan, and Elder Young from Hamilton, New Zealand. This is just Elder Youngs second transfer so I know him from the MTC. We all get along great, I really enjoy it here.

So my companion was here in the mission during the earthquake. He was in an area called Yokohama at the time. He was with his companion riding to an appointment when all of the cars stopped. He and his companion didn't know what was going on because they couldn't feel anything while they were riding their bikes. But they stopped, and heard a bunch of weird noises... Elder Casey felt something touching his shoulder and looked over to see a shop about three stories tall leaning over and touching him. But he was about a yard and a half away from it. Buildings were swaying back and forth like crazy. They just got back on their bikes and rode to an open area. He ended up being transferred down to Fukuoka for about 8 weeks. He has a lot of miracle stories from that time of his mission. One being how President Albrecht and his wife were able to feed all of the missionaries in the mission (about 160 missionaries). Sister Albrecht was preparing for a zone conference, so she had oranges and muffins from Costco. But only enough for a zone conference, not the entire mission. Elder Casey said they did the math and figured out how much each missionary could take (about 3/4 of an orange and 1/2 of a muffin). Everybody was really hungry because they hadn't been able to eat for a while. Elder Casey said that each missionary went through the line and received their portions... but somehow there was still a lot of food left. The missionaries were able to get seconds... but there was still a lot of food left. This happened over and over and there was still a lot of food left after everybody was full. Enough for breakfast the next day. He said that he, as well as everyone else, had no idea how that could be possible. Everyone had taken their share. It was a real miracle.

Well backtracking... leaving the MTC, we needed to be at the travel office by 5:00am where we were given all of our travel information, tickets, and passports. We were put on a bus and headed out to Salt Lake City. Our first flight to Portland went well and we had about an hour and a half layover. Then our 11 hour flight to Narita Airport. We all slept and studied during the flight over. We didn't watch any movies or anything, but they did play five of them during the flight... it was pretty long. They only fed us one meal and another sandwich the entire time, but it was alright. President Albrecht and the three newly called Assistants met us after customs. We exchanged any cash we had and packed all of our luggage into two vans. There was 13 of us, so everyone rode back to the mission home in the vans except for Elder Ige and myself. President asked who wanted to ride the trains and dendo (proselyte) the way back and we immediately volunteered. We just wanted to hit the ground running. It was about 4:00am for us Utah time, so we were a little tired, but two of the Assistants, Elder Fowers and Elder Brown, both from Utah, rode with us back to the mission home on the trains. Trying to speak with people on the trains with our broken Japanese was interesting. But we were able to find one Chinese man very interested in learning more about our message.

Our first night in the mission home was pretty much just having dinner and going to sleep. We got there around 8:30pm. The next day was filled with interviews and training. By about 3:30pm we had our companions and were beginning to head out to our areas. That night Elder Casey and I had eikaiwa (English class) at the church. One of the teachers, a member in our ward, couldn't make it, so I ended up teaching the advanced class and Elder Casey the beginner class. The other two Elders in our apartment teach the intermediate class. Teaching the advanced class was pretty easy because all of the students had pretty good English. We teach English class every Wednesday from 7:00-8:30pm.

Lately we've been doing a lot of finding because we don't have many progressing investigators. Our days are full of talking with people and handing out eigo chidashis (English flier’s) while we have light, once it starts getting dark (about 4:15pm) we visit less active members or former investigators and knock on doors. We don't really knock on too many doors though. Every house/apartment here has a "kekko box" as the missionaries here call them. 'Kekko' means okay, as in not great or bad, just okay. So next to each door there's a little speaker box with a button on it. We press the button, wait for a response, explain that we're missionaries, and listen to them say 'kekko,' meaning they're okay and don't want to hear anything from us. So we get most of our rejections without ever meeting anyone face to face. Every once in a while someone will answer the door then reject us. And every once in a great while, someone will answer the door and let us talk to them for a little. So far we've found one man who wants us to come back to see him. It's going really good though. We talk to a lot of people and are confident that we will see success. Seeing God's children come unto Christ or at least begin towards that path, is great.

Our Christmas was great. On Christmas Eve at about 9:00pm, a bunch of members from our ward surprised us with a bunch of boxes of gifts. We had two little inflatable Christmas trees about 18 inches tall, so we set the gifts on the floor and put the tree on top. It was awesome. Church was only sacrament, from 10:00-11:00am. After church we contacted a referral who lives near the church. After I talked with you on the phone (2:30pm Japan time), we had about 30 minutes to dendo before a dinner appointment. We headed out of the apartment and stopped a university student riding a bike. He had somewhere to be, but we told him about church and English class. We called out to the next man that we saw down the street and got him to stop for us. His name was Komishi. We spoke of and asked questions about Christ, His Atonement, baptism, and prayer, for just about 30 minutes. We actually prayed with him right there on the street. The Spirit's presence was undeniable, and we continued with asking him about how he was feeling and encouraging him to learn more about it. But he didn't want to meet with us again or give us contact information. We gave him our information and we really hope that he ponders about our experience and realizes that he needs a relationship with Christ. We know that he's never been asked the questions that we asked him. And we know that the gospel could bless his life so immensely!

Today, Monday, we just did a little shopping and will go to get my foreign (gaijin) card a little later before dendo'ing for about three hours.

I hope you are all doing great. Enjoy life everyday! All is well here. I love you!! I won't be emailing again until the 2nd of the new year so Happy New Year! Make it a great one!

Love,
Elder Rindlisbacher

Saturday Dec. 17, 2011

Hello!
Well it's been a day full of packing and getting ready to leave on Monday! I hope you're all doing amazing!
Our last TRC (Teaching Resource Center) lesson was this past Saturday.

For our Sunday fireside we had the opportunity to hear from the BYU Men's Chorus.

It's been finals week at BYU.

Tuesday devotional
Elaine S. Dalton
Patriarchal Blessings
Endowment
Testimony
District Meeting

New Missionary Hosting
Elder going to Fort Worth, Texas
Elder going to New York, New York

Brother Mills
Haircut
Last Classes

In-Field Orientation
Our Purpose
Finding
Goals & Planning
Exercising Our Faith
Working With Members

Travel Calls Home
Travel Misc.

Conversion Timeline

Doctrine & Covenants 46:13-14
2 Nephi 2:28
Moroni 7:33
Mosiah 2:23-24

Love!
Elder Rindlisbacher