8/23 Hello :)

Hey! Sorry last week's email was super long! So I won't write as much
this week. But lots of good things are happening! We now have 8
investigators with baptism dates! I felt like the spirit guided almost
everything we did, and things just worked out better than I could have
imagined. We're trying to have enough faith to see 6 people baptized
this transfer together, and at he begging of the week, it looked
impossible, but we kept the faith, and kept praying, and found
prepared people. We will have a baptismal service every Sunday of this
transfer if everything goes as planned :D Pretty insane for Japan
haha.

Helloooo!

This was beautiful. Beautiful in everyway. I loved it :D

I think I might just break it down day by day so I don't lose track.

Monday: p-day's are usually the most stressful. Because there's so much to get done in such little time! But this P-day was just beautiful. We had a plan to teach HIrai, and Sawada our two grandpa's together since they because friends. But Sawada forgot the time of the appointment and came at 6 instead of 4. So we taught them separate. Hirai needed some coaching though so it was a blessing. When he came to the church I noticed a coffee can in his car, and took and pocketed it. We taught the lesson, and at the end I took out the coffee and asked him what it was. It was pretty hilarious. Hirai, is really slow...he apparently didn't realize de-caffè was still coffee. We took a video of him dumping it in the gutter haha then we went to a convienient store and quizzed him on what drinks were ok, and which ones weren't.

Look for the missed fist bump, it's so bad. I love Hirai, he acts like a black person, it's awesome :D we decided to move his Baptismal date to the 30th so we could review everything again for some better understanding. We also, fixed my bike, called lots of people, played bubbles and sword fought with 2 year old, practiced sining, and got tortillas, salsa and Costco muffins from Erik!

This little girl is so dang cute, we're sword fighting with my bubble wand bamboo sticks.

Tuesday: We pretty much did Less active work all day, we got to visit with 5 less active members! One of them nishizawa. Is now reading the BOM in English and Japanese, and praying daily again. It's so cool to be able to see people progress closer to God. Then at night we taught in Vietnamese! Really we just pretty much used google translate to communicate haha. It's way fun though. Vietnamese guys are super nice. 

Kinda blurry picture, but this is Thaath (pronounced tie) and Bac. They're cool. We taught them on Tuesday and Saturday. 

Wednesday: We went to lunch with some cool members the 市川家族. We arrived a little early and ran into a guy we had met yesterday on the train! Tui! He's Vietnamese, and super suteki (good looking) we had actually gotten an appointment with him on the 23rd for him to come to church, but we decided he probably wouldn't come since he doesn't speak Japanese very well. So we didn't count him as a new investigator. But then since we happened to run into him again the next day, we figured it was probably God trying to tell us we should help/teach him, and count him as an investigator.

We also taught Mori-mura, and Hirai and Sawada again. We teach them Mon, Wed, Friday now.

We just did a review of prayer so Hirai will stop reading his notes while he prays haha. The board says, prayer, thanks, questions, and things to ask for, then we listed different things from the scriptures and from their ideas. It was fun. 

Thursday: All our appointments actually fell through on Thursday, haha but it ended up being a beautiful day! We did weekly planning, then decided to call Bruno to see if he wanted to go to Homie Danchi with us. Homie Danchi is a place famous in the mission. It's just a mini Brazil in Japan. A couple thousand Brazilians all in one spot :D We had never dendoed there before, since there was a brazilian missionary here. But he transferred out, so now Brazilians are all game! It started to rain, and Bruno asked if his Brother Erik could come so he could drive. We went there and split up, me with Erik, and Hadteiter with Bruno. We visited 5 less actives, only two were actually home though. I had a prompting to knock on the door next to one of the less actives I visited. And...we found a Soccoro! She was super nice, she's catholic and goes to church every week, has a family of 4 and was planning on moving this Saturday! She said we can teach her, but she wants her whole family to be there for it, so we set up an appointment in two weeks, we also told her we'd stop by to help her move Saturday morning. 

Then on the way back we met a nice girl named Thais in the elevator. It was kinda awkward, she didn't have a ton of clothes on... so I was just looking at the wall, but she started talking to us, and asked if she could come to church. Erik switched FBs with her, she's should be coming this next Sunday. We'll just have to bring an extra button up shirt for her so I can actually look at her haha.

After homie we still had time, so we went on a road trip! There's a road that goes way up north with a bunch of less actives on it, ending with the Bishop. It takes a full day to bike up and back since it's so far, which was actually our original plan for the day since we had no plans. So we made it all the way up to bishop! Such a beautiful day :D I love it when plans cancel haha

Friday: Another beautifully guided day. Our only appointment that day was teaching Hirai and Sawada again with Aatsumi shimai as a member present lesson. We called her and asked if we could visit Mori-mura, another investigator, at his shop before Hirai's lesson. On the way there a crazy Japanese guy in a pink shirt with a British accent stopped me and started telling me how I need to go home and kick Oboma out of the presidents seat haha. He was way weird. But it turns out he had studied Mormonism before, and he wants to study again, and he brought us in to a shop we were standing outside of and told us to teach on of the workers there haha. It was way random. We're meeting them again this week. It was way funny because Atsumi shimai and Misuzu shimai went to temple square on their missions and were telling us about how weird Americans are and how everyone is normal in Japan....Then we had this guy stop us and prove our point that Japanese are stranger. Haha

Saturday: we helped Soccoro move! She introduced us to a bunch of her friends, and we're going to teach them all together next week haha Portuguese! Then we had a BBQ with two of our other Brazilian investigators, Fabricio, and Leonora. It was a party :D Now that they're friends it'll be easier for them to want to come to church.

Sunday: Sunday we had Shokujikai! A meal meeting! At night we visited Leonora again, Eriks mom. We showed her the "reclaimed" Mormon message and talked about forgiveness and how it makes us happier. Her ex-husband cheated on her, and she still has a hard time forgiving him, we  had a way good talk. She's going to come to church when we sing. It was actually way fun. A lot of their family came over a different times while we were there. We are teaching a lot of their family. Angel, their cousin, Nilda their aunt, Leonora, the mom, Kaho, the daughters best friend. This family is so Golden.

Then when we were leaving my lock got caught in my wheel, so I had to stop and fix it, then a couple of women stopped and gave me a light so I could see what I was doing. They were Peruvians but they've been here forever so they speak Japanese pretty well. 3 daughters and a mom. When they found out I was a missionary they were way happy. We're going to teach their family this Tuesday. 

Pretty much everyday we didn't follow our written plan...but we were able to follow God's plan somehow, and it has made everything amazing. He helps us if we will allow him. Just have to get out of the way and let him work :D

8/9 Week of tears and trials :')

Hello errybody :)

This week, not gonna lie, was incredibly stressful. But it's all good,
cause God's in control :D
Lots of lessons fell through, some scary stuff happened, I got really
angry at a ward member, and then transfer calls. But all in all a good
week. I'm staying in Toyota! Woo hoo! I've got another 6 weeks to try
and work some miracles here.

Some interesting points of the week:
We've been teaching a Catholic lady named Justine who lives across the
street from the church. She is crazy. Her lessons are always insane,
and super long, she has SO Many questions. It's really hard to teach
her, because she'll ask a question, and then we'll start answering but
half way through she'll ask another question, or she'll just cut us
off and talk about the saints haha. It's been a nice trial of my
patience, I did pretty good the first few lessons. In the past three
weeks we taught her, first a 1 hr lesson, then a 3 hr lesson, then a 4
hr lesson, and then to say goodbye another 2 hr lesson. The last one
we didn't have time to get to a lot of her questions before we had to
leave so we went to our friend Erik's house, and wrote down all her
questions and found answers to them from the bible. Erik is injured
right now and so he just spends his days studying the scriptures. The
next day he spent 10 hours writing a paper with all the answers to her
questions so we could give it to her before she left. By the end she
has committed to read the BOM and find out if our message really is
true. She feels like she was meant to come to Japan to meet us and
learn, i feel like she will be baptized in America sometime, it was
just a heck of an experience getting her to this point. We usually
never like to teach someone more than 45min to an hour, but she was
leaving soon and it's super hard to get out. The last lesson I snapped
a little when she started talking about how faith is built off
miracles, and feelings/the spirit is unable to be trusted.
^that was obnoxious, and pretty stressful.

Actually now that I look back on the week it was really cool. Everyday
there was something that for me was really hard. Really pushed my
buttons. And about half the time I had control and passed the test,
and half the time I snapped and got angry/just didn't handle it as
Christ would have. But this week also had lots of amazing things
happen. Every time something bad happened, something good came of it
by the end. I just need to trust God more and not worry as much.

Some cool things that happened.
Sawada forgot the time and day of his appointment, and came to church
during Hirai's lesson. So we taught them together, and they became
good friends! Now they want to be baptized on the same date and we
teach them together form now on. It's amazing because Hirai has
problems understanding, he barely understands anything...but he never
asks questions when he doesn't understand. Sawada is opposite. He is a
pretty slow learner as well, but he always tells us when he doesn't
understand and repeats things back to us when he does understand. So
he is helping Hirai to progress much better. That was a pretty cool
miracle.

8/3

Hey Familia! This week's been awesome! But I don't have any time to
email..sorry! We had a district activity today, we went to Okazaki and
had a giant nerd war! So fun :D Dendo has been the best recently.
We're setting some crazy records. I think we have the best stats in
our mission...our zone has the best stats in the mission, and we have
the best stats in the zone, so that's fun. God doing a lot of cool
stuff in this area right now :D

One cool miracle this week was meetin Miho! She came to Eikiwa with a
friend, we set up 30/30 program with her, taught her the next day,
and....committed her to baptism! Now we have 4 people that should be
baptized next transfer. :D transfer calls are this Saturday, I really
want to stay with Hastriter, so much cool stuff is happening, and it's
sooooo fun :D he has requested he mission president 3 or 4 times that
I stay with him, so hopefully we will.

This week I taught priesthood, it was kinda stressful preparing the
lesson in Japanese, but way fun. I think since this is so short, I'll
just attach the English copy, so you all can read it. It was about
prophesying and the Book of Mormon. Fun stuff :D

7/26 Wow. Cool stuff :D

Helloooo America! Or wherever this email happens to find you.
So, life's been pretty good recently. Well it's been pretty great
spiritually, and good for the work, but physically I'm dying haha. I
think we haven't eaten both lunch and dinner in the same day in over a
month haha. We're just too busy, it's so good :D we found 12 new
investigators this week, almost half of them were people that our new
investigators from last week invited to our lessons. Their families or
friends. It's a pretty cool compliment, they thought our message was
specially enough that they wanted their family and friends to hear it
too.


So I don't really have time to email today unfortunately..but lots of
cool things happened I promise! Haha we did lots of music dendo this
week, we rapped to a random kid on the street then made up a song in
Japanese for him, then when we went to leave Haustriter tried to give
him a handshake but the kid thought he was going for hug, and it was
the most gloriously awkward hug ever haha. We rapped and beatboxed and
breakdancer probably everyday this week haha.

We also had a huge firework show last night, we threw a party on our
roof. It was awesome. Erik and his whole Brazilian family came and our
awesome investigator Sawada came. He's so funny. After the show ended
they made Hastriter dance, and in tern he made everyone else try and
dance haha. Sawada even did a summer sault and then wanted to try a
hand stand, but we stopped him (he's almost 70 years old haha)

We also had a lot of fun run ins with drunk people this week. Gotta
love drunk people :)

Anyways I love you all, thank you for your prayers, they help so much.
Keep on dendoing!

7/19 The miracles never cease!

Hello! Konnichiwa! Ohio Gozaimasu! Life is good, God is Good Dendo is
great! Man! Have seen some cool miracles together! I don't even know
how it's happening, or even why it's happening. I'm NOT that good of a
missionary, but good stuff just keeps happening!
So this week I really am appreciative of the power of music, and
especially the hymns. They have made such a difference in my dendo, in
our member work, less active work, investigator lessons, it brings the
spirit so fast it is incredible.
D&C 25:12 A song of the righteous is a prayer unto the Lord." Elder
Bryce Coleman

コールマン長老

We've had other similar experiences like this with investigators as
well. This Sunday we had 6 investigators come to church, and two of
them came because we said we would sing for them before church
started. It is the easiest way to teach people what the spirit feels
like, and what it will feel like when they receive an answer from God.
The ward has now asked us to sing a hymn before sacrament starts every
week to bring the spirit into the meeting.

One other cool experience we had this week, was on my exchange with
the other elders in Toyota. They aren't doing so good, they only have
3 investigators and are losing hope... Me and Lehman had a long talk
about obedience and faith and how that relates to how much God can
help us in our work, then we prayed to find a prepared person. We only
had an hour left of the day to dendo, and we went to a less active
lady, tanaka shimai, that I had been working with for a while. She was
actually busy and said she couldn't talk at first but she had a friend
over, so we just talked to him. His name is Fujisawa. I came in and
started talking to him, and I could feel the spirit working on him,
and see in his eyes that he needed what we had. He looked at me for a
little while and then said I was glowing, he said I looked like Super
Saiyan in Dragon ball Z, then he looked at Leehaman and told him he
would eventually become like that. He now has a baptismal date for the
9th of August, I'm kinda sad that I don't get to teach him, but I'm
way happy that the other elders have someone preparing for baptism. We
made a companionship goal to baptize 6 times together, so that I could
fulfill the mission goal of one month one baptism. I wasn't in control
of my circumstances much before but now I feel like God is preparing a
way for us to build up his kingdom.

Some other miracles.
-Hirai has magically been able to stop smoking, drinking, and
everything else needed for baptism. He's the coolest!
-We had a lesson with Mori-mura on Wednesday, which isn't the usually
day for his lesson, and while walking here we ran into Bruno! Who just
so happens to be the kid we brought to his lesson last week! The
lesson was beautiful. We tried to commit him to baptism, and then
found out what his real problems were. His family has been Buddhist
for generations apron generations...and he feels like he can't betray
that trust. But besides that large problem, he said if it wasn't for
that he could keep all the commandment, change his day off to Sunday,
and be baptized. I have no idea how to help him though, just gotta
pray for a miracle. Bruno helped a ton in the lesson, it was such a
miracle he was there.
-We got a little discouraged on Wednesday actually, because we still
hadn't found anyone new yet that week, so we decided to stop and pray
to be able to directed to find someone, then we took a path under the
railway and met a cool guy in a scooter/wheel chair named funehashi.
We set an appointment to meet him this last Sunday. We went over
yesterday and had an amazing time just getting to know him, and
helping him feel loved. We sang for him and then he said he'd come to
church this week. We also complimented him on his hair, and he said he
had it so long because he can't afford a haircut. So we told him we
could have a member give him a free haircut if he'd like. So he's
going to get a haircut, from brother Takami (who's actually less
active, but he's a barber and he's cool) on Wednesday. He can't use
most of his left side of his body, so it's hard for him to walk/get
around. He's an armature painter and has some pretty awesome
paintings.
-We had 7 lessons on Saturday, it was by far the most I've ever taught
in a day. People called us during the day and asked us for
appointments, we found 3 new investigators. It was awesome. It looked
like we weren't going to be able to accomplish our goals, but we
actually ended up exceeding them!
-We had interviews with the mission president and the zone
leaders/Ap's on Wednesday. It was fun receiving training from them,
they pretty much just told us to keep doing what we're doing. In
Hastriter's interview he requested that I could stay one more transfer
with him, and Ishi kaicho said he's consider it. If I can stay another
transfer, we can baptize 6 times. I don't know how, but it will
happen.

That's about all the time I've got. The past few weeks have been
amazing, and soooo busy. I love being busy. Keep up the faith and
please pray for the missionaries! Prayer is the best use of your time,
all the time.

7/13 Miracles despite the rain :D

Hey! Elder Bryce Coleman

コールマン長老

This week has been crazy! I feel like I say that every week, but like
for real, God is awesome :D
So I don't have much, but there's so much to tell so I'll probably
just do a list.
This week it rained almost everyday. It ruined our dendo. People
wouldn't talk to us on the street, which is our main source of finding
investigators, the investigators we found last week on the streets
didn't show up tot their appointments because of the rain, it was
beginning to look like our streak of success had run out. But! Rain
doesn't stop God's work from going forth! And we still saw a TON of
miracles!
-We accomplished nearly all the standards of excellence, 15
investigator lessons, a member present lesson everyday, a referral,
etc. it didn't look like we were going to have any stats this week,
but the last few days God just pulled through miracles so that we
could accomplish e goals we had made in faith.
-The rain stopped Saturday so that we could have our lesson with kato.
Our paragliding grandpa, but there was no wind, so while we waited we
taught the whole first lesson, then taught him prayer, and told him we
could pray so that God would send wind, and guess what... We prayed!
And guess what, there was wind! The wind was so strong when Hastriter
tried it, it picked him up off the ground 3-4 feet!
-Since it rained so much this week, and streeting wasn't working, we
tried to house at every opportunity. BUT something I have now realized
that housing In the day, in Japan is a dangerous thing! Sometimes,
people don't have close on when the answer the door! Three people In
particular left fairly scarring images....yah. Watch out kids. It's
been really really hot and humid, so people just shred their clothes
during the day, and sometimes don't have time to put them on again
when we knock I guess..haha
-We met with the Suzuki fufu, something we had been praying for, total
miracle, we taught all of the restoration message and they are excited
to pray!
-We met, taught, and committed to baptism a cool grandpa yesterday. We
now have three yakuzokusha's! We're actually he only elders who have
anyone with a baptismal date in the zone, I guess we actually are the
only ones really having much success in general actually...I don't
really know why, but they read us the average stats for the zone and
they were less than a third of our average for the past three weeks.
We sorted and threw away probably 20 trash bags full of garbage this
morning, it took 4 hours or so, no one who had lived in the apartment
before had known how to throw away/sort the trash, so it had really
piled up!
-ok here's the big one! So this week we had been praying for 3 things,
tachiai lessons, a referral, and a family. We really really wanted to
teach a family together. And we set out to find one Saturday night,
housing. But! Everyone kekkoed us (said no) and we were kinda sad, we
really felt like we would find a family! So we biked home, and on the
way home my seat broke off my bike, and I jumped off! I wasn't riding
with hands at the time so I just kinda hopped, and my biked kept
riding without me. For 30-40 yards! It went across the Main Street,
and turned left the finally fell over. It was crazy! We were in shock!
Then we thought that there must have been a screw that fell out that
made the seat fall over so we begun looking for the screw. Then a
family crossed the street and asked if we were ok, and what had
happened. They saw it form their car! Anyways they are super prepared,
they are looking for God's true church, their read the bible daily,
and pray and their daughter goes to a catholic school, and they lived
in Michigan and speak fluent English! Sooo prepared! God found our
family for us! We didn't get their number, but they want to meet, and
will hopefully call us or come to church, I feel like they will, God
wants them to be taught.
That's all I have time for right now, I love you all! This work is so amazing!

This morning's project!

7/5 Obedience + faith= Miracles!

Hello all! How are you?!
This week has gone by so fast and has had so many cool miracles I. It,
I can't remember half of them haha. And since I only have 10 minutes
to email, I'll only write half of the half that I do remember haha
sorry.

So first off, I'm in love with my companion my Hastriter. He's just a
straight up good missionary! It's his first transfer as Senpai and
he's still pretty young, but we both just love missionary work and
work great together. This week has been magical. So my last companion
told me that the standards of excellence for our mission, were
physically impossible to get, and that this area is really bad for OYM
(steeting) BUT me and Hastriter. Have prob Ed both of those tho ha to
be wrong! God can do anything, in any area of the world! Even Buddhist
Japan! We have averaged finding two investigators everyday that it
hasn't rained, just from talking to people on the street on the way to
appointments. We had 15 investigator lessons this week! And three
people come to churn! And 5 people progressing towards baptism!
Everyday has been absolutely insane, and hundred percent guided by the
spirit. Like you don't even understand how incompetent of a missionary
I am haha, but Heavenly Father is making us into something great. Eve
just my struggles of finding investigators houses. Like yesterday
wanted to visit Kawai Keiko, a friend who stopped investigating 3 or 4
weeks ago, and I had no clue which room she was in this HUGE apartment
complex, but as I prayed to know where she was, and just started
walking, flash backs of random memories came to mind that led me to
where she was. And like just last Saturday (two days ago) we were
biking and I randomly had a thought that John's Market was really
close, even though I wasn't actually that close, but because I thought
of it, we decided to just to go there for fun, and met Takami Rae
there! Which was a miracle since we hadn't been able to meet with her
for two weeks and haven't been able to set an appointment. But! Now we
have an appointment and are back on track. Her baptismal date isn't
until September 13th.
So anyways we've just been doing everything we could to have the
constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, and it's made a world of
difference in every part of our dendo. Our lessons are better, our
companionship is happier, we are focused, our prayers are being
answered. Missions are a wonderful thing if you let them be :D

I like lists, then I don't have to tell the whole stories haha. Some
cool stuff that happened this week:
-We had a awesome spirit filled lesson with Fabricio, we brought Erick
with us, my favorite Brazillian :D He testified powerfully of his own
path to conversion. Fabricio is progressing well, just needs a bit
more faith and time and he'll be ready to be baptized
-Taught a fun 30/30 program to Jackie, Ericks sister, we taught her
English for 30 min, and gospel for 30 min. She doesn't know much about
the gospel, even though she's a member, so we're trying to help her
out.
-Hirai became a yakuzokusha (person with a baptismal date) after some
seriously inspired teaching based off his and our questions. He will
be baptizedAugust 9th if all goes well.
-Taught almost the entire plan of salvation on the street to a kid
named Daiki in English. He doesn't believe in God, but after talking a
while he realized he would be much happier if he did believe In God,
and a life after death.
-Mori-mura, an eternal investigator who has never really progressed
has started progressing. He's keeping the word of wisdom this week and
praying everyday if he should change his shops day off to Sunday. He
also started reading the BOM on his own without us asking him too, and
he taught his friends in his shop the plan of Salvation, with my map
haha.
-We're teaching a less active lady's son, I love part member families
:D So now we'll be able to strengthen the mom, teramoto shimai, and
the son at the same time! (He's like 40 btw everyone in Japan just
stays with the their parents haha)
-We went to Ikai shimai's house, and played her accordion and sang
songs haha we've been sining to everyone we visit, I love being able
to harmonize again :D
-We had a lesson with a recently reactivated less active member,
Morita shimai, she wants us to teach her all the lessons over again,
since she doesn't know anything about the church, I don't know how she
was baptized... But it's good we get to help her :D
-Our recent convert Takahashi now has a date to get the Melchizedek
priesthood! We also got to teach him about family history and temple
work yesterday, that was way exciting, he's way excited to help his
grandparents!
-We spent to nights at the church, we brought the maps to the church
and the ward record. Haustrider can read kanji really well, so he
looks up where people live (less actives) and puts them on the map so
we can visit them, and I just spent the time calling people :D I love
phone dendo! We got two more families to come back to our Eikiwa
class, and had a way intense spirit filled conversation with a long
ago dropped investigator. I testified that God loves him, cares about
him, and can help him overcome all the problems of this life, through
the love and grace of the Atonement. It was an intense phone call, at
the end he wanted to meet with us, and set an appointment, but the
next day he texted and said not to visit, how sad.
-We had another breakdancing/beat boxing lesson this week, and at the
bunka center some of the Japanese teachers asked me to give a
presentation, so I beatboxed and had Hastriter breakdance (see video
below) it was pretty fun!

Oops, we spent a lot longer than the 10 minutes I planned on, haha
sorry if this is too long for you to read!

6/28 Transfer 4

6/28

Hello this is elder Coleman's companion writing. My name is elder
Hastriter. Just wanted to praise your son for being super awesome. He
has such a great spirit about him and is really good at Japanese for
only being here for a few months in Japan.



Elder Bryce Coleman

コールマン長老

Hello! Ohio gozaimasu!
This week has been Insane! Mostly, because I just don't know how to
get around Toyota still...we got lost, pretty much everyday haha.
Oops. My companion probably hates me haha. But it's way fun anyways.
Guess what? I have been out over 6 months now! Woo hoo! Seems pretty
crazy, I feel like I just got to Japan yesterday.
So this week we set a record for investigators found. We found 9! Just
from talking to people on the street as we went to appointments. One
of them is a breakdancer. His name is June, Haustrider is pretty pro
at breakdancing, so they breakdance while I beatbox, and then we do a
Lesson afterwards haha. Adventure dendo!
We also had our ward conference this last Sunday. The ward mission
goal was to have 120 people there, and we had 121! Got it!
Hastriter likes to sing and can hold his own on the melody if I
harmonize, so we've been sining to people a lot, less actives, at
member visits. It's going to be a fun transfer.

So only time for one story. So Friday I totally had a random prompting
to bring my planner to the church when we worked out in the morning,
but I ignored it...because....there's not need for a planner, so I
thought that was silly. And anyways, God pretty much had prepared a
way for us to go in a car with a member to visit a bunch of less
actives, and tachiai for our lesson. But instead we ended up having to
bike that day, and it rained, and we got lost, and ended up somehow in
Nagoya, and missed our lesson. So....heed the small promptings! No
matter how weird they are!

6/21 Happy Fathers Day

Hello everyone! Happy Fathers Day! Go give Dad a hug!

So transfer calls were this week! Lots of exciting things happened!
I'm with an elder named Haustrider! I heard he's really cool, a hard
worker, and really good at break dancing...haha I'm excited we're
going to see a lot of miracles this transfer :D
Hardcastle is going to Matsumoto! That's where he wanted to go, it's
actually kind of a miracle, he had wanted to go to Matsumoto for a
while, but didn't tell Yamashita, but one of our investigators
MuriMura had been praying that he'd get sent there, and he did! Haha
what's more is that he's with his MTC companion again, and has 3 of
his original MTC district in his district and his trainer in his zone.
So that's good for him.
In other news Smith Choro went trainer, he's my dokie, he went trainer
transfer 4, which is pretty much unheard of in Japan unless you are
Japanese, or studied for years. So that's way cool!  He's the most
dendo fired missionary I know, and he's the only elder I REALLY want
to work with. So that's pretty crazy.
This week was awesome. Every week is awesome, I mean...I'm in Japan,
and I'm on a mission. It can't not be awesome haha.
Some highlights for this week were...
-We went paragliding again, I didn't get to go we had the or elders try.
-Had 2 Kokans (exchanges) both were a party
-I sang in church I'll go where you want me to go, Craig Petrie's
arrangement, I just wrote in the Japanese from the hymn book. I sang
it with the dendo shuning (ward mission leader) who happens to have
been in a college accapella group, so he's super good.
-Hard castle said bye to everyone, tears were shed
-We had the funniest law of chastity lesson, in the history of law of
chastity lessons, with my friend Murimura.
-My bike tire popped. That sucked.
-I got really sick...most of the week, that really sucked.
-We finally had a sports activity! Yea! I've been wanting one since I
got here, and it finally happened! Now the ward wants them at least
once a month, and wants all our ideas for activities too :D 28 people
showed up, mostly members, but eikiwa students and investigators too.
-I started learning Japanese sign language from a lady in the ward, I
keep running into deaf people and all I know is what Aaron Blake
taught me, which is just like...nice meet you, my name is elder
Coleman. But every time I do just that they get way excited that I
know a bit, so now I want to learn more.

Yup been a fun week. Gotta plans for the upcoming transfer, I'm excited :D

6/15 Today I Flew

Herrooo! How's everyone doing?!
This week has been AWESOME! Lots of miracles all the time!
We got to work as God's hands in so many ways this week! It's the best
feeling! We're just like wandering through life, trying to do all we
can to help these people and God is just taking our stumblings and
making them into something great! Like I have no idea what to do most
of the time, but God just kinda some way or another has us do what he
wants us to do, say what he wants us to say, go where he wants us to
go, I've felt the spirit stronger than ever this week!
So starting from Monday, we had three lessons, and that's on the day
we have "off" and when your p-day is that good you just know you're
going to have a good week :D We had 8 member appointments this week as
well, everyone wanted to hang out with us! A big part is they want to
say bye to Hardcastle before he leaves, everyone thinks he's going to
transfer (he's been here almost 9 months...) so that was way good,
lots of food :D
We also had zone conference this week with Yamashita kaicho and
shimai, they did an open question and answer with everyone, and we
said our last goodbyes, they're leaving next week at the end of the
transfer, it's way sad. I love them.
So we had a lot of appointments this week, which is awesome, but it
also meant we had absolutely no time to try and find, to go knock
houses, or talk to people on the streets, so it was interesting to see
how God would find people for us even thought we didn't have time to
find haha. I found one investigator while Hardcastle was trying to
figure out where we were on the map, just talking to a guy on the
street, he said he believes in God and wants to know more about him,
so we're teaching him this Friday, then on Sunday we still hadn't
found anyone else, and we had set the goal for 2-7. Which is a big
leap of faith for Hardcastle, he used to set it at 1-7 but he's
realized every time we've set the goal at 2-7 and prayed to accomplish
that goal, we've always gotten it. So now we wanted to see if the
pattern would keep even if we couldn't spend much time on it...and low
and behold a guy we had talked to on the street almost a month and a
half earlier randomly came to church and brought his wife and baby! So
now we get to teach a family! Yah! I love families :D Working with
Hardcastle this transfer has been 100% different than last transfer.
Last transfer he wouldn't street contact (OYM) because he said it
didn't work, and he had a pretty low expectations for what we could
do, but now this transfer the only finding we've done has been OYM,
our obedience is way better, dendo is fun again, our friendship is
good, we see miracles everyday. It's a way cool transition to watch,
the ward here is changing, their faith and love for each other and the
gospel is growing stronger, Hardcastle's faith is way strong now, life
is just good haha :)
So some other miracles, there was seriously 3 or 4 a day that were
easily recognizable, so I don't know how many I'll be able to write
about haha. Anyways Wednesday we got a call from Ichikawa shimai, one
of my favorite members, asking for a blessing. She wanted to go to he
temple with her daughter who just got off her mission. But she had a
really bad toothache and it was painful to do stuff...so we gave her a
blessing and in it told her she would be healed so she could
experience the spirit of the temple with her daughter unhindered. So
the next mowning she texted us and said she had no pain. Then on
Sunday she told us that she was pain free the whole time she was in
Tokyo, but then as soon as she got back to Toyota, she had pain again
Haha. So that kinda stinks, but it's a cool witness to the power of a
priesthood blessing.
We also have another blessing last night to sister Linguiton, she's a
Philippena lady, and she probably has breast cancer, the test result
aren't 100% yet but...it looks pretty bad. So we went over and shared
a message of comfort and gave her a blessing. We shared D&C 121:7-8
and 122
"7 My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine
afflictions shall be but a small moment;
8 And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou
shalt triumph over all thy foes."
122 is God talking to Joseph smith when he was in Carthidge Jail, just
before he was killed.
"7 And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of
murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast
into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce
winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the
elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws
of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son,
that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy
good.
8 The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?
9 Therefore, hold on thy way, and the priesthood shall remain with
thee; for their bounds are set, they cannot pass. Thy days are known,
and thy years shall not be numbered less; therefore, fear not what man
can do, for God shall be with you forever and ever."
It was one of the most spiritual experiences of my mission. We were
able to comfort her and her family, and help them have faith hope and
courage, that God is in control, and will never let them go threw
something that they can't handle, I'm confident there will be a
miracle with sister Linguiton, her faith is strong, and you can feel
the strength and love of her and her family. She's going back to the
Philippians next week so I might not get to see her again. But I

definitely will keep in contact, I want to know what God has planned
for her.
So this email got long already, sorry about that. But just one or two
more cool things...so we had a BBQ today as a district activity, me
and Hardcastle just bought our own BBQ haha it was fun, played
frisbee, soccer, bubbles, water fight all the good stuff. Anyways at
the park there there was a guy kiting his paraglider....which is just
cool, so of course I had to go talk to him, so me and Larson our zone
leader went over and ended up becoming way good friends with this guy,
he's a 72 year old dude named kato, he was a taxi driver, but he
somehow has tons of cash to blow...since he had three paragliders, and
a propeller to go with it. So he gave me and Larson flight lessons! In
Japanese haha...I spent almost an hour flying his paraglider! Haha
it's on my bucket list to go paragliding! I already went skydiving and
hang gliding, this is the last one I needed to get haha. So I've got
another paragliding lesson this Thursday, and in return we agreed to
teach him how to become happy through the gospel of Jesus Christ haha.
Life's always an adventure :D We're not doing real flights, that's
probably against the implied mission rules, but I'm getting good at
controlling the parachute, which is what you've got to learn before
you can fly.
I also spoke in Sacrament meeting yesterday, about faith miracles and
the Book of Mormon. I testified that if the ward members studied the
Book of Mormon everyday they would be able to recognize miracles in
their life, everyday. That's another thing, so I reset my personal
goals this week, I figured out if I read 10 pages of the Book of
Mormon a day I'd be able to finish before the end of next transfer
(it's a week longer than normal) so I testified about that, and how's
it's blessed me and our work just this week. I'm also reading the
grammar book 10 pages a day. I'll finish that by the end of next
transfer too. And I'm writing in my journal! Before I didn't ever, I
was always spending all my free time memorizing/studying the ninja,
it's a book with the phrases and sentences to teach all the lessons.
The Yamashitas really want everyone to pass it off, by reciting it to
your companion and a ward member, or the zone leaders. So this week I
went crazy on it, I woke up at 4:30 a few times to get extra study
time in, so I could pass it off before zone conference. That's when
your receive your badge for it, and I wanted to finish it as kinda a
going away thank you gift to the Yamashita's. So now I have time to do

all the stuff I had grounded myself from doing before haha.