In Japan Nov 23, 2016

Konichiwa Mina san. To all how have not heard, I am alive an well in Nihon. My P-day is Monday but I am emailing today because I have ZTM(zone training meeting) to today and then I have P-day when that is finished. Oh ya, I'm not i Fukuoka, my area is Nago, Okinawa, which is basically the north side of the island, its pretty out here. And now to my week

Monday-Tuesday:  I left the MTC around 5 in the morning in to catch a flight from Utah to Seattle and then Seattle to Tokyo and then Tokyo to Fukuoka, if you didn't know, Japan is almost a full day ahead of us and because of that I lost a day in the air. I slept on most of the flight to Tokyo because we couldn't watch any movie but I did talk to the Passenger next to me, Jimmy but, sadly he didn't want a BOM. We finally landed in fukuoka at 8 pm Japan's time and I was dead and I slept pretty soundly at the mission home, under the temple.  

Elder Swapp - I had to pack some of his stuff because he didn't have enough room

Me and Elder Campbell

Wednesday: after breakfast kaicho (what we call President Egan) gave us some slide shows and some videos to watch about things here in the mission and that took a while but was interesting. After that was done we went dendoing until dinner, I don't know Japanese that well but, It was fun. Dinner was at a Japanese restaurant, it was good but I can't tell you what it was and I didn't bring my camera. After some more dendoing we went to the church to get our assignments. I'm going to Nago, Okinawa with Aoki Chōrō, who is native Japanese.  

Thursday: we left for Nago today. It was a short flight but it took forever for our driver come and we got dropped off at the Okinawa church building because he had to drop off some other senkyoushi elsewhere by the time we final got to Nago it was almost 11 but I did get some good pictures.

Miranda, Me, Barbosa, (W?), Campbell, Swapp, Bacon, Clayton, Winchester, Weaver, Walbeck, Torgusson, Takishita, Miyagi, Bills

Aoki Chōrō and me

Friday to Sunday: a lot had to be done in this time, first I bought my bike and a wallet that holds Yen because the bills aren't the same size and they use coins. Also we where preparing for dinner party we will doing for the members on Sunday, so we had to buy lots of groceries. Saturday, we taught our progressing investigator, who has a baptism date on Dec 3. Sunday was interesting, I gave a little introduction in sacrament meeting and then had no idea what was said the rest of the time. The dinner party went good and was delicious.

Monday: I bought my own groceries for the first time, that was new. We  also did lots of tracking today and it was sprinkling a little bit but it wasn't to bad. So, in Japan they have these little shoulder bags that pretty much everyone has and I bought one because I wanted a smaller bag

kono bagu ga daisuki desu

Tuesday: Kaichou gave us these 5 steps for a successful mission and the last one is "come home tired" that is a very easy one to follow. We taught Kouichi san again today and went over the Baptism interview questions with her. We were planning to go to a restaurant called captain Kangaroo but is was closed so we went to A&W to get some burgers, they where only okay. We went to visit a less active that apparently no one had been able to get ahold over and she was there, yay. I have no idea what was said.

Wednesday: I am an Arizona boy through and trough, that being said It rained all day and i was not prepared for that at all. We had some limited success with tracking. Today and we had set a RA today but when we got there she wasn't home. We did have another lesson though and that went well.

Its crazy actually being in Japan but a ton of fun. I'll get Japanese eventually but a Japanese companion will decently help. I forgot, there are two other elders in the Aptment, osborne choro and Mizukawa choro. Osborne Chōrō' family lives pretty close to the Mesa Temple so its nice having another Arizona Boy with me

Mina san ga ai shitte imasu

The Room

Outside the room

Arriving in Japan - Letter from the President

Arrive in Fukuoka Nov 15, 2016

日本語は下にあります。

To the parents and loved ones of our Fukuoka Missionaries,

We just wanted to take a moment to let you know that your son and daughters have arrived safely here in Japan. We already love them! Thank you for sending them to us. We are excited to have the opportunity to serve with them here in the Japan Fukuoka Mission. They will have the opportunity to email you tomorrow afternoon. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask. 

Best Wishes, 

President and Sister Egan.

敬愛する福岡伝道部宣教師のご両親の皆様

私達は少しだけお時間を頂き、皆様の愛する息子あるいは娘さんが無事、この福岡伝道部に到着したことをお伝えさせて頂きたいと思います。私達はすでに彼らを心から愛しています！彼らを愛し、育て、福岡伝道部に送り出してくださったことを深く感謝申し上げます。日本福岡伝道部で彼らと共に奉仕する機会を心から楽しみにしています！彼らが直接、明日の正午近くに、短いメールを皆様にお送りする機会がございます。ご不明な点がございましたら、ご遠慮なくご質問頂ければと思います。

心からの感謝と愛を込めて。

イーガン会長と姉妹より


HI mom and dad!!!! I have made it alive and well, except for major jetlag and a crapped neck from sleeping on the plane. Its great and I love it. I don't know where I'm serving until tonight but President Egan should send you an email about that. I excited, love it here and can't wait until I know better Japanese. My PDay is Monday so, you'll get my emails Sunday night and I'm emailing on thanksgiving instead the normal day. Matane 

Week 8 Nov 9, 2016

Sorry, I hit the wrong button, here is my real email.

This week has gone by crazy fast. Its weird to think that I'm almost done with this place and I'm not going to have much of a choice to speak Nihongo for 24/7. And now the moment you're all been waiting for, my week

Wednesday: I got a package today, lots of home made chocolate, a family picture, inspirational pictures and a Rogue One pillow case. My favorite thing is a tie between the pillowcase and chocolate. We had TRC, not a clue what it stands for but we teach members, this evening and we taught a brother named Miura Kyoudai. It went pretty good and he surprised us at the end by finding a picture of Campbell 長老 that he had posted be leaving.

Thursday: everyone was dead today. Not much happened out of the ordinary.

Friday: 

Its official, I'm leaving. We also so did an "eigo fast" but that just means we tried speaking more Japanese that English. We taught 2 lessons today, one to Nakahara San and a surprise visit from Nakagawa San but the both went well.

Saturday: some of the chisai kohai, the ones that just came in, are trying to kill me during volleyball. One of them kicked a ball yesterday which hit me in the gut and today her doryou didn't hit the ball high enough so it it me in the gut as well, hopefully I'll make it to Japan before they are successful. Also I'm finding more people from Mesa, I saw Kaylee Bowman, who I was on swim team with, her at the MTC.

Sunday: Fast Sunday........actually wasn't to bad. I finished Our Heritage today and that made me pretty happy. Also during our temple walk, we had just crossed the street and I heard someone shout "Spencer?!?!" I look over and haven't got a clue who they are but my doryou has the same first name and turned out to be his Girlfriend and that was the last we saw of her. For our special Devotional speaker we had Jenny Oaks Baker, an accomplished violinist, come and play for us. She would share a short message before each song and after she had finished her husband spoke and he started his talk in Japanese and Barlow 長老 freaked out and started shouting "konichiwa" really loudly, it was very amusing. 

Our Senpai left behind a lot of origami and I found this's dragon one.

Monday: today was the last Monday we have here in the MTC. We had class with Rockwood Kyoudai, which we spent most of class make sentences in Nihongo and it was a challenge.



Tuesday: not much happened today, well out of the usual schedule. But our speaker was Sister Jones the primary president. Her talk was mostly on obedience and we have been told that at least every other talk is going to be on obedience, so I'm looking forward to that.

I may have gotten a bit bored last night.

 Its been a good time here, my next email will be from the land of the rising sun. I have decent Japanese but its about to meet its true test pretty soon. I have a challenge for all that read this email, I have been looking for this talk by Henry B Eyring about the importance of Journalling and I can't find it, if anyone knows it please let me know it would be much appreciated.

The Kingdom Of God Or Nothing   

-Brinkerhoff 長老
Sent from my iPad

Week 7 Nov 2, 2016

Its P-Dar already? I promise you time works differently here at the MTC. Another week down and sadly not much has changed but I love it here.

Wednesday: it was a fairly normal day, when we went to the temple we did initiatories and during it, I was thinking about the significants of olive oil. This is what I came up with, during the time of Jesus olive oil had many uses, for food and others and the atonement has many uses as well, healing, cleaning and self improvement; the performance of the atonement is called the 'olive press' and the result of an olive press is olive oil or the atonement; therefore the olive oil is symbolic of the atonement. Before the day ended and we all went back to the residency, we began our splits and I got paired up with Haroldsen 長老.

Thursday: today was the beginning of splits and to describe Haroldsen 長老 in a nut shell I would say he is a ball of energy, this elder literarily could not sit down for 10 minutes straight but he was a ton of fun. We taught both of his investigators today and they bot went pretty well.

Here is Haroldsen 長老

Friday: thank you so much mom for sending me the "Book of Mormon Made Easier" books, I love them and they have really cool insights. We also taught Yoko today and it did go well, I just need to work on my listening. 

Saturday: we had a super good lesson with Nakahara san. We here teaching her more about baptism so we had her reading the scripture talking about how baptism is the gate we must enter and the I drew on the board to help illustrate and she did commit to baptism which made me super happy. The second best part is I was using Bunpo (Bunpo means grammar pattern Tango is vocabulary) that I'm not super familiar with and the sentences made sense, gift of tongues all the way.

Sunday: today was not my most Christ like day. It started during our Priesthood meeting, Jensen 長老 was giving the lesson and one had the first councilor, Brother Turpin, in supervising and right from the get go, he hijacked Jenson 長老'S lesson so that he can talk about Greek words. What he had to say was insight and cool but he was saying it instead of Jenson 長老 being able to give his lesson. Jenson 長老 did say this one quote that I really like fro the Count of Monte Cirisuto, or something like that, "I don't believe in God" "That is alright because God believes in you". Our devotional speaker tonight talked a little bit about the atonement and it was super cool.

Monday: Happy Halloween Family and Friends. Me and Campbell 長老 taught Yoko san today about the Word of Wisdom and it went pretty well considering the fact that it wasn't well prepared and we got her to commit but I'm pretty sure we're going to have to recommit her ever time we meet. The night ended with a ton of せんきょうし going around the classroom halls trick or treating, I didn't participate but I couldn't doing much because it was so loud and at the residency hall, there was a parade missionaries in costumes and they were even louder..

Tuesday: we had a weird schedule today because we had choir practice at 4 pm as a posed to it's usually 5:15, it was because the speaker wanted an hour before the devotional to get any kinks worked out. The special speaker turned out to be President Russell M Nelson and I loved his talk. Being it the choir I got to sing Praise to the Manarranged by Mack Wilberg and it was some much fun. 

i am well, learning Japanese and the Doctrine. I love getting mail from you guys, its a break in the same old rotation.  I leave on November 14, and that is less that 2 weeks away and I get my flight plans on Friday. We got our Japanese name tags last week and that made me super happy. 

Love you all      

-Brinkerhoff 長老