Wednesday, August 21, 2013

6 August 2013 - The Scout Jamboree

Well, I don't have much time as we have been away from Saijo for almost a week now so we have a lesson in a bit and lots to catch up on. The jamboree was a blast but I can't wait to get back to my area. 


An update on one of the guys we are teaching (the one we are going to meet with in like an hour), his boss won't let him get work off on Sundays but he really wants to come to church so he said he is going to talk to his boss again.  The last lesson we taught him about the word of wisdom and when we told him you can't have tea he said he doesn't understand because that is part of their culture (he is from China btw) and it is healthy for you. He said he doesn't understand but he will try his best and we called him while we were at the jamboree to check up on him and he said "no worries all is well, I only drank orange juice today so I am trying very hard." haha He is an amazing man, keep him in your prayers that his boss will let him come to church sometime soon. 

Also a girl named Azumi that we are teaching we knew that we needed to get her to regularly start reading the Book of Mormon because she is having a hard time recognizing the spirit. So we made a contract for her that says she has to read the Book of Mormon everyday for a month.   haha If she keeps her word she can make a contract for us for something we have to do as well. She signed the contract and it has been amazing so far. There was one night she didn't have her Book of Mormon so she asked us to text her a verse or two because she really wanted to read it but didn't have it. We told her to read a couple verses in Moroni and she said she ended up reading quite a bit of it which is amazing and she said she thinks she is starting to understand the Book of Mormon and its importance. We will find out what we will have to do for the next month at our next lesson tomorrow or Friday. Hopefully its something like you must eat ice cream everyday for a month!

Now to the Scout Jamboree, so the jamboree was great fun. We ended up giving out over 500 Book of Mormon's, maybe 600, I'm not sure. Our usual schedule everyday was wake up at 5:30, eat and get ready, be out the door by 6:40 and we had to take a half our train to Ube where the jamboree was. We would then set up the tent and everything for the day. The tent was way cool, it had pictures of Mormon Helping Hands (and by pictures, I mean a 3 by 4 foot poster), temples, Jesus, Temple Marriage, the First Vision, Book of Mormon, and families. On the back wall we had the famous picture of Jesus visiting the people in the Americas and it was like 10 by 5 feet long it was huge. We would then teach scouts as they came from 9 in the morning to 5 at night everyday. The groups were usually around like 6 people but they would sometimes just be a group of 2 or as big as 20. It was way cool teaching the scouts though because I knew they didn't care about how bad my Japanese was, and after you finished basically teaching the first lesson in like 8 minutes and ask them who wants a Book of Mormon almost every hand shot up in the air. The Jamboree was also probably as close to the celebrity life that I will ever come to. When it was slow in the tent, we would have a companionship go out to the like shopping/stage/where everyone would be area and the little Japanese Scouts would literally run to you. There was one kid who from prolly a good 40 feet away saw us and just started yelling and running with his hands in the air to us.   haha It was quite odd.  They would all ask us to sign their hats or shirts too and would just give us random things like badges or the handkerchief sliders. I felt real bad at first, I was like man I'm just a missionary, I shouldn't be signing these kids stuff or feel like a celebrity this isn't right. So I started signing my name and then I would write mormon.org on all their hats too. haha.   We weren't allowed to talk about the church at all in this area, the only place we were allowed to do that was at our tent.  All we could do was tell them to please come visit our tent during their free time. The other quite odd thing was in Japan its not Boy Scouts. It's just the Scouts of Japan. There were like just as many girl scouts there as there were boy scouts. I was real confused at first why there were so many girls at a scout jamboree but I soon figured that out. That also became quite a problem as well was all the little 12 year old scouts asking if they could take pictures of us. so we told them only if they visited our tent. there were people from all over there as well.I met people from Sri Lanka, Israel, Korea, China, India, Togo, Australia, ummm and other places too but I don't remember right now.   Yeah that was pretty much the usual schedule except for Sunday.  Sunday was really cool.  It was supposed to pour all day long so we prayed that it wouldn't.  We were being talked to by the Japanese Elder from the Quorum of 70's, I can't remember his name right now, it is real bad I know, but he came and talked to us on the beach there from 8:30 to 9;30 in the morning. It was real cool cause it was raining the entire time but not hard enough to have to pack up and head for cover.   He spoke to us and the scouts in the rain the entire time. We then had Sacrament Meeting near our tent with the scouts who wanted to attend at 11:30 where he spoke again for a bit also  Gustaffson Kaiicho (Mission President)spoke for a bit and after that drove back to the church where our apartment was.  There we had a fireside by Elder something somethin -can't remember his name again (the only Japanese in the 70) and he gave a really powerful talk to the members. It was so powerful that I couldn't really understand a thing he was saying but could still feel the power of the spirit in the room.  We were blessed enough to break our fast by some delicious yakusoba at one of the members homes that night and pretty much that was the jamboree.  It was beautiful there too, it was right on the beach.  The scouts loved to practice their English, give us free things, play a game with us, then hear about the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.  It was the first time I was really able to be myself while teaching as well cause I'm too afraid of breaking Japanese Culture or saying something wrong (well and cause my trainer does most of the talking in the Japanese lessons unless it's testifying) but with the scouts I could be as fun as I wanted and make jokes and they all thought we were just some neat lil gaijins (foreigners)
LDS booth at the Jamboree

Some great Eagle Scouts!

Missionaries that represented the Eagle Scouts at Jamboree

Friend we met
The Booth for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that Travis was a host at

Display in the Booth

Another look at the Booth


 Eagle Scout and Missionary

Nicaragua Booth at the Jamboree (for Kyle)


Just hanging out

Girls Scouts at the Jamboree

Showing some kind of trick

"Just a minute"

"Let me get one more drink"

Visitors at the Booth
All the Booths/Tents at the Jamboree

Entertainment at the Jamboree

Taking a rest from the Jamboree

Love ya man!!!!!


Today they are celebrating Peace Day in remembrance of the Bomb that the Americans dropped on Hiroshima.  IAug. 6th is the day.  We had a moment of silence at 8:15 am as that was when the bomb hit Hiroshima and everyone prayed and such and then that was pretty much it. In the actual city of  Hiroshima they do lots of cool stuff though but we weren't here for that.

I'm bout out of time and the printer seems to be broken so I can't check out every ones emails, but I hope all is well and safe.   Try not to get sunburned in that neat lil summer sun. 

Much love,

Elder Bloomfield
Thought for the week:

No comments:

Post a Comment