Elder Travis John Bloomfield in Fukuoka, Japan: 7 April 2014

Well this week we had MLC (Mission Leader Conference) on Tuesday. So we woke up at 5am and took a shinkansen to Fukuoka. We had our meeting, then took a shinkansen home and got back about 9:00pm. hah. It was an entertaining MLC though. This week we also had our Zone Training Meeting. We had a very good spirit filled ztm. We are doing a "Becoming more Christlike" program this transfer. Each week there is two attributes from the 9 attributes in Preach My Gospel, that are to be the focus that week. The missionaries in the zone will study those attributes in the week as well as with their companion apply that attribute as best they can into their dendo and life everyday. Along with the 2 attributes there is a different challenge to go with the attributes each week. For example, one week is focusing on the youth, do as much as you can that week to focus on the youth, another one is focusing on baptismal invites to work hard towards the Easter goal. Another is focusing on the Atonement, using it as much as possible, on the streets and in lessons, etc.. Challenges like that. We are excited and it should be fun.

At ztm we also did trainings on how to approach the young (high school students, college students, and young families) in an effective way. Right now the church in Japan is way old and it's kind of a problem. The average age for the Kagoshima Branch is 57 and if there are not more young in the church, basically in like 15 years after everyone dies there won't really be a branch anymore. The entire mission is focusing on young right now and it's actually a lot more fun than teaching old people in my opinion. No offence to the crazy old peeps here in Japan. We also did a training on how to teach the Atonement and such but it was a good time.

Our investigator Kusatsu san had a cool miracle this week. So lately she has been in and out of the hospital because of various problems she has with her body, and she is currently taking medicine for her shoulder to heal, but one of the effects of the medicine is it makes her sleepy and she basically sleeps from breakfast to about 3 or 4 in the afternoon and then from dinner again until the next morning. So meeting her to teach is pretty much impossible. We wanted to fast for her yesterday and she told us she wanted to fast with us. The cool miracle is she decided to fast her medicine for that 24 hrs too because she has to drink water for her medicine, and she said she didn't feel any of her body pain those 24 hrs and didn't ever get hungry. The beauty of fasting aye? It works!!!!!! So that was way cool for her and hopefully we will begin to be meeting her more often.

Well I can't really think of much else. Today we went to a strawberry farm and I ate a lot of strawberries. Apparently there isn't just one kind of strawberry, who woulda known? There were like 5 different kinds. We apparently were not supposed to eat any while we were picking them, but I didn't know that and happened to eat a few while picking them. woops!! But hey how am I supposed to know which flavor is which and if I like that one if I don't eat one real quick? I just had to take a quick reminder.

Kagoshima is good these days. We found some young new investigators Saturday and Sunday that we are excited to meet with this week. We had a lesson with a guy from Nepal Sunday and we were supposed to meet him at the Central Park and when we went there I was pretty blown away at how much it was like Austin. The park had tons of hipsters and kids break dancing and skating and such. It was a way cool park that reminded me of Austin but prolly not the best place to teach a lesson I found out.

Well I can't think of much else. Life is good. The ash is good. I'm reminded why God gave us eyelashes... The ash in the eye never gets old. I'm excited for General Conference next week. I don't know if I will have the privilege of watching it in English or not but maybe if I'm lucky.

Oh also I got the package from Mom. I'm way excited to read about Christs Life everyday until he died and his Resurrection. Legit! Arigatooo!! Way cool.

Well I hope everyone is genki.

Love,
Elder Bloomfield