A Naked Man

**must see pics**

Today we went to the temple with two other zones, one of which was Yokohama South (Yamate). As I was noticing how many of my previous companions were there I realized 9/12 of my companions were there! 4 of which are now companions with each other (2 pairs). I got a pic with all of them, I'll explain more at the pic caption.

I'll start with the funny stuff. I have been making taco rice a pretty good amount lately, it's so bomb. We got some lettuce from a member recently and used it for the taco rice. Cook cleaned it and chopped it up to have with the meal. As we were eating though he said, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" I look in his bowl and see all of his food pushed to one side. On the other side there sitting in the bowl was... A slug! I originally though it was a worm that got in the meat but we decided it must have been from the lettuce. If he hadn't have noticed it he definitely would have eaten it and assumed it was a tomato. I lost my appetite but managed to finish my meal, so did Cook, what a champ. I love Elder Cook, we are way different but we are working hard and just feeling joy, even though we haven't seen a lot of success lately. It's funny though because the whole mission thought we wouldn't get along. People always ask me, "so... How is it?" Implying that it must be terrible. I was worried too but it's great!! Haha

Alright next thing is another one of those stories that I can't ever forget. Elder Kubera and his companion came to Hachioji all the way from Kofu. I went on splits with him this same time about a year ago, at that time he was my zone leader, this time I'm his haha. Our previous split we had all kinds of funny experiences but this last one trumped them all. We went to go visit this Vietnamese family pretty far put. Of course when we got there it was raining and we had no umbrellas. We finally got there after getting lost and decently wet. Of course the parents weren't home but their 6 year old daughter was. We gave her a note to give her mom. It was raining pretty hard so we ran over to a bike shelter to check the map. Some guy rides up to park his bike with a shoe on one foot, slipper on the other. He knocked over like the whole row of bikes when he parked and I started to pick them up. I said hi to him probably 4 times and he just stood there staring in space ignoring me. So awkward, we started leaving and then he called out to us, "Christian? Go home! Go home!" Took us a while to understand he was actually telling us to follow and go to HIS home. We skeptically followed him into his place. He sat us down and not too long after just dropped his pants real close to me. Just the first layer but still. Then he went for his shirt. I just started thinking, "please stop there, please stop." Then he said, "shower." I though he was asking us if we wanted to shower, so I said no. Then he walked over into his kitchen (still in view) and just exposed it all to get ready for his shower. I turned away but not before I saw EVERYTHING. After that I wanted to ditch so we started to try and sneak out but his shower was less than a minute! He was already out... He came in and put on the tiniest boxers and sat down with his legs spread to hear a message about Christ... Haha we could not stop laughing though. We eventually got out of there haha. Here is the awesome part though. If we didn't go to that guys house we would have gone home. Since we spent about an hour there we went back to the Vietnamese ladies house and she had just gotten home and read our letter. She was so happy we came by and such an amazing lady. She asked us all the great questions we love to hear (What's the purpose of life? Why do we have hard times? What's the difference between you and other churches?). We managed to answer all of them using the Book of Mormon. Hopefully you will hear more about that family soon.

Last thing is we started meeting with a kid named Kenji! He is actually only a quarter Japanese and the rest Hispanic. Which is awesome, I love Hispanics. One hard thing is he can't read or write any language, so teaching him is really hard. He can't read the BoM. You will hear about him more later.

I'm actually out of time and that was the bulk of what I wanted to say this week. I love you guys so much. Oh and also I hit my six months left mark this last week! See y'all in December.

Pics
1. Alright! Here it is. All of my companions so far except for three of them! From left to right with whichever transfer I was when I was with them. Johnson 8, Molen 11, Hawkins 9, Harrison 6, Schreiber 10, me, Cook 12, Gailey 7. Then in the front: Nagano 1 & Inumaki 2 my dad and step dad (trainer and follow up trainer). Everyone I was ever with in Yamate was there and to top it off Nagano replaced me to be with Molen in Yamate. Also Johnson and Schreiber are companions now. I hope you understand a bit of how wild this was. Nagano, Inumaki, Harrison &
Cook are all going home in about 3 weeks.

2. Elder Cook and I

3. Anotha One

4. Takao district meeting!

5. The sister on the far right had to go home this week for medical stuff :/

6. Remember the African guy I talked about last week? This is him! Earnest. We are meeting pretty constantly but he is being really difficult right now haha love him though

7. Our new friend Kenji!

8. Father's Day blitz in Tama (lots of missionaries, one place, mixing companionships & going hard)

9. Mizuo

10. Shintaro, this is a total miracle. Elder Cook taught him like a year ago when he was here. They set a baptismal date and he disappeared. Elder Cook recognized him on the street and we completely ditched a convo with an old man talking about Trump and how we need to go preach to all the people in Wash. DC to go talk to him. We are
meeting again this Wednesday with Shintaro :)

11. Haga... Uhh we went to this shack house to visit him. Most ghetto living circumstance I have ever seen. It's basically like an illegal homeless shelter.

12. Saw a great friend from my previous area Sagamihara, Masaki Yamanashi, at stake conference.