Elder Jonathan Goes

Family Spanish speaking in Kofu

Okay, so here is my week.
We have been working okay lately. My companions and my mission president all say I am too hard on myself but I think that we could be working a little harder. I could be a lot more focused then I am. I am trying though; we have been housing a lot and teaching quite a bit as well. Man I sure hate Satan. Wow, what a jerk. It is ridiculous how well he knows our weak points, he knows when we are trying to be better and he knows right when to throw distractions in.
Highlights of the Week.
Baptismal date with Yabuki. June 13!!
I fixed my bike
I learned a whole new meaning as to why I am here
Saw the love God has for me first hand.
Ate a Lot
Okay me and Elder Ttsuchida have been talking a lot lately, can I just say how amazing it is to have a Brazilian companion!! Wow, have never gotten along so well with any of my companions before. He wants to work, but he also wants to have fun which makes working fun. Oh how miss math... ha-ha anyway
We were coming home from a night of housing and running into evangelical after evangelical, like everywhere we knocked we would say Nos somos missionarios da Igreja de... Amen Irmao Amen.... then you knows exactly who you are dealing with. anyway we have knocked and gotten a couple appointments and I don’t remember exactly how we got to it but we got to the point that, The entire reason that we are here is so that the people can feel the power of the atonement. All these people THINK they have felt it but they haven’t. You can NOT partake of the blessings of the atonement unless you were baptized and by the proper authority, It gave me a whole new outlook on the work, helped me see the urgency in it, helped me feel a greater love for the people I was teaching, in short I think I came a little closer to understanding kind of what the sons of Mosiah where feeling when they went out to preach because they could not bear the thought of even one soul pereshing. I hope that now I can just keep that motivation as strong as I felt it for another year =] So on the way home we realized we had very little food at the apartment we went to Beissia (the closest grocery store) and we both had no money in our wallets so we were like...well we can have bread for dinner... (by no money I meant like 300 yen which is like three dollars) so we left Bessia through the back and we saw a Yaki Tori car parked there...I had never had it before and Tsuchida said it was worth the 300 yen so I went to by some.. When I placed my order the guy who worked at the car looked at Tsuchida and said... Hey I remember you from Kiryu. (when Tsuchida was serving in Kiryu he would meet this guy all the time and became good friends of his and learned that he actually even though he was Japanese had spent quite some time in Brazil) so the guy just starts handing us food.. And when I ask how much it was he told me it was a present from him. Now think about it, all we had in the apartment was bread. No butter, no mayo, no nothing. Just bread and udon actually...but even that alone is no good. So we get way happy and we get home look at the fridge and just kind of laugh, that second we get a call from Brother Wener Campos. He asks us where we are and when we tell him we were in the apartment he said he would be right over. He takes forever and I joke maybe he made a pit stop at Bessia and is buying us dinner. He gets there and we go down to meet him and as I am talking to his wife Erica he is taking out bags full of groceries for us. He said we have been worrying a lot about you guys lately and Elder Goes is losing weight so we thought this would be appreciated. They gave us about 5 bags full of food and also a lot of new socks (Tsuchida had the WORST pair of shoes ever and they had holes and he was basically walking barefoot so all his socks had holes) they said that we are working so hard here, with a new area, new apartment spreading the good news of the gospel that it is the least they can do. Now let me tell you a little bit about this family, they have 3 kids. oldest maybe like 9 and youngest is still a baby. the dad had surgery on his arm and hasn’t been working for like 4 months. the mom has had to work to feed the family. The dad just started working again and the night before he had jointed with us during a lesson. He finished work at 6 30 and was picking us up at Cainz home ( a store near Yabukis house) at 7 30. That family has been one of the biggest blessings I have ever had on my mission. They knew exactly what we needed without hearing anything from us .I hope to one day be as in tune with the spirit and so willing to sacrifice for this great work like they are. I know that God loves me ,I know that this is his work ,I know that everyone here on earth is my brother or sister and that my heavenly father wants them home just as bad as he wants me home .I am nothing but blessed to be out here serving him. Thanks for all the support you guys give me. I know it must not be easy dealing with my short non detailed emails and my negligence to everything but even though I have all these flaws you still love and support me .I feel how much my family loves me even though I am all the way here in Japan . I miss you guys very much but there is no greater work to be done.

John Bytheway spoke in his Zone Conference

I am excited for this transfer i think we have a lot of good people we are working with and i want to work extra hard for a baptism here in Kumagaya. John Bytheway was very good, i really liked his talk, i think i really want to apply one of the things he said which is win their hearts and then lead them to believe. Especially here in japan cuz we are asking them to change everything in their life because nothing they do or think about is the same in our religion so we gotta work extra hard!! Hopefully me and elder sorensen can work hard and have the spirit!! I love you mommy !!

One more day snowing.

Missionaries with Lap Top

I know the Lord sees my desires and has blessed us with 4 new investigators this last week. We have been teaching a lot and all in Japanese except for one family in Spanish who is going to Peru soon. They move on April 18 so I hope we can help them get close enough unto Christ so that when they move they will look up the missionaries there and stuff like that. Japanese is actually going really well, I am starting to understand people on the streets and stuff and THIS SUNDAY I have to TRANSLATE!!!! I am so scared all the Brazilians are coming from Kiryu to Kumagaya and I have to translate from Japanese to Portuguese =/

I know that if I trust in the Lord and do my best to prepare myself I will be able to translate at least the meaning of the talks.. hahaha but transfers are this week. We have a lot of things going on, for example John Bytheway is coming to our mission on Sunday and we are having a mission conference to hear him speak at Kichijoiji. I am very excited for that. We also have a lot of lessons set up for this week, actually about 10 which is the most I have ever seen. I am very excited. Sorry the miracles letter hasn’t come yet, as you can see we are very busy. When we get the laptops and we don’t have a time limit I can write in Portuguese and still have time to say all that I want to say so I think I will do that soon. I am very excited that you guys got to go see Elder Holland speak; he is very intense but says some very beautiful things. I am very grateful for our apostles and prophets. I love you mommy and know that I am good healthy and happy.

Elder Góes visiting Buddha Park

Emailing for free now.

This week we are emailing for free.. it was way crazy so my first week as we were out doing missionary work we found a place called computer club and I was like stop I don't care what time it is were going here to see if we/ I can email. so then we did and the guy said it would cost like 16 dollars for an hour so I was like yeah right and so we started talking to him about him and stuff and in english and turns out he has been wanting to come to our english class for a long time but he is just very shy. so we invited him and he is now our english student potential investigator AND lets us email for free. so I'm very lucky but he has a class soon so its not very long but it IS free. He is a really nice guy and I'm excited to teach him english and stuff. Thanks for sharing all those experiences with me. It makes me happy to hear you talking about stuff like that. In Shonan my first area the tsunami was a big deal but to me I didn't even know it happened until I talked to Elder Mathias.

New Area - Kumagaya - (45)

...once he realized that was something to work on and started to work on it. Since Saturday morning, EVERY SINGLE PERSON we talked to, gave us their phone number. Yes we did meet with sekiguchi again and he is an awesome guy. He races motorcycles and will soon become a real estate agent. On Sunday we had a SELF REFFERAL come to church who is coming again next week. Sunday after church came the coolest and saddest experience this week. We were riding our bikes because we were going to go housing but we went down this hill thing and started riding near the river. Why? idk. so we kept going and going and all of the sudden Elder Anderson just starts riding across this park thing towards the river...I’m like okay lets go see the river then... so we go and we look at the river and there is this guy reading a book. The second we get there the guy looks up and says konichiwa, then starts walking towards us. The conversation just starts like no problem, we didn’t introduce ourselves we didn’t ask him to talk to us he came and started talking to us. Somehow either from the way we were dressed or the nametag on our jackets he figured out we were missionaries. So naturally the conversation drifted towards religion and we started talking to him about heavenly father and how he exists and how he loves each and every one of us and actually has a plan for us, the guy listened very intently and said we gave him a lot to think about. He also said that at this point in his life he can’t change religions but said that later he will look into it. we tried to give him a book of Mormon but he said that if he took the book of Mormon he would read it, and with the mindset he has now he wouldn’t be able to judge whether it’s true or not because he is so focused on his religion (one of the few active Buddhists in Japan) but he said he would look into it sometime. I know that probably sounds like nothing but, sometimes we reap and sometimes we sow I think that was a really good seed planted and it was so natural I swear we knew each other before hand.

Girl by the bridge ledge

So me and Elder Albretsen were riding our bikes in the 100 mph wind up and down hills like every other great day in Narita and we were going to be biking for a while this time and when we reached a place where we were going to turn he passed the turn and as were going to go back the light turned red. So we could either A wait, or B take the bikes up these overpass bridge looking thing that goes over traffic which we chose to do. As we went up and crossed that bridge there was this girl looking down into traffic and I thought to myself... Whoa, don't jump now.... As we kept crossing I kept thinking.... so I asked Elder Albretsen are you thinking what I'm thinking? He asked what. I replied, telling her not to do it. He had been thinking the same thing. He asked you feel like we should talk to her? I knew we weren’t suppose to as missionaries in Tokyo Japan but, we really felt like we should. We decided not to ignore that feeling and go talk to her. We approached her and said Hi... nothing... so we asked... How are you doing?? She started to cry (I didn't notice this but later Elder Albretsen told me that her feet were on the ledge.) She started crying and speaking in Japanese while crying is very hard to understand but somehow we picked out the main words and were able to talk to her a little bit, we invited her to a McDonalds that was very near the bridge but she said she was on her way to work at the airport. We walked her to the train station talked to her a little bit there and then she went to work. I kept thinking about that incident a lot after and if he hadn't missed the turn, we wouldn't have crossed the bridge. I learned a lot about how much Heavenly Father loves his children. I learned a lot about the Holy Ghost and how he works. We had no idea why he missed the turn. We had no idea why we didn't just wait for the light... it took like 1 minute longer... and never did I think. Oh, that’s the spirit guiding us. My expectations have changed a lot and I just hope that I can be prepared and in tune with the spirit so that maybe I can help more of Heavenly Fathers children. She is coming to English class on Wednesday and we will see if we can get the Chiba sisters to start teaching her. I'm very grateful for this gospel and for all the blessings I have received from it. I am grateful that I have been blessed with knowledge of Heavenly Father's plan for me and for the opportunity I have to be serving Him and teaching people about this great work. I love my Savior and I know that he died for me and because of Him, it doesn't matter who I was or what I have been but who I am, and what I can do now. I miss you guys very much but there’s no other place I would rather be. I love Japan and the people here.

Elder Góes in Narita (56)

This is his second transfer.

Hot experience from Elder Góes. Enjoy it.

> > At curry night they have this thing called the death sauce its very hot sauce and everyone was like hey try it! There are for degrees of hotness. i didnt want to look weak and try the least hot so i went to the second least hot. i ate that just fine no problem at all. so i went to the table after i was done got some more and put a lot of the one above the one i just ate. it was all fine and dandy until my mouth started to BURN. i could not feel anything except for my tongue in the most pain my mouth has been in. It hurt soooo bad!! But im okay now, but ill be a lot more careful next time.