Feb 10 Letter

From his latest letter:

"well transfers are official. i am staying in otaru for another transfer.. my new companion is elder christian. elder nelson went zone leader to a place called hakodate. I'm really excited for this next transfer, hope things go good, my comp is hawaiian, he seems really cool, he is known as a way hard worker so that will be fun. my ankle is much better, i just wrap it now, if you could send some ace bandage wraps for me that would be nice, they only have temporary daily ones, so they aren't the best, but i can walk fine and all of that.
Have not heard from mom in a couple weeks.. whats up? Sounds great about the work out and weight loss dad, i do like the sports updates, please keep them coming, i have tons to say about them probably too much so thats why i don't comment back on them.
The last week has been pretty good, taught a really good lesson one with a lady that use to live in tonga i have some pretty high hopes for her. other than that it was a lot of helping elder nelson pack and doing last minute stuff. I love you all continue to update me on life, in a bit of a hurry, we are going to the big annual snow festival in sapporo!!"

He also had some desperate plea for decent hair gel and LETTERS. He even had me break into his facebook account to beg for more mail. Sooo.... let's get into the Valentine's loving spirit and send Elder Rora (Lawler) some mail. His address is located on the left of this blog for your writing convenience ;)

Here are some pictures I found online of the snow festival he's talking about just because it feels like all posts should have at least one picture.

Feb 3

This is a long one, but it's a good one...

yo yo! its been a crazy week!!! all starting off with thursday, day one of ankle injury, pretty sucky, we were confined to the appartment, so we went through the area book, we called everyone in there!! that took the whole day up. then we made carmels with some people in the ward it was pretty awesome, they were a lot of fun. fugita passed her baptismal interview with flying colors!
Friday was another day in the appartment or solitary confinment as i like to call it, i was way sick of being there! earlier in the morning i was thinking about what we could do, i had the random idea to just go through the phonebook and try approaches and see if we could pick anyone up, when it came time to go to work, elder nelson had the same thought and mentioned it so we gave it a try. i thought we should start and do all the names that ended in fugita (would be the equivelent of calling all the smiths in the phonebook) after 2 hours we had nothing, just a couple contacts but no pick ups. finnally elder nelson talked to a guy who likes english picked him up and took a come to church commitment, pretty wild! we were excited.
saturday was the day of fugita's baptism. the first one i would get to watch, i liked it. The baptism was great, as soon as fugita came out of the water she was crying. she was very touched and graetful. just how grateful i did not know but would soon find out. when she went up to bear her testimony she was very emotional. she could not really speak much, but whatever she said it was expressing her gratitude, it was very sincere. then to my astonishment she closed her eyes bowed her head and started saying a prayer, at first i was stunned, i didnt know what to do, i thought it was very weird but than as i listened to the prayer it hit me, she was so grateful, so overcome with emotion and gratitude that she knew of no other way than to thank her Heavenly Father than to offer a prayer to Him. i was very touched by her prayer, in which she said she was older and commited sinns and how greatful she now was that they were washed away, she thanked the missionaries, and everyone that helped teach her. I have never seen someone so humbled and greatful. This is what a mission is all about!! fugitas conversion and experience will forever be engraved in my mind.
Sunday we confirmed fugita as a member and gave her the spirit, and the other fugita from the phone book came to church, he is about 30 or so very tall for a japanese person, after church he said he enjoyed, but was not really interested in religion, but agreed to meet with us again to talk in enlgish and get to know us.
Monday started off with teaching tatsuya (phone book guy) at first we talked, he is very smart and very good at english, he started to explain japanes culture, history, background. i learned a lot, very fasinating!! he talked about the way japanese people think, act, it was amazing, i learned a lot, and it made a lot of sense. he than told us how he was different why he was not like the rest. he said about ten years ago he was very unhappy. all he did was work. he got up at 6:30 took a train to work, went to work, worked, took a train back got home at 12:30 at night, slept and then did it all over again, every day, no vacation, no weekend. he repeated that life stlye for 5 years. one day he said it was too much, he fainted, woke up in a hospital. when he woke up people thought he was mental, but he explains he had awoken, and broke free of the life he was trapped in, he stoped working, and lived, his girlfriend thought he was crazy and left him, to this day it is a sensitive subject. i was very taken back by his story. as i just listend i found so many thing he said that highlighted messages of our gospel, i just listend, never said anything unless he asked me a question. and he talked, a lot. he told us when he came to church he felt a peace, a sense of love, and unity. he agreed to come to church next week, again. I am very excited for him! the lord guided us to find him, in a very perculiar way, but i am so greatful to have found him, it can be said it was a coincidence or fate, but it is nothing short of the tender mercies of the lord, and his gathering of his elect. even if tatsuya turns into nothing i have learned a great deal from this experience. after that we had another lesson with a 25 year old kid named hashimoto. we went over his reading and discovered he had, had quite the experience. he said at first he did underdstand mosiah 3 the spot where we gave him to read, so he than went and read mosiah 1-4 and he gave a perfect explanation to us of all the chapters. it was amazing, just as we were about to move on i asked him how he felt and he could not describe it, he said it was more than just learning, he felt something, he said he felt like he should pray but didnt. we told him that was the spirit, from there the lesson went great! he offered one of the best prayers i have heard from an inverstigator ever!!
Tuesday was a day full of member visits and meals, it was a lot of fun.
This last week tried my faith with my ankle injury, but it proved when we are given afflictions and trials, the lord is testing us to see if he can bless us, he wants to shower us with blessings but wants us to prove that we want them, that we will submite to his will, i was patcient in my small affliction, and the blessings from heaven we received without end!!! How great is my calling
With all my love
Elder Daniel Henry Lawler

Now for some pictures... too bad there is no cane in view.

Fujita's baptism 

Can you believe  it looks like dano is actually enjoying the food in Japan? I keep holding out for his first encounter with squid and fish soup...

jan 20 & 27 update

So I figure it's been long enough since someone posted something on this blog... "Uncle Dano Missionary" as Eli calls him is doing pretty well on the other side of the world. Here are some excerpts from his Jan 20 and Jan 27 emails.
Here he is with his district in Otaru:

Jan 20 email to Becca:
This week was way good! had a baptism!! Honma, she is amazing really solid, well prepared, Pres Daniels interviewed her and was very impressed with her knowledge and complimented us on our teaching. we also had our interviews with him, we are top three in the mission in every key indicator!! and leading in most! pretty sure my companion is going zone leader next transfer that is what everyone said. went on splits this week with a japanese elder, watanabe he is way cool it was a lot of fun, the whole apartment is japanese, its was a pretty wild time! i will get you those pictures next week !! (this is the last picture at the bottom) oh real quick one picture is of the baptism obviously, the other one is way funny we went to an old investigators house we had never met with before, and they were way crazy!! the doll in the picture is like their kid.. they are old and don't have any kids so they went a little crazy i guess, bought a doll and act like its their kid, the grandpa carries it everywhere, they have pictures with it, at like all these different places, they have a room for her, have over 50 pairs of shoes for her, they have fake food for her, it was way weird, i was laughing the whole time at them! me and elder nelson were dying. the food was way good, and they want to feed us again so probably will go back...

I would like everyone to closely examine "the doll family" because Grandpa is wearing a truly spectacular wardrobe combination. I'm also not sure whether he has 2 doll children or if the child (who would be the bigger doll) has a doll who is a toy.

Jan 27 update to the family:
okay real quick update, had a bad incident yesterday playing basketball with some potential investigators. I went for a lay up and got under cut.. went to the doctor today and i tore two ligaments in my ankle, but im not too bad. They gave me a cane. As of now i can walk, slowly, with my cane, i am not sure what will happen for transfers, if they will keep me in the field of if they will put me in the mission home. hopefully my ankle will heal fast and i can stay in the field but i am not sure. Other than that everything has gone really well this week. went on two more splits, and found out some things i don't want to do as a missionary, the elders i went on splits with were what we call wanpaku, lazy. Our baptism got moved from last saturday to this saturday on the 31st. she is looking really really solid. we did the prep interview and went over baptismal questions and she was amazing!! i am really excited for her and she said she was really excited to be baptized!! that made our week! other than that nothing too exciting has happened this week. we had a couple of interesting lessons this week. one with a women about 29. we shared the joseph smith experience, and asked her what she imagined it looked like, then showed her a picture. she said i saw it a little different. she went up to the board and drew a ufo with a beam coming down, and jesus and god in the beam, very interesting, i tried not to laugh but was unsuccessful. i recovered and told her she was off. I will never forget that one. this week i have really noticed i am understanding a lot more when people speak now, i still struggle speaking but i can understand much better now. i would encourage anyone reading this email, to turn to your heavenly father and talk with him, being on a mission has shown me how much god loves everyone of us he knows who we are! he loves us! he wants us to be happy! and he wants to hear from use, he has given us a way to talk with him, and feel his love, through prayer and reading the book of mormon we can know and feel the love of our creator and father. The lord will continue to pour out his blessings as we make and effort to follow his beloved son jesus christ. I love you all!!!! and am so proud to be a missionary!!

As you can see, Dano is doing well and we're all very proud of him. I'll try to be more responsible about posting on this so all of Dano's fans can follow him. In case you were concerned he was getting too grown up or serious I have included the following pictures:

Dec. 16 to Mom

Hayashi got baptized!!!!!!!!!!! and to top that off earlier that day we had a lesson with a women named Fugita, and she is getting baptized on the 24th of January!!! and to top that tomorrow we are going to hopefully take a date from a guy named Nishiura!! amazing or what!! All good things happen in pairs of three!! it just goes to show, never stop believing!! do not fear!! never accept defeat! it is amazing the work that is going on here right now, the lord is truly gathering his elect!! big things happen, as soon as you decide they do!! I feel so proud to be a tool used by the Lord, what a great and marvelous work that has been going on among the children of men!
love you!!!

Dec 16th send to Dad

Dec 16th
Real quick to respond to the questions that you asked, my name tag is ロ-ラ- pronounced ro ra. but there are all sorts of variations as to what they say... the Japanese do celebrate Christmas but, like most of the world they take the Christ out of Christmas, its just xmas out here for the most part. Our ward is having a huge Christmas party!! They have been planning forever.. and one of the main events they are having is a kind of rock Christmas song they have here.. called ma ke na i koto maybe Yamada's (friends in Alpine) has heard of it... anyway, they are having a band play and put a big stage up, and guess who are the singers?? ya thats right they nominated the elders to do it.. we had practice the other day, and its going to be a blast!! ha ha i cannot wait, i will be sure to get some pictures of it.. while on the Christmas subject, here is the time and number for you to call me!! but we only get 1 hr. here is our apartment number for you to call, we dont call you, you call me....can't wait to hear from you all!! things are great! love you very very much!!
Your son, Elder Lawler

Dec 9 to Dad

...well this week has been another week of miracles!
we gave Hayashi the word of wisdom commitment, at first it did not go good at all! he panicked, said it would be impossible and started saying we were going to have to move the date back.. by the end of the lesson he gave us his word that tomorrow he would stop, and would still get baptized on the 12th..(that night he went home and drank all the alcohol in his apartment, which i guess is a lot because he said he threw up twice) haha i couldn't help but laugh.. as of today he is still keeping the word of wisdom! everything is looking on track for the baptism still! i'm really excited!!...we found some great new investigators this week! really excited and hope things take off with them.

Last Sunday was our missionary fireside for our ward, they gave an awesome presentation, i don't have the dvd yet, but as soon as i get it i will give it to them so they can put it in. the best part was when they did McKay Jacobsons video.. the old wide receiver for BYU, he is our zone leader, as you could imagine his highlight video was pretty sick! President Daniels was amazing too, he was at one point the 40 highest tax payer in japan, CEO of three major companies at once, including at&t japan. it was a great inspirational fireside.

yesterday was my first presidents interview! cant say i was not a little nervous.. but i took a lot from it. at the beginning he had both of us come in to review our numbers with him.. we looked through, in almost every category our numbers were above mission average! in five categories, we were top 5. and we were leading in appointments made. than after he looked at us and said i don't tell everyone this, but i want you two to be the standard. set the bar. i think you two can lead the mission, do it! he said we were the youngest companionship, but he thinks we have the most potential.. wow that really took me back. to see how much confidence our president had in us was amazing. the truth is we want to be the best! after that it was a great booster to get out there and prove that we can do great things.

...on a more personal night i had a very special experience dad.. i was just about to go to bed. i find right before i go to bed is when i receive a lot of personal revelation, or new ideas. about three nights ago i was thinking about what i would do after my mission. i could definetly see you in my job, i couldn't pick out what it was at first though, at first i thought maybe some kind of presentation, or speaker. than it came to me, and i could feel a very re assuring feeling, my heart began to beat very hard, and i knew with out a doubt what i was to do. I feel very strongly that i am supposed to be a chiropractor. as soon as the thought came in my mind i saw a wonderful and bright future, working together with you, going to school, even though it will be difficult. the more i think about it the more it seems right. i try now to put it off and focus on the work, but i thought i would let you know. and would love to hear some feedback.
hope everything is going great!!! would love to hear from the family! mail would be a nice.. love you all very much!!
ELDER LAWLER

Dec 9 to Mom

i just wrote a letter to dad but i will respond to the questions you asked me in this email..
have not gotten any mail from you yet.. except for the thanksgiving card, Grandma Lawler so far has sent more mail than any one else.. they do celebrate christmas here, its pretty big, we are having a big ward christmas party. did not hear about Grandma Henry being in the hospital,tell her I hope she gets better & love her... have not heard any news really about anything, found out yesterday that Elder Worthlin died, found out today from you about Ace.. i will make sure to send Matty something for Christmas, i think i have something that he will really like! i will work on a letter to the ward, and i will hopefully get some pictures from the baptism or something for you next week to put in there. keep me updated!!!!!! love you thankyou for the pictures give my love to everyone at home especially Ace if you see him!! i will write him a letter today..
love elder lawler

Dec. 2 Con't

Well another week has gone by, the are going by a lot faster now! i cant believe it! this week was amazing!! Saturday night was a big one! We have been teaching a guy named Hayashi for about a week or so, taught him lesson one and two, and things have been going really well! we set some goals for him and it has been a miracle to see
how through our faith our goals are turning into a reality. so we gave him the commitement and he willingly excepted to be baptized by me on the 12 of december!!!! we know he has problems with a almost everything in the word of wisdom, and who knows what else, but he has a really srong desire and testimony at this point so i am confident that we can overcome those obstacles, and prepare him for baptizm. we found some really awesome other people this week, our teaching pool is really picking up. our numbers this last week crushed everyone elses in the district, we have been working really hard, we taught 9 lessons last week and contacted over sixty five people. a huge improvement on what we had done previous.

I went to my first zone conference this week, absoulutly amazing!! wow it was powerful stuff, i dont think i realized how amazing my mission president is! he took us on what he calls `deep dives` where we pick a gospel topic and go way deep into it. i learned a lot, we did the atonement and the book of mormon. powerful stuff. i dont think i realized how big of a bussiness person he was either.. when he said invited to be the main speaker at the annual CEO`s meeting, in Hong Kong, for over two thousand CEO'S, i realized he is a pretty big gunner. but he is way down to earth, loves sports, after zone we played in door softball with a nerf ball, in the church, and we said we had to go he said stay and play another game. he is really cool. he was mad at me i played tennis and did not invite him to play. won't make the mistake twice.

That is great to hear juan and cristina and leo are doing so good!! really happy for them as a side note, i finished the book of mormon this week that i started reading at the mtc, and i came across chapter 8 of moroni, at the appropriate time i would highly recommend that they read that you share that chapter with them.. i would like to know if my website has been updated?? if so could you print of the page and send it to me?? i would love to see what it looks like.

.. tonight we are teaching 3 lessons so Im really excited about that! things are continuing to progress.. the language is still extremely difficult, but i am slowly picking things up. i am starting to be able to teach more, and make better contacts. love you very much, excited to hear everything is going good!! miracles are real! i see them everyday! we only hold our selfs back from see the powers of heaven with our lack of knowledge and unbelief. i have been feasting on the gospel, there is so much i want to study. i would strongly encourage to learn more about the gospel, make sure as President Eyring said to refreshen our testimonies. there is so much to learn. recently i have been particularly interested in the church history, when we did our book of mormon deep dive, i learned a lot about the 3 witnesses, there is still a lot there to learn. have you heard of the chiasmus? the book of mormon is full of them! very interesting stuff. always read, pray, and study with a purpose, and you will be amazed at what you will learn! The Lord cannot hold back the mysteries of the world, we have the power to learn all things! when reading about the brother of jared, in either, i really got motivated!! i would really suggest to read that. the last conference in which Pres. Bruce McConkie spoke, he bore one of the most powerful testimonies, i would suggest reading it if you have not.
Love, Elder Lawler

Dec 2

Oh ,the kid in the 3rd picture is one of the kids in the ward. japanese kids are way way cute! old people are pretty scary though. me and my companion are pretty tall out here, but surprisingly, maybe its just cause we are further up north but the average height, is pretty tall! like most people are just a little shorter than me.. oh and one more favor, it says pretty specifically that we are to email family only, and i have really been trying to obey with exactness, so i will send separate emails, in response to emails from my friends, if you could just forward them to their email address for me that would be awesome!! thanks, love you all very much!
elder lawler!!

Nov. 25th

wow i thought i had a busy week!!! i cant believe all that happened with Cristina!! wow... looks like once again uncle dano missed out on more Lawler family fun! that is absolutely crazy.. im glad everything worked out! give my love to juan cristina and leo!!!! well to start off i will answer some of your questions and then list some little things i have need of..

...if you could send me my nike/jordan stickers, they were in a manila envelop i left them out, if you could send those to me that would be really nice so i could put them on my NEW BIKE!! its way sweet solid bike.

so here is what has been going on!!
this week has turned out to be amazing!!! last week was kind of crappy for finding and what not but the start of this week we have already done better than we did all of last week.. its only wend. and we have already taught 4 lessons, we have another 6 planned for the week, we have picked up 2 referrals, 4 new investigators, and taught two lessons with members!! yesterday was really good, we found more people yesterday than we usually do in 3 days. we have truly been blessed.

Sunday was way fun, we had an guy we contacted the Saturday night before come to church, which is almost un heard of, the ward was really excited to see a new investigator come. but than after sacrament meeting one of the sister members came up to me and started going off with really fast Japanese and i couldn't catch every thing she was saying, but i caught the work do you like to sing, and i said kind of, and then she said did you sing at church in utah, and i was like ya, but to her that meant i sang in front of the church, she asked another question i was not really sure what it meant, and i said yes, and she got really excited which made me nervous, then she walked off and my companion turned to me and said do you know what you just told her, and i said i have no idea.. he said she asked you if we would sing in two weeks and do a musical number for the ward and you said yes.. so i guess me and elder nelson are going to be doing a duet for the ward in two weeks!! what a nightmare!! i laughed for a while after that, i learned my lesson to not always fake like you know what someone is talking about..

.. right now we have six investigators we are teaching which is really really good out here! so i am really excited. things are slowly picking up and we are starting to see people progress and do well.. the food out here is way way good!! the noodles are really tasty and the rice is good, they have a lot of different types i like, but i have not been asked to eat fish yet so thats good...

guess what!!! on friday night guess what i did? played tennis!! it was really fun, one of the women who just got baptized her parents are somewhat interested and they play tennis like every day so when she found out i played tennis she set up a time for us to play. and the mission president was cool with it, so they picked us up and we went to this really nice resort place and played, the girls parents are way rich i guess. i surprisingly did really well, at first i kind of sucked, and the dad was pretty good, so we started playing and i smoked him!! my serves were on fire! just hit them as hard as i could and they would go in.. i drew quite the crowd, it was funny everyone was way amazed i guess there are not to many good tennis players in japan.. after every shot they would clap, it was kind of ridiculous.. but i had fun, I'm going to try and send you those pictures..

..well there is still a ton of snow on the ground but the roads are dry so we have been riding our bikes, its really fun/scary, one we are on the wrong side of the road and every time i go to turn i almost get hit because i forget, and two the cars pull right up next to you if i put my hand out i could touch them.. it didn't take long for me to biff it on the ice either, we were pulling of to the side of the road and i hit my brakes right as we went over this huge patch of ice and i wiped out.. no harm to the bike or me though, everyone around us was laughing.. im really starting to love Japanese people and all the weird things they do here, its really funny, people are either terrified of us or want to be our friends cause we are American.. people start running away when they see us walk towards them its really funny.

We do mostly housing all day and when we knock peoples doors the old lady's answer and look up at us and start backing away almost shaking and then shut the door, its really really funny. but most people just say they are budhdist and slam the door.. well thats pretty much was has been going on. well for the christmas list all that really comes to mind is lots of candy and food!! they are not real big on treats out here, so like Receses and jerky, and more milano cookies, stuff like that would be way sweet!! and pictures would be nice! and some more spending money in my account is always a good thing!! oh and who am i getting presents for?　are we doing the name thing?? let me know!!

love elder lawler!!
(dont forget to forward this to everyone!!)