People

A few weeks ago in church our bishop was teaching the last hour class or elders quorum in my ward, and he was talking about people that had come and gone in his life and the people that stuck out the most to him and those that made huge impacts on his life. He then proceeded to go around the room and ask us if there was anyone in our lives that had a huge impact or really any sort of impact at all in our lives.

It really got me thinking and even almost 3 weeks later it is still something I think about..and it has raised a few questions in my life...One of them being "why do certain people come into our lives leave such a mark, then leave so suddenly?" Has that happened to any of you? I'm sure it has. I mean how many random amazing people come into our lives, leave their mark and then just take the next train out of town? One of those more recent for me would be my ex...She came left her black mark and then moved on to the next guy in a matter of a week after she left me....and as hard as it is to finally realize that the main reason she was in my life was to show me exactly what I didn't want in my future wife and although she did have some of the qualities I want I deserve someone so much better then her, so much more not selfish then she was...even though it still hurts me a lot some days of how quickly she vanished, she was still a huge part of my life...but she is just an example...

But that really isn't why I am here writing this post, Today I would like to talk about one of the people in my life that impacted me for the so very good and not once at all the bad....His name is Yukous Inoye, I probably butchered the spelling of his name, so I hope he forgives me lol...He was a little man from Japan that lived in my neighborhood one street up from mine...I remember him as a little kid always out cleaning his house or watering his lawn, keeping up his garden. He had moved here from Japan with his wife when he was I believe in his twenties maybe later, and seemed like a pretty cool guy..I never really talked to him much when I was a little boy....but when I became a scout I got my first glimpse of what Mr. Inoye was like. My best friend Cam and I were out promoting flags for a fundraiser and we got to his house....we knocked on his door and his wife opened, who in all her 40 or 50 some odd years didn't really know how to speak English very well, if at all...more on that later....She smiled said hi and ran to get her husband. He came to the door we did our approach on selling the flags for a fundraiser so us little 12 year old scouts could go to camp and how he could have an American flag in his yard some 11 times during the year. He stood there and looked at us for a second o two and then said "you are selling bugs? We don't want any bugs here" we repeated what we said before and he repeated the same and we did it off and on for a few minutes before he invited us in for some candy and to give us the check for the flags....I left his house that day thinking he was a crazy hilarious old man that was a little delusional and we went on our way..little did I know the road I would start with this man.

Through the years he would always stop my friends and I from the ward at church and talk to us and tell us little words of wisdom and give us a treat and his wife would smile, but that was about all we got from him. One day though when I was about 17 or 18 I was walking over to a buddies house of mine that lived right across the street from Yukous. Well Reece wasn't home from work yet so I went out to help his mom clean up the yard a little bit till he got home, cause believe it or not I had chores at his house...It was the price for me eating there all the time lol....we got done cleaning up and I noticed that Yukous was trying to pry some weed gigantor bush out of his garden, I think he noticed that I was looking cause he yelled out across the street "hey you boy! come help me with this" It made me giggle but I ran over and pulled it out for him, then he pointed at another one, then another, then a few more, and a half an hour later he was done with his weeding...I stood up brushed myself off and before I could turn around and head back over to my friends house, he put his hand on my shoulder and asked me to come inside for a drink and that he wanted to show me something. His wife brought me a glass of lemonade gave me a hug and went back into the kitchen area of the house, he pulled me aside into his den and asked me to take a seat. To be honest I was kinda freaking out...lol this was the farthest I had ever been in his house and to add to that I had no idea what he wanted from me, did I do something wrong? was He gonna lock me up and make me always weed lol...I can't remember what was going through my head at the time, but needless to say I was worried. He sat me down in a chair in his den, and left the room for a moment...Now to understand Yukous better, at this point in time I believe he was around 90 years old. He didn't move around quickly at all...So it gave me some time to look at the tons of pictures I just realized were all over the room. He came back into the room and was like "that was me playing football back in the day" He sat down next to me and thanked me for my help then began to just talk. Ask me how I was doing, how school was going, how life had been treating me, what I was doing in school, girls etc. I told him school was going great, I was playing football at the time so we talked about that some, he took down the picture that was on the wall of him playing football and I hadn't noticed till he handed it to me that he was wearing the old style helmets, if you can even call them that, they basically are what the forwards wear today playing rugby..they weren't helmets at all..he showed me some pictures of him during WWII and told me that story. He was living in Utah when Pearl Harbor was attacked and him and his whole family were taken away and put into a camp because they were thought to be spies for the country of Japan, and then later on he ended up serving the United States throughout to the end of the war. He told me so many stories that kinda had me shocked...He was such a stud in his youth and to be honest he still was. We talked a little while longer and then he started giving me some advice on things he could see from just us talking...All the while I just sat there soaking it all in, but at the same time wondering why he had taken such an interest in me and giving me advice, even now I still wonder why he did that. He told me he had to take care of some stuff and that he would see me later so I went over to my buddies house and continued on with my day, thinking about what he said to me. I still think about it a lot and I think about a lot of the things he said to me over the next year or so till he passed away..A lot of times he would just stop me at church and talk, and when that man got up to bear his testimony it was like watching the prophet enter a room..no one would talk, just all eyes on him as he walked up on his cane to the podium. Watching him and his wife together was almost like what a Disney fantasy would be like, they were so incredible together, since she couldn't speak much English she would bear her testimony in Japanese and he would translate. It was awesome to watch. He died right before I went on my mission and I really do miss him a lot, and I could really use him and his advice right now in my life. I'm kinda feeling a little lost and I just don't know what to do at the moment...Not really fun, but Yukous will always have a place in my life as one of the heros that came and for some reason took aside some random kid and helped them out a lot..Makes me wonder if I have ever had an impact in someone else life and has always wanted to make me a better person...Thank you Mr. Inoye!