Thanks for all the emails and encouragement! Life's getting a
little easier, still mostly just going with the flow, but nothing wrong
with that. Here's a recap of the last week:
Tuesday:
Pretty good day. Shohei (an Eikaiwa student who moved out of our area
to be a manager at a pet store) was back in town and we made lunch at
his house. They were an attempt at hamburgers, but we had to use pork
and regular slices of bread instead of buns. Still tastey though. He
still doesn't want to really investigate the church but he did contact
the church in his new area to go to their Eikaiwa. Then we did some
streeting and stuff, got a couple numbers of people saying their
interested in Eikaiwa but not the church right now. Then the 4 Elders in
our area went out to dinner with a recent convert and at dinner met an
older man that we had a good conversation with. The other elders picked
him up as an investigator and have seem him a couple times this week so
far. Elder Lloyd and I started handing out Eikaiwa flyers at a nearby
strain station. One guy came up to us and started speaking English to
us. His name is Shota Chiba. He asked us what we were doing, we
explained that we were missionaries. He asked about the church, and long
story short we gave an overview of all the lessons and set a baptisimal
date with him! It was pretty miraculous. We exchanged numbers but he's
been pretty busy and unfortunately didn't come to church yesterday even
though he said he would. He's been reading the Book of Mormon though. We
probably won't be able to baptize him as soon as the date we set but I
think it'll happen eventually.
Wednesday: Had a lesson with Brother Fujita, once again
it was just him and not his family. He really likes the church and
church members, but when we talked to him seriously about him receiving
the priesthood and baptizing his family he said that he doesn't want to
rush anything and will only do it when he feels like his family wants to
do it on their own. Slow progress but still progress. Later we had a
study session with recent converts and read a talk by Elder Bednar. I
followed along in English but wasn't really able to participate in the
discussion. Good listening practice. In the evening we had Eikaiwa and I
taught the beginner class.
Thursday: We did our normal study and spent a lot of
the day preparing for something special that happened Friday. We had a
4-person planning for what we wanted to do this week as an apartment,
and we had a 3 hour weekly planning as companionships to talk about our
investigators and have "companionship inventory", which is where we have
to talk about our feelings and other girly stuff. I see why its
important but I still think it's pretty dumb sometimes. We finished the
day doing tracting and not much came of it.
Friday: Woke up bright and early to go to the Temple
annex in Tokyo and hear Elder Nelson! First time I saw Zach, so that was
cool. And I got to say hi to everyone from the MTC too and see how
people were holding up. Elder Nelson was amazing and we had a question
and answer session with him afterwards. I think what I took away most
from it was the responsibility I have to be here and the feeling that
I'm really not wasting my time, which was something I needed to hear. I
think the biggest change in my way of thinking about church things since
I started my mission is my respect and admiration for the General
Authorities. They really do have power and authority, they're not just
good leaders. They receive powerful and direct revelation. So a lot of
the day was that and travel, but in the evening we went to a free local
Japanese Class to try and find investigators and improve our Japanese at
the same time. Turns out the first one of every month is just a dinner
so we got an extra dinner. We did meet some cool people though. One of
them was apparently baptized as a kid. He would go play basketball with
the elders when he was about 13 and one just got baptized. Never went to
church, got confirmed, or even took the lessons though. It gave us an
opportunity to talk about the church and hopefully we can talk more this
week.
Saturday: Pretty average day. Checked out familysearch.org
during study time and was surprised how far back I could go. That was
cool. We have an Eikaiwa student who doesn't want to officially take the
lessons and commit to anything, but we teach him private Eikaiwa
lessons using the Liahona and basically just teach him the lessons
anyway without him knowing it. We taught the Plan of Salvation and he
thought it was really cool. Had a lot of questions but understood it in
the end. Still no desire to change his life though. Then we went to go
to a soccer activity with one of the youth and an investigator. My
companion thought it started when it actually ended though so the 4 of
us didn't end up doing it. We taught a role play lesson to the youth
that was with us in a mcdonalds on the way back. He's a pretty cool guy,
15 year old named Toshiharu.
Sunday: Did normal Sunday stuff. No investigators at
church this week unfortunately. Taught a recent convert after church and
Eikaiwa. We got a referral from some sisters in the area by ours, who
had a Nepali guy approach them on the train back from Elder Nelson and
say "I don't really know why, but I feel like I need to talk to you and
hear whatever message you have." He lives in our area so they referred
him to us. We met him at the local trainstation, he came with his friend
and we walked with them to the church real quick before they had to go
to work. They're both 24 year old Nepali guys who are here studying
Japanese. They've only been here for 2 months so I'm kind of the same
level as they are. We talked all in English. They're both fluent in it,
as well as Nepali and Hindu. Pretty impressive. We set up appointments
to meet with them on Wednesday.
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