Week 24
こんにちは皆さん！今は私のメール時間です！ごめんなさい、皆さんに私のメール時間はたぶん大変けど皆、耐え忍んで下さい。
Yes it's that's time of the week again
already. Sorry to have to put
you through this but everybody will just
have to endure. How's
everybody doing this week? We had a zone
p day yesterday so sorry
about getting this email a bit late.
I'll tell you how I'm doing. I'm sick.
Also my companion was sick.
Last Wednesday we literally spent all
day in the apartment because
Elder Sato was sleeping. I was recently
hit by a cold last Saturday
and I'm still feeling bad. We took time
after church to rest up a bit.
Those 3 hours in church, surrounded by a
bunch of germaphobic Japanese
people were grueling. However, I've
noticed a recent break through in
my Japanese before church started. I can
formulate sentences and
answer pretty quickly now. That's a big
step for conversation. I
attribute that to the fact we have 2
Japanese elders and a last
transfer missionary in the apartment, so
not only am I the youngest by
far, but pretty much every conversation
is in Japanese.
So I guess I'll recap this week. We
actually had some cool things
happen. I'll start with our most
promising investigator Kouda. He's
honestly awesome. He's reading and
praying everyday and we're just
blowing through the lessons because he
just accepts them. We haven't
had any problems so far. A big problem
with Japanese people is the
word of wisdom because smoking and
drinking are big parts of the
culture here but he realized about 2 years
ago that none of those
habits are helping his family, so he
quit. Like straight up. He's
pretty much a member. I probably won't
be around to baptize him but
I'll come back for the baptism for sure.
I've worked a lot with him.
Our big miracle of the week is with a
Peruvian guy we met last
Saturday. We arrived to the church for
sports and we saw the sisters
talking to some guy we've never seen
before. We took over and found
out he'd been waiting at the church for
a pastor to come out. We
explained we don't have pastors and that
the members talk on Sunday's
while the bishop oversees everything.
After we invited him in and got
his Facebook (because we're allowed to
use it here) and talked for a
while. He's a seventh day Adventist but
loves the bible and prophets.
He used to be Catholic but his own words
were "the Catholic Church is
bad." We gave him a Spanish Book of
Mormon and told him to contact us
when he has questions. He was very happy
to receive it.
So this week we were all pretty sick.
Not much was done but I'm glad
to see some miracles. This transfer has
been pretty rough. I've been
focusing a lot on the members and my
relationship with them. Let's be
honest the only way this church will
grow in Japan is when the members
start getting active in missionary work.
Two gaijin walking up to you
on the street and saying hello asking
you if you want to learn about
God and Christ can be pretty scary to a
Japanese person. However, when
the members start to reach out to their
friends, a lot of success will
be made. My goal is to strengthen the
members and get them excited for
missionary work.
Lastly, I'd like to direct your
attention to 1 Nephi 17:49-51. In this
section of the chapter, Nephi is
chastening his brothers after they
mocked him for building the ship. I
exhort you all to read and ponder
it this week.
Well I hope everybody's been good this
week. Please email me back! I
love seeing emails. I won't respond
right away but I'll get to it! If
you have any questions you want
answered, or words translated, I'd be
willing to help. Thank you for tuning in
this week!
Picture 1- it was like 70 degrees that
day so I took a picture
Picture 2- our church building
Picture 3- a jacket we saw on splits
Video- We found sparkling grape juice that requires you to actually pop the cork.
モア長老
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