Monday, September 16, 2013

Totsuzen and a heavily burdened missionary

Hello from an already heavy burdened missionary.

I looked in the mirror the other day... and I'm glad I'm wearing glasses because they cover up the bags that have developed.

It is so tiresome. We go sometimes 4 hours and only contact 5 people. But recently times have changed.
We have this thing called a totsuzen lesson (sudden lesson) where we teach like 2-3 concepts. We contacted 106 people last week. We taught 27 totsuzen lessons. That is - one in four people allowed us to continue teaching. A lot of them said we could come back. Out of those people (some carried over form last week) we found 6 investigators this week. 3 of them said that they would come to church this next week.

The other companionship here are two Japanese elders. Elder Bakabe and Elder Nara. (Onara is to pass gas so we poke fun of him sometimes.) They are both 20 and they are from around Tokyo. Nakabe Chourou keeps us fed so I'm not starving. I'm just thirsty all day long. I drink maybe 3-4 liters of water each day and I sweat it all out. As I ride my bike or I'm walking, I feel it running down my entire body. I swear when I come home and take off my white shirt, pants, and socks, there is just this death that is released into the air and man... it is horrible.

I forgot my camera at the apato. So yeah, no pictures.

My bike, the church here has their own transportation service they use so they will ship it for me.

Letters are going to be really hard because I seriously have less time than I did at the MTC to write. We have so much we have to do each week. I'll write you guys as soon as I get your letter. But I can't write for right now.

Speaking of writing, can you send Sarah and Dylan my address and tell them to write me? It's hard being on an island with only one person that can speak English (well except John, the English teacher who teaches free English on the same day we do.) (Sarah and Dylan are his very good friends from swim.)

Can you also get into contact with Amanda Sensei? I would like to get into contact with her. Could you ask her to email me? (Amanda Sensei is his Japanese teacher from high school.)

Also can you get me Masako`s email? I want to try to keep in contact with her. (Masako is our very dear friend who is from Nagoya.)

But no I want peanut butter and I can't just ask my zone leaders. I'm a plane ride away form Okinawa. They aren't going to buy stuff and send it to me. But maybe for Christmas you can send some. And I'm still being soaked with rain. (They have rain suits in Japan. It rains horizontally there and anything we sent with him would not have helped. Because of their flight delay, he was not on the big island long enough to purchase one. He is getting soaked!)

So there have been many things that have been really amazing this week.  The other companionship got 82 contacts in one day when we only got 23. They taught 8 totsuzen lessons, when we taught 9.

Uhhh what to say... we found this older lady who is completely in love with us. She thinks we are just the hardest working kids she has seen in her life. We always go to her house when we are feeling just completely awful and she always listens. She brought her husband out and asked him if we were just the cutest things. He agreed and it actually was a funny experience. They are 2 of the people coming to church next week. We found this old guy who is retired. We taught him a little bit and we had to go. When we were leaving he said that we can come back anytime since he was retired. He said he would love to talk. But then he noticed our name tags. He saw the kanji 長老 which literally means old old and it's used for old people. He said that's a really interesting name so we explained how it was a title. That made him want to learn more.

Another quick one. This guy, we only taught about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. We left him with a Book of Mormon. Usually when we leave stuff people never read it. (You know they are good when they read it) But he read all the intro and part of the Book of Mormon and said it's interesting. We invited him to church and he said he will try to come.

We have quite a bit of people who are interested in coming to church. It's amazing to see how a branch who hasn't seen any action in 2 years has 20 plus investigators and 3 people with baptism dates (not us because the Japanese companionship got all of the progressing investigators when me and Nara Chourou arrived. Gandy Chourou and Nakabe Chourou were companions before I came here so they split the investigators to favor the Japanese because Nakabe is only on his 4th transfer). But we think we can have 4-5 baptized next month.

Anywho its time for me to say my goodbyes!

Jameson 長老

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