So This week is full of awesomeness and miracles. I don't have lots of time but I'll try to get through it all.
We had a Family Home Evening thing on Monday where the youth and their friends gathered. One friend came and while he was there he kept saying "This place is nice. It feels good. Its peaceful. Everyone feels happy and like a family" That's what the gospel of Christ does for you. We will work with him soon but he is pretty busy.
Tuesday. We had a wonderful zone conference. It helped me and Elder Olsen figure some things out that can better help our dendo. Especially in our family history. I would like to get stories of dad, mom, grandpa, grandma (both sides) and their parents if possible. I would be super happy if I could get some stories.
We made it back in time to try to meet W but she completely forgot about our lesson. So we went and dendoed the night away.
Wednesday always seems like the day we pack our lessons on. We had 7 lessons planned. Some of them were not strong. The not strong ones fell through and some of the investigators dropped. But the ones who want to listen, we were able to meet. Last week I said we met this guy named T. We went and visited him. Mostly we just talked to him and talked about his plants. He liked that we showed interest and he said he would come to church. He forgot to tell us that his wife had her birthday on the 23rd so he will end up not being able to come.
After this man we went to meet T. Well he is awesome as always. Busy too. Elections for Okinawa just passed and I think there is a larger scale elections that his friend is competing in. He is supporting his friend therefore extremely busy. We were able to tell him to pray before he reads the Book of Mormon, which he is loving.
We got a lesson with W. She is regressing because she isn't keeping our commitments. She said "I feel bad when I hear all of the members and missionaries stories of good feelings and experiences. I don't have them. I mean I feel good when i pray but I don't feel like this church is anything special." I turned to her and said "well have you prayed to know if the church is true?" She responded no. I said "that's why. You havent been doing what we asked you to do. We know you will feel it if you do it. But you aren't doing it so therefore you aren't feeling it." After that she said she would pray. Hopefully she is praying and things will turn around.
Thursday. Man I really don't like planning and having eikaiwa on the same day. For some reason this area has eikaiwa on Thursdays. Planning and then eikaiwa just kills you. Our classes have not been good because we have been so dead. Its not good. It also kills our Japanese too because we spend a whole day not speaking it. I wonder what we should do to fix that.
Friday. We start off with E. She has such a bad problem with forgiving. That is probably her only problem. We need to help her with that. We need to get the members more involved in her teaching. After her we went to S's house. Last week when we visited, his bike tire was flat. There was no way he was getting to church on that. So we went when he wasn't home and fixed his tire punk. Tt was super fun.
Remember that woman that walked into the church saying she wanted to repent? Well she completely dropped off the earth. She only gave her home phone number. But the cool thing is, in the phone book, it gives addresses to home phone numbers. I felt like a stalker but we found her house and visited. It turns out she is in the hospital and won't get out for a while. So that's, I guess, the end of her story for now.
We returned to S. He was super happy we fixed his bike. He was beaming when we visited him. We sat him down and talked about baptism. He said he would like to be cleaned from his mistakes and bad things. He has a hard time understanding so we have to teach simply and slowly. But we set a baptismal date for January 18th. We are super happy about that!
Saturday we spent sometime finding. It was super good. We went to an area that Elder Bevan andIi found. Apparently its really new. Almost every house was new. It was super awesome. Everyone seemed to be really genki and listen to us. This man named H.M. really seemed interested in our message. He talked about how God and Jesus appeared to Joseph. We asked him is that was believable and he said yes. My favorite part was when he stepped out of the house and randomly hugged me. It was awesome. We will meet him soon. There are a lot of amazing people we met. I wish I could say more but time limits me.
We had a lesson with C. It was so good. She has so many life pains and loves to pray because she feels good when she does. We taught her that feeling and told her to try to recognize it and understand what if feels like. It was a short lesson but it was what she needed.
We went to the N's with a member. I was super scared that it was going to be bad. It was super awful at the beginning because the kids were all over the place and the mom seemed like she wasn't in the mood.Bbut the member suddenly started to play with the kids and bam. the spirit came and we had the best lesson we have had with N. We figured out her understanding and cleared a lot of basic things up. Members have some amazing power. Our relationship with N is better now.
We went and visit N. It's been a while. We didn't teach anything but just to get back on base. It was super good and we figured a time where we can meet her.
SUNDAYYYYY!!! So I was super stressed about this. 5 people said they would come. One couldn't because he had his wife's thing. 2 more randomly got sick! One frankly didn't show up. But one of the people, J the lady from the Philippians, called me on Sunday and told me she was feeling better and she would come. So S and J came! They had a great time and felt like they were at home. I was a little upset about the fellow-shipping though. People just passed right by them. Not cool. But they felt the spirit. That's what matters. At the end, we talked to the wife of the recently reactivated member. She said it was okay to start lessons. Her name is Si. We think she can progress really quick.
After church we had ward council. For the past month we have been trying to set the Christmas party up so we can start planning for our open house. We also told them about the mission goal of the 250 people at church. They brushed off the goal. They just said "Elders, good luck." (Not all of them said it but some did and others kind of hinted it. They are really passionate about the work. So me and Olsen will try our hardest to get them going) We think we can pull in 5 or 6 investigators. There are some young members that can bring some more. We think we can get in total 15. Lots of prayer and work is needed.
After church we spent some good time finding. We found this one man that said "sorry its because I'm Japanese and its our culture to be Buddhist." I turned to him and said, "if you let the culture control who you become, you are choosing to let people control who you become. This message has no culture." It turns out he wasn't even Buddhist. The only reason why he doesn't listen is because he doesn't understand. His father and sister are actually Christian. and he lived in America for a long time. He said "well then in 3 topics, what is the message?" That kinda threw us off. We haven't heard that before. I said Christ is the center of the message. It is made for our families so that we can over come sadness and find joy. Christ, families, and joy. There are probably better ways or better words to explain it. But it was what he needed to hear and so he invited us back on next Saturday.
Have a great Thanksgiving!
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