Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Miracles and progressions

The chances of meeting Nathan are really low. I would have to be in Fukuoka early in the day or have to be in his zone later in the day. It depends on where I get sent next and where he will be sent. (Jarom got news that one of his best friends, Nathan Sherman, was just called to serve in Fukuoka!! Sadly he will arrive in Japan the same transfer Jarom leaves. We are praying that there is a chance they will be able to see each other the day or two they are in Japan together!)

My memory is starting to fail me. I used to be able to remember so much but there is just so much to remember and so much to do. Its impossible to remember it all without writing it out. That and also I think that the sun has just blown up my brain. Jokes aside, I'm just saying I'm having a hard time remembering all that happened this past week.

So miracles and progressions this week.

Monday we just went to work and dendoed hard since we have been told to try to dendo 3 hours each day. It is such a blessing because it just refills our teaching pools, and miracles are something that comes with it. We found a couple of people on Monday night. One in particular is S. An 18 year old that just wants to find God's love in his life. He believes in God and prays to Him by himself.  He wants to find a way to not only to ask God for favors but to also be able to serve God. This kid is way amazing. We met him on Tuesday as well but since then we haven't had luck.

The area we went to go house was this danchi area over by our apartment. We have avoided it all of my time here because we thought lots of missionaries hammer it. Well actually the opposite is true. Lots of people have never met missionaries before and they seem really welcoming.

Tuesday we had our weekly lesson with W. It seemed like the normal lesson with her. Somehow we got to the point of comparing the gospel to food saying that it is the best taste and most healthy thing in the world. Then it changed to how people have different likes. She said at the end, "wait. I don't know what my favorite food is. I don't know what my favorite doctrine or religion. In order to find out I just have to try to eat it and figure it out." Break way. She said she wanted to try out our religion to see if she likes it. Hopefully things will finally get better with that.

Other than that we met some awesome people. I is one. She is this older woman but seemed to just drink in what we taught. I hope that we can review on her next week.

Wednesday. I have absolutely no idea what happened. That day is just gone from my memory.

Thursday we were able to meet K for a second to give her son some cookies we made and just say hello. It was good. I love that family. Her oldest son who is 18 is smoking now. Not a good thing but hopefully we can get to him soon. He loves reading and has a Book of Mormon. Maybe later on after he graduates we can help him.

We then had eikaiwa. It was super good. We are just trying harder and harder to get more people coming. If there are any ideas that would be great.

Friday. We ran around trying to visit a lot of people and because of that we didn't have a lot of time to dendo. We actually had to split because we had too many appointments that we couldn't cover. We visited E shimai. She got in a fight with a member a few weeks ago. It sounds like a different member sat her down and talked her through it. We called another member about a less active and she said that the less active had bad member relationships. I asked if the member that caused the relationship to go bad was still active. she said "Yes, she is a very strong member."

I don't think it is any of our business to dig into who did what. But if there is anyway for us to help the member relationships to become better that would be great. There are so many people in our ward who are less active because of members.

We were able to go on splits and Elder Just and I went to T. He is great. He has a smoking problem but other than that he said that he wants to believe in God so badly. We taught the first lesson. He said that he wanted to believe in Joseph Smith's keiken.

Later we met a member with the intention to meet her less active son. He wasn't there but right before we left he came home and we were able to talk to him a little bit. He is super busy all the time so this was really rare.

We taught H on Saturday. It wasn't all the best because the member there was mostly building a relationship with M. I guess that is okay but we needed to focus the lesson.

Later we were able to visit K. She was sick but we were able to fit in a 10 minute lesson about prophets. She loved it. She loves the idea how prophets are here to guide our families. She couldn't come to church but I'll talk about what happened in a bit.

We were housing and we prayed where to go. The place wasn't really receiving what we were teaching but in the middle of a contact a friend of ours that came to the Halloween and Christmas party showed up. He is a college student and we were able to get his number and get back into contact with him. A rich blessing!

Sunday was great. The two companionships combined - we had 6 people at church. The other elders have been blessed with crazy awesome people. They had 4 come to church. We had M and T come. Not only that but K sent her son to church. The 8 year old boy walked all the way to church and brought 3 of his friends. They were so funny.

After sacrament it was really stressful because we had to figure out what to do with all the people. Elder Olsen and I went on splits, he went with the Branch President and taught T. I took another priesthood and took M to gospel principles. The other elders took E and taught her and put their 3 other investigators in the youth class (since they had one 14 year old girl come). It was really hard to keep them all with someone they knew and a missionary. But I'm grateful that we have this chance to do this. Hopefully this will continue.

We taught M during 3rd hour. He is doing good. He committed to pray and read as a commandment. After this we will head into the 10 commandments.

We later visited J with a member and a youth. We watched the restoration. She said she felt goosebumps all over her. We testified to her that was the Spirit and it was telling her it was true. She said she thinks its true. The only problem is that she said "I'll come to church ever week. I'll come to church things. But do I have to get baptized? I want to die a catholic." We didn't even bring up baptism and she said that. We will have to explain that to her later. She actually doesn't know how to pray without a prayer book. She is Christian but seems to have forgotten a lot about it. This makes me so grateful for the Restoration of the gospel.

Elder J

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