Things have just been a daily continuation of trying to just find someone to listen. And it seems to not work. We just try so hard everyday. We talk to everyone on the streets, we try to help people with anything we can.
We did that last week and it actually turned out well. We talked to a lady for 40 minutes. But as soon as an opportunity to talk about religion came up, she shut us down. But she is happy when she sees us.
We have this investigator that is amazingly old and has every problem that you can imagine. I forgot to mention this last week but Elder Jensen and I gave her a blessing. We came back the next week... and she wasn't healed, but she was like 20 times happier and super genki.
Something cool from this past week is our meet with Y, this guy Elder Gandy and I found like 3 months ago. He received the Book of Mormon 10 years ago. But every time we met we couldn't get off a message. So I wanted to review lesson one with him. And during the lesson I asked him if he read the BOM at all. And he said a little... but. And of course I asked him how it went. He said that he received a feeling like when one of his children was born and he knows that feeling came from God. So that was the happy story for this week!
We don't have a lot of time today because Elder Jensen and I went to visit a less active this morning. It went pretty well. It turns out the less active speaks pretty fantastic English. So we talked to her for a long time. Interestingly enough, she actually asked us how the branch was doing. For example, how many members are in the church. We were able to explain to her about the situation of Miyako just a bit and we were actually able to talk to her about her conversion experience. She said she can remember the feeling of when they placed their hands (she remembered the names too, and it was over 40 years ago) on her head and she said she actually felt like she was part of the house of Israel. Not only that, when we blessed the investigator, she said she felt comfortable and something familiar came over her.
The thing is we have a lot of people saying that they felt good when they tried to pray and they had a great experience with it. We testify of what it is but for some reason they don't connect the dots. They say it was great but they still lose interest. I don't know if it is me or my teaching but we do exactly what we need to do with regards to the lessons and it still doesn't work out. That is what is so frustrating right now. Elder Jensen and I only got 3 lessons this past week. 2 amazingly of them were member present and all 3 of them are progressing investigators.
Recently we have also been trying to get the members more involved with missionary work. The members here in Miyako look up to the missionaries so much. They talk to us in the most polite form time to time. So I was thinking if we get more of them involved in what we do, to see that we need their help, maybe the branch will grow. I've been asking members about less actives and investigators, asking them to call or visit them to ask them to come to church. And to get the members excited for missionary work, I give them Helaman 5:23-50 to read. Its when the one "less active" member helps the missionary effort and 300 people are baptized. The members love the story and hopefully I can get some dendo fire in them.
Jameson 長老
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| Elder Jensen. Maybe? |
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