Hello my wonderful mother who is mine,
So I found out that President Smith doesn't allow us to use the iCloud photo sharing...so that's why I haven't posted anything this last week, you guys can send me pics over email but I can't view them through the iCloud thing anymore. Maybe it'll change next July, I guess we'll see.
We have still been doing almost all just finding, but we have found a lot of potentials so I think we will start teaching more and more. THis week we also did a couple mogi (mock) lessons with members, both to practice teaching and to BRT. So hopefully we will be able to get referrals from those members eventually. But yeah it feels slow to me but Hancock Choro says we are getting more contact info from people on the street than he's ever seen before, so the Lord really is helping us, I think we'll be teaching more and more from now on.
On Tuesday, 大きい きせき を 見ました！(saw a big miracle) We were trying a new method of streeting--we divided up our area into 10 sections, then we prayed and separately chose 3 sections. Then we would compare our choices and whichever number we had in common, that was the area we went to. We got #9 on Tuesday, and we actually didn't even make it to that area but I know it was inspired because on the way there we ran into a guy named りょう きょうだい。 (Brother R) We just started having a normal conversation with him, we asked about where he was going to college and what he was studying. We actually didn't even talk about the gospel for like 10-15 minutes, but then he asked us why we came all the way here to Aomori from America. Classic mistake--it was a straight せいれい (Holy Ghost) punch to the face from there. We talked about our purpose as missionaries and taught a little bit about God and Jesus Christ, and gave him a すくい の けいかく (plan of salvation) pass-along card. He asked about the picture of the temple on it so we explained what ordinances and covenants are, and how they've helped and blessed our lives. Then that led perfectly into the first ordinance, baptism, and we invited him to be baptized. Right there on the street. AND HE SAID YES!!!! So we asked if we could teach him more about it and our church and he said he would love to learn more. We got his contact info and he has been really busy this week but we will start teaching him as ASAP as possible!
One weird, less spiritual story from streeting this week...we stopped this guy in the street and started talking to him, and once he saw that we were gaijin he said (in his thick Nihonjin accent) "アイム ワキング デード (I'm walking dead)" then put his hands in the air like a zombie and walked away slowly. True story.
Hancock Choro and I have been going hard coming up with better ways to do finding. We have been brainstorming ideas this week, and the ZLs are in our apartment, so they decided that that would be our topic of discussion for Zone Training Meeting. Dad had a lot of good ideas too. What did you feel like were the best ways to find/connect with Nihonjin?
We just taught a few lessons this week...we taught the ふなはし かぞく (a less-active family) about gratitude, they have been coming to church more and more lately so hopefully it will continue to improve! We taught two もぎ lessons to members, one on the Restoration and another on Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy. The mogis were helpful partially because we (but really just I) need the practice teaching, but also we are trying to build relationships with the members and start to use them more in our dendo efforts. We thought that teaching them would help get them excited about sharing the gospel, so hopefully it'll work.
This week I had 2 must-have cultural experiences--Ramen (real Japanese ramen) and Mr. Donut! The ramen place was good, I could only read half of the menu but I just got the #1 regular ramen bowl. They bring it to your table and then heat it up right in front of you using a little canned flamethrower thing! So cool.
Mr. Donut was fun, they have so many different flavors. I got 3 but my favorite was this inside-out maple bar churro stick...maple on the inside, cinnamon in the outside, とても おいしかった。(Very delicious) Did they have Mr. Donut when you were here?
At Eikaiwa this week I was teaching the "advanced" group so basically we just had a conversation in English, and I helped them with pronunciation. One guy had super good English but he studied in Italy so he was a Nihonjin speaking English with an Italian accent...was not expecting that. We ended up talking mostly about the Olympics so I got all the good deets from them. I thought Michael Phelps was done, but I guess he's still getting gold medals? Isn't he getting old? It made me miss swimming a little bit. And they said Japan wasn't doing as well as America, but Japan's gymnasts and judo wrestlers are better at bringing out the beauty of their respective sports. Haha gotta have something I guess.
On Friday we had zone training meeting, which meant that I got to see all my Doki! Me and Nathan Choro sang/beat boxed a little bit of Joseph, just like old times. The ZTM was fun, I got to tract with Nathan Choro and Livermore Choro (from my Doki) for a little bit while our trainers were in a leadership meeting. I think we did a really good job of talking to everyone we saw, even though it was hard without any "experienced" missionaries.
That evening we went to Mr. Donut again--I am convinced that revelation can come through the stomach, as well as the heart and mind. We had met a woman named S earlier this week, and she said she was interested but she was pretty busy this week and we couldn't schedule any lessons. But she is apparently an employee at Mr. Donut! So we saw her there, she actually came up to us and said hi, and it wasn't very busy so we spent a while talking with her and the other employees. She wasn't able to come to church but she was really excited to see us, hopefully she'll be able to start taking lessons soon. If she can't then we might just have to try and teach her at Mr. Donut. And then if she gets baptized maybe the mission would reimburse us for all the donuts!
The spirit also guided us through our stomachs on Saturday--we went to get some ice cream at a conv. store right before Eikaiwa and we talked with the cashier for a while. His name is M, and apparently he was good friends with some previous missionaries, but they didn't put him in the area book as a PI for some reason. So we got his number and he said he likes hanging out with missionaries, so hopefully that will turn into a desire to learn the gospel. But for now at least he is open to meeting with us!
On Saturday, we did an all-out blitz inviting everyone we met to church. Literally everyone. One guy we tried to talk to just kept walking and ignored us, so I threw my bike down and caught up to him. He just kept ignoring me but we needed to give him some kind of invite...his hands were full with grocery bags so I just put a pass-along card in his front pocket. Hancock Choro thought it was so funny.
No one could come to church that we invited on the street (even people that were interested couldn't because of the Obon festival) but the Lord rewarded our efforts because H was able to come to church! We haven't seen him since we went to Nebuta together, he has been super busy and hasn't been able to meet. Then kind of out of the blue he was able to come.
The branch president had me and the other new elder, Murai Choro, give short talks. He let us know like 5 minutes before sacrament meeting started. Except Murai Choro is nihonjin so it wasn't that big of a deal for him, haha I was freaking out a little though. I just gave a short introduction and talked about gaining a testimony and why I came on a mission. I think it went well, but I am now realizing that everyone will tell me "Nihongo Jouzu desu ne!" (Your Japanese is excellent!) either way, just because I am American and trying to speak their language.
Right after church we gave H a lesson and we were hoping to set a baptismal date because he had been taught by previous missionaries for a while, but they didn't teach him nearly as much as we thought. He said he felt like he wasn't ready for baptism yet, but he does want to keep learning more and find out for himself if it's true. We taught mostly about how God is our Heavenly Father and how we can know that through reading the Book of Mormon. And he had a lot of questions about the Seirei, (Holy Ghost) so we talked a lot about that. He thought it was pretty cool that it can dwell in us. And he also thought it was awesome that eventually, after he gets baptized, he would be able to get the authority to baptize other people!
Hai is our main kyudosha right now but we have a lot of good potentials that we met this week. We are going to try and contact most of them today if we can.
We did teach J Kyoudai again, and I understood so much more Japanese than our first lesson with him. He wasn't able to come to church yesterday but he is coming to the Sapporo temple dedication this weekend. He really likes when we visit so hopefully we will be able to keep helping him be more active!
Ai shite imasu,
パスケット長老
Elder Paskett
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| Beautiful art at Eikaiwa this week! |
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| Zone Training Meeting |
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| Indian curry spiciness scale from 1-10 (...do they have these in Indonesia?) |
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