August 22, 2016--re: Deja vu weekend

私の 愛する、かんぜん な うつくしい 母、

Glad to hear moving in went well, and that's fun that Taylor has a mission buddy there! And sounds like Brent will be in his ward then?? So fun! That is too bad about the 2:30 p.m. church though. But tell Taylor to still set an alarm for church the first week, just in case. Learned that one the hard way ;)

So this week, it has still just been blitzing the streets...the hardest thing is how insanely busy everyone is! Our investigators H and R have so much potential but they are crazy busy with school and work so we haven't been able to meet at all this last week. Hopefully next week will be better with those two.

Usually we'll get contact info for at least one or two people each day, but the hard part is setting up an actual lesson. A lot of the time (again) they are just so busy, but also pretty often people aren't really interested but they're too polite to say no, so they keep coming up with excuses why they can't meet. So it can be hard to gauge whether we want to keep pursuing an appointment or drop them.

Last Monday, we visited a recent convert named T Kyoudai who just moved from Sapporo. He is 22 and was baptized about a year ago, and he moved in a month ago. We're not sure how active he is but we'll definitely be visiting him again. He is super friendly, we are thinking that he will potentially be a huge help in finding and fellow shipping new investigators. We had a lesson set up with him on Thursday but then he had to cancel last minute because of work, hopefully we will get something set up for this week.

On Tuesday, Nathan Choro and his doryo stayed in our apartment to do splits with the ZLs! That was way fun, except they had to sleep in the kitchen because that was the only place we could fit 2 more futons. And our dinner table could barely fit the 6 of us. It was a good time though, it was good to see them again.

It has been so rainy this week. Really rainy, Like Japan rainy. And we're not allowed to ride our bikes when it's raining so we have been doing lots of walking, oftentimes walking with our bikes. On Tuesday we were pretty far out and then it started raining, so we decided to eat out so that we didn't have to walk our bikes all the way back to the apartment. We went to this とんかつ (tonkatsu) place that was soooo delicious. Reminded me of having とんかつ at the McCuens. とても おいしかった。(very delicious)

We blocked out that evening to call all of the Potential Investigators that we had accumulated, and it wasn't as fruitful as we were hoping. We ended up dropping nearly all of them, but there are a few that we are still hopeful about. 

Wednesday was even more rainy--we broke out the raincoats, and it was あるくこと だけ (only walking) all day. The weird thing about the rain is that it is still hot. I'm sure you already knew this, but it doesn't cool anything down, it's really just 100% humidity plus the normal heat. So I'm not really the biggest fan of this Japan rain thing.

On Thursday we housed into a lady who seemed super interested, especially in Eikaiwa. She even had a friend that she thought would be interested, so we gave her an extra restoration pamphlet and Eikaiwa flier to give to her friend. But then she texted us the next day and said that she can't become a Christian because her grandfather is a Shinto priest, and it would be disrespectful to him. And she has work both days we do Eikaiwa so she can't come to that either. So that was a bummer, we are still trying to see if her friend has any potential.

We got ice cream from a dainty little shop down the street, it was actually maybe the best soft-serve ice cream I've ever had. We talked to this little family inside, it was a Mom and her 2 little kids. The kids didn't want to talk (I think they were scared of us), but the Mom was really friendly. Kind of the opposite of how things usually are.

This weekend was the dedication for the Sapporo temple!! We saw a broadcast for the cultural celebration on Saturday, except the broadcast was super spotty so we only saw about a third of it. What we saw was great though haha. There was a lot of dancing and I think there was a little play/skit about the history of the church in Japan. Then they all sang Happy Birthday to President Monson at the end!

On Sunday the broadcast was really spotty as well. We actually ended up seeing all 3 sessions of the dedication (because they needed us to check recommends at the door) so between the 3 I think we got the gist. Most of the talks were in English, and they would repeat each sentence in Japanese, that was fun to listen to. I would try and beat the translator in my head. He usually beat me though. And then Elder Stevenson was conducting the meeting, in Japanese, so that was a surprise. I think they had a romaji TelePrompTer or something. And the white handkerchief part was way fun in Japanese! Overall, I just felt so impressed by the faith and dedication of the members in this temple district. I think living as a member of the church in Japan must be so much harder than in America, just because of how small it is and just of the general opinion of Christianity here. I'm so excited that they have this temple now though! Even though Tokyo isn't that far, it's a lot easier (for the people in Aomori at least) to make a trip up to Hokkaido than to go down to Tokyo, so it will be much more accessible for the people in our branch.

So that's been my week! Hope you have an amazing week! Don't get too swamped with Cantus and RS and all the stuff you have going on. I'm excited to hear how everything goes though! 

Thanks for all you do!

いつも 愛しています！ (love always)

パスケット長老

Elder Paskett