Elder Landon Paskett's Journeys in Japan: February 20, 2017--The Week of the Kamakura!

Hello there!! Hope you had an amazing week!!

We started off our week up in Akita--went to Indo Curry for our district P-day, then stayed the night for splits the next day. My comp was with our DL so I got to spend the day with Watanabe Choro, a new missionary from Chiba who was called to a mission in Australia but is serving here until his VISA comes. That was a good time, he is a great missionary!

A week or two ago, Maynes Choro and I found a new investigator, S, who lives in Akita--he was only down in Yokote for a couple days, so we referred him to the Akita Elders. But he was able to meet on the day of splits so I got to teach him with Watanabe Choro! I wasn't expecting to ever teach S again so that was a fun surprise. We taught a solid lesson about prayer, how to pray and how our prayers are answered. He had so many questions about everything, we ended up talking a little bit about prophets and temples and eternal marriage and a hundred other random things. But I felt like Watanabe Choro and I taught very well together and were able to answer all of his questions. It also helped me realize that lessons are so much better if they are 100% focused on what the investigator has interest in, what he/she wants to know, instead of just what I want him/her to know.

Yokote Castle

The Kamakura festival was on Wednesday! O showed us around, it was a good time. It's still a hard situation with her--she comes to church consistently every week, but she's not a member because if she gets baptized, her daughter won't let her be buried at the family grave. She also has a few "doctrinal" issues with the church, namely that we teach that angels don't have wings. I guess missionaries have been too pushy with trying to get her to be baptized in the past, so we are trying to find ways to work around her concerns but without being pushy.

But the Kamakura festival was great! They had little tatami mats in all the snow caves and were serving amazake. They also had mini Kamakuras with candles in them everywhere! So pretty. We got a nice view of everything from the top of Yokote "castle," we went up to the top balcony with R. We saw so many gaijin during the matsuri--we very very rarely meet any foreigners in Yokote, but this week we met people from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, England, and America. We talked to an Australian couple on the street, and they were so shocked that we live in Yokote! They thought we were just messing with them at first.

Kamakuras

People told us the Kamakura days are supposed to be the last days of snow, and literally the very next day it was pouring rain instead of snowing. We got so soaked and it was frigid, so much colder than being out in the snow, because our gloves and hats and everything just get saturated with rain water and they don't keep us warm anymore! But after Friday it started snowing again, which I was grateful for.

This weekend Elder Holland gave a couple devotionals in Japan! On Saturday night, we were going to watch it with R, but we couldn't get the video to stream. We ended up just calling in and listening to the back-up audio line. We put the phone speaker up to the microphone on the podium so we could hear it better, the sound quality wasn't great though. It was really good, but I don't think R got very much out of it. Between the bad sound quality and no video and the church vocabulary and missing the first 20 minutes, he was kind of just confused. Hopefully he felt the spirit though!

On Sunday night we had another devotional, and the Miyakawas came to church and hooked their computer up to the TV so we were able to watch it with no problems! We brought K that night. It was a little hard to bring someone so new to the devotional with church members as the target audience, but I think he got a lot out of it. Elder Holland talked about how God loves fixing broken things, and talked very deeply about the Atonement as well.

We met a guy named M on the street last week, he was interested in our message and also loves English! He took a Book of Mormon and we exchanged numbers. Then this week he texted us asking if he could have 2 copies of the Bible, one in English and one in Japanese. Of course we said yes, so we delivered them to his house on Sunday and talked with him for a bit. Apparently the main reason he wants to learn about Christ is becuase he loves watching American movies and he hears Christ's name often in movies. He said his favorite movie was DieHard, and he has learned all the swear words in English so when he gets mad he can just cuss people out in English and they won't understand. He was even kind enough to demonstrate different ways to use all the swear words he knows. So we will stop by this next weekend to answer his questions about the bible and talk more about Christ. Hopefully he will start to have more of a doctrinal interest rather than just wondering why His name is used in movie scripts, but we'll take what we can get haha :)

Love you so much! Thanks for all you do!
パスケット長老
Elder Paskett