We had a lot of fun last week--we went to Indo Curry and played some games in the park, it was a good time! I'll send some pics. Kitakami is pretty small, quite a bit bigger than Yokote though. We are part of the Morioka Zone which is basically all of Iwate ken.
Yeah we will have a new mission president in 3 weeks! We had transfer calls yesterday (it was just a 3 week transfer), then this next transfer is a 9 week transfer so that Sekiguchi Kaicho can come in and get oriented and still have 6 weeks before he has to decide on transfers. Elder Holdaway and I are both staying, we're excited to have another 9 weeks here!
Monday night, we had a lesson with the T family--they are former investigators, and the mom and her 2 sons were super close to getting baptized, but they were dropped because the Dad was hantai. But we found their names in the area book, and it had been a while since the last contact, so we called her up and she said she would love it if missionaries could come by again! They are pretty familiar with Elders, but the Sisters will continue to teach them, so the Ward mission leader had all 5 of us (us, the sisters, and him) go over there together for the first lesson. We just talked right outside her house, but it was a great lesson! Also I realized how jouzu sister missionaries are...teaching a lesson with them was a revelatory experience for me and my comp. Our goal with everything now is to become more like sister missionaries. Her 2 little boys are 11 and 7 and extremely energetic, it took all 5 of us to try and keep them entertained and engaged in the lesson. We sang Families Can Be Together Forever with them, and they loved it. The older son R was getting a little distracted at one point, so I gave him my tie and taught him how to tie it, then we managed to tie that back into the lesson haha. (see what I did there?) R says he wants to be a missionary someday! The Mom's faith is really strong as well. We're still not sure if anything has changed from the husband's side, but the sisters picked them up as investigators and will keep teaching them, so we'll see how it goes!
After that lesson we took the train to Morioka for ZL splits. I had a fun time with Fono Choro--at one point during the day, we were biking through a neighborhood and I saw some people crouching down on the side of their car, it looked like they were trying to fix a tire or something. So we went over to offer to help, and we realized that the problem wasn't anything with the car, but they had a bunny who darted under the car and they couldnt get him to come out. We parked our bikes and tried to help get the bunny out, but that guy would not move. After a couple minutes, a few different friends from across the street came to help, so it ended up being like 6 people surrounding this car, all of us trying to coax the bunny our way. Eventually one lady brought a broom from her store across the street and prodded the bunny out. Someone else grabbed him and set him in the little kennel, then Fono Choro grabbed the lid and put it on. They were so grateful for our help! It was funny because we didn't
really do anything, but they were just so grateful and touched that we "helped" to "rescue" their bunny. The lady from the store across the street gave us drinks and a tour of her store, we ended up talking to this group of people for probably half an hour. They had never met missionaries before, but now they think we are heroes. And, the broom lady and her husband love English, so we invited them to GoEigo and she said they would come! Cool little miracles.
On Wednesday, the crazy guy who gave us a scooter came to English class! That was a surprise. They were 2 high schoolers who are pretty good at English, then him haha. He kept just telling random stories, in Japanese too, so we had to keep trying to re-focus him. It was pretty funny. One of the high schoolers, M chan (she also came to District p-day last week) had some great questions about past tense and present perfect tense and that weird stuff...I actually learned a lot about English myself that day. Her English is good, but she thinks it's not and doesn't have very much confidence in it, so I shared some of the language learning tips they taught us in the MTC--there is a Gift of Tongues Video where someone talks about how you need to make 300,000 language mistakes before you can get fluent (or something like that), and it is up to you to decide how long it will take to make those mistakes. M chan thought that was way awesome! MTC language training came in way clutch.
Speaking of language mistakes, I gave a talk on Sunday! I needed a nice transition from a self-introduction into the gospel, so I made up a conversation between me and Dad while we were out harvesting potatoes and I asked about the meaning of life. Except everyone thought I was being serious, so now they all think Dad is a champion potato farmer with the best life advice (not too far from the truth). I felt really good about my talk though! We had Sister Takahashi (who is super hilarious and loud) and Yamada Choro from the Mission Presidency speak as well, it was an awesome and very spiritual sacrament meeting.
F san has made great progress!! We were finally able to get into some doctrine, and he was so fascinated by the Plan of Salvation. Up to this point we had been doing a lot of BRT/how to begin teaching and trying to foster his interest, and now that he's opened his heart a little more he is just eating up the lessons. He knows a lot about JW doctrine and Buddhism, so he had so many good questions about the Plan of Salvation. We weren't able to teach the whole thing, but even from just the first half, he told us that it all makes so much sense now. He sees how God loves him and how his life fits into the grand scheme of things. For the first time, he realizes the purpose of life and is starting to see us and not just representatives of some church, but as representatives of God with a message of truth. He is so awesome and I have great hope for him!
It's been another fantastic week, and since it's a 9-week transfer that means I will hit my 1-year-in-Japan mark this transfer. I wish the time would slow down!
I love you! Thanks for all you do!
XOXOXoxoxoxXOXOXOXOxoxoxoXOXOX
パスケット長老
Elder Paskett
PICTURES FROM DISTRICT PDAY:
No comments:
Post a Comment