March 19, 2018--This week was the best!

My awe-inspiringly wonderfully fantastically fabulous and exquisitely gorgeous Mother dear,

This week was the best!!!

To be honest I cant keep track of what happened last week and what was 2 weeks ago but I’ll fill you in on a couple of the recent highlights...

We met probably the most golden investigator of my entire mission! Maybe we aren’t supposed to use the term “golden investigator,” but we knocked on her door and explained who we are, and tried to just get to know her a little bit better before we went into our message and invited her to learn more. But before we could even get that far, she told us that she has been thinking recently that she really wants to learn about Christianity! She went to a friend’s wedding at a church and thought it was kind of もったいない **(what is that in Eigo? Haha)** [more or less..."it's a waste of time" or "meaningless"] that they were all there and signing hymns and said アーメン at the end of the preacher’s talk, but no one (including the one getting married) knew anything about Christianity or what it actually meant! We decided to show her the Book of Mormon and invite her to study it with us and take lessons... but she just took one look at the book and was like, “this looks really hard. Is it ok if I just have you guys teach me?” So tomorrow we will have our first lesson with A san! We also realized that it is super easy to set up appointments if they actually want to learn haha.

Also, she is a high school teacher and right now is spring break (which is in between school years for Japan), so she told us she would be getting a transfer announcement on Friday and might stay or might have to go teach at a school somewhere else. We prayed so hard that she would stay...and she did! She sent us a LINE saying, “I’m technically not supposed to talk about for another couple weeks...but I’ll be staying in Towada for the next school year!!” God is good.

We were finally able to meet again with S san! We met her housing a few weeks and she is Christian and showed some interest in the Book of Mormon. We had come to follow up a few times but she was never home, until this week! We invited her to church, and she accepted! She said she had her own church though, and gave us some pamphlets about 統一教会。[Unification Church?] But she actually came to the Misawa Branch and brought 2 friends! We went there this week as well because the Branch President wanted us to give talks. Her friends both left partway through sacrament meeting but she stayed the full 2-hour program, and we were able to talk for a while after, and we set up a lesson for Monday morning at a member’s house. She and a friend came, and it was a very very tiring lesson. She and her friend are pretty active members in their church, and we spent probably 2 hours listening to them talk about their church and their doctrine.

After we listened, they were willing to hear our spiel, and we just showed a simple video about the restoration and explained that Jesus Christ’s church is on the earth once more. I bore testimony that this church truly has the authority of Jesus Christ, and that God gave us the Book of Mormon so we can know if that is true for ourselves. It made me realize how simple, and yet how significant our message is. Christ’s church has been restored. We didn’t need to expound on doctrine for hours, we just bore simple testimony and the spirit was there. Even though the 2 of them probably just wanted to convert us to 統一教, S san for sure felt something. She looked me in the eye while I bore my testimony, and accepted an invitation to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. Her friend didn’t answer our invitation, but I think a seed was planted in S san’s heart!

Our Eikaiwa class has been way sukunai (like 0 to 1 students) lately, but we had 3 last week because the Buddhist people who taught us wanted to come learn English! They weren’t interested in learning about Christ, so we were worried that we had wasted the Lord’s time listening to them teach us about Buddha. But we were able to build a friendship and they came to English class, so maybe the door to them accepting the gospel is starting to open!

Other than that, we met a lonely obaachan who needs friends to talk to and has a lot of opinions about different religions. Most of her opinions were in line with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, so we told her “you already sound like a Christian, you should totally get baptized.” She was like “really? I’ve never thought of becoming a Christian before... hmm...” and she told us she wanted to try coming to church when she gets the chance! She even said a prayer to end our conversation/lesson at her genkan. We taught her how to pray, and I was going to ask her if I could pray before we left, and then she just went ahead and started praying! Haha it was great.

We met the most chill elderly couple of all time, who just moved here from Kanagawa (I think) and they were so friendly to us. The Obaachan asked where our church was and said she would go and hear what we have to say! We told her that we could come teach her at her house but she wanted to go visit our place. We invited her to the sacrament meeting at the community center and loaned her a Book of Mormon to read until then! Her husband is also super friendly and way funny!

We have been meeting lots of new Qs lately but have been having a hard time having solid follow-up contacts with them, so we decided to make cookies for St. Patrick’s Day and take them to a lot of our new-ish investigators who we haven’t really been able to start teaching yet. It worked really well actually! One mom opened the door and immediately said “sorry, we’re busy...maybe next time if the timing is better!” But we were like, “we just brought over some cookies for an American Holiday! We just wanted to drop them off and we’ll be on our way...” She was so surprised and talked with us for a little while at the door, and her little daughter came to the door too and was super pumped about the cookies. Service soften hearts! 

We have been really trying to focus on individuals and love them as Christ does, and we have found that when we just truly forget about numbers and focus on doing the Lord’s will, we are able to be guided by Him, see miracles, and our numbers naturally go up. As we have really tried to love the people, we have been blessed with more people to teach and more opportunities to teach them. The Atonement enables and strengthens us not only to overcome our sins and the natural man, but to grow to be more like Christ. Not just to get rid of negative habits and tendencies, but to add on positive ones—love, patience, charity; even the ability to smile at people who reject us is a gift from God. I have felt my love for this people grow so much, I hope that someday I can love as perfectly as Christ does. I know that Christ loves us! He wants us to be happy. I know He lives. I love His Gospel!! I am so grateful that I can share it every single day :)

Love you so much Mama!!!
--
パスケット長老
Elder Paskett

Celebratory Aisu!

Our new Indonesian homie! We knocked on his door and started
talking in Japanese, and he responded in way good English that hedoesn’t understand Japanese.

The district! The new sister is from Idaho so now there are 3
Idahoans in the disutorikuto.

Making St. Patrick’s Day cookies!!

March 12, 2018--Staying in Towada

Another great week! We got transfer calls and we are both staying another transfer! Actually all 6 elders in our district are staying. Sister Ishikawa is headed up to Aomori and we will be getting a new Sister from the MTC and a new Senior couple from Herriman, Utah.

We have been trying to follow up with our contacts a lot this week, we have had some trouble getting the timing to line up right, but we visited the A family again and it was great!! The son R kun (8 years old) saw us through the window and opened the door before we even got there. His Dad was home so we got to meet him! I was a little nervous because as I’m sure you know, the Japanese Dads are often the ones opposed to Christianity and religion...but he was so friendly!! We told him we came over last week and met his wonderful family, he was like “yeah I know, R was talking about it all week!” Haha. He asked where we were based out of because R kun really wants to come visit “our place”! So we invited them to church, and he said they would come next week. “We’re not Buddhist or Christian or anything, but R kun really wants to go so we’ll go together next week if that’s ok.” Way to go R kun! The Dad doesn’t seem crazy interested yet, but he is open-hearted. He is such a great Dad too. I really think that if he and his wife have a chance to hear and understand the Gospel, they will accept it. And R kun is providing that opportunity! We played some basketball with him (he is really good for an 8-year old...low-key better than I am haha) and had a good conversation with his Dad too. Please pray for the A Kazoku!!

As far as snowstorms, I think they are done for the year! We spent almost the whole week last week in Hachinohe, and when we came back the snow was almost all melted from being rained on. Yesterday we were out on bikes and it was great! We can’t ride in the rain or snow, so they are both pretty taihen if we want to go anywhere far away.

Glad Willy Wonka was good, hope tour and ballroom comp go well too! Are Grayson and Maddy both in it?

We left on Wednesday to go to Hachinohe for DL splits on Thursday. I was with our DL’s comp Kaku choro who is awesome! He swam in college before his mission. His parents are both Japanese, so he looks like a Nihonjin and has really good Japanese, but was born and raised in the U.S. It was pretty funny to see which people thought he was from Japan and who could tell he was a foreigner.

The next day was DTM, and we spent time that afternoon on Facebook as a mission sharing the Hana wa Saku video! So that’s why it probably popped up on your news feed a million times...but yeah a lot of different members and non-members have expressed their thanks for the video and said it was very moving! I realized that even singing that is not the best will bring the spirit if it’s from the heart :)

We were planning to attend a “Harry Potter party” in Hachinohe the following day (Saturday), and we realized that if we went back to Towada we would just have to come straight back in the morning, so we stayed the night in Hachinohe again on Friday. The party was great! The sisters planned most of it, and they wanted me to make a skit for the end. “We want to write out a skit to teach everyone the plan of Salvation using Harry Potter characters, we want it to be really easy to understand and funny.” So I stretched my creative muscles and wrote “Harry Potter and the Plan of Happiness” this week! Haha. Probably my finest work of all time. It was set in potions class, where the trio decide they want to make a happiness potion—then Dumbledore comes and explains how our life IS a happiness potion! So I got to teach a group of people about Christ and the Plan of Salvation, while holding a magic wand.

The past couple days, like I said already, we have had trouble getting timing right with our new investigators. We tried to visit about 8 different people on Sunday, but only 1 was home. So that has been hard, but now that we have bikes it doesn’t kill our day if someone isn’t home. In between follow up visits, we have tried to really listen to the spirit to be aware of more finding opportunities. On Sunday, we were trying to go to a Q’s apartment but went to the wrong place and ended up at an apartment building that looked very similar but was not his. We decided to hit it up anyway, and only a few of the doors answered. One of them was a nice guy named S who thought we were the pizza guy—but he gladly took a pamphlet about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ instead of pizza! Didn’t even seem that disappointed. He doesn’t have a job right now and spends most of his time just playing video games, so meeting with him shouldn’t be too hard.

We also met a super solid couple last night! We had about 10 minutes of finding time left before we needed to head towards home, and the very last door we knocked on was the M's. They are probably in their 70s, but they are both super nice and so funny! Mrs. M asked if we had a church, and said she wanted to come this Sunday! They aren’t Christian, but they said they would try listening to our message and see what they think. She was like, “sorry we’re so old. I hope it’s not disappointing that it’s just an old grandma who wants to come to church.” We assured her that we were very excited to have her there, haha :)

いつも愛してます！！！

--
パケット長老
Elder Paskett

Photos 1-4: Bandai Conference from a couple weeks ago

Photos 5-9: Behind the scenes of the "Hana wa Saku" video (and he says about #9--"can you tell I've been doing squats lately?")

Photos 10-12: DTM / Sis Ishikawa Birthday Party; Sis Hirano (deaf member whose boyfriend we are teaching)

Photos 13-18: Harry Potter Party!

March 5, 2018--3 Miracles

It has been an amazing week!! The Lord’s hand has been guiding us in the work. We are getting to the point where we have lessons scheduled and people to teach! We are finding lots of investigators and dropping a lot, but some progressing people are coming out of the woodwork and we are getting excited!

First miracle! We come to an apartment building where you can’t get in unless someone who lives there lets you through the glass door. At the entrance there is a just an intercom where you can call to any of the rooms in the whole building, and they can talk to you and choose whether or not to let you into the building or not. And sometimes people get mad if you just ring up to every single room, so we have to be careful with who we were going to try and call. Looking at all the rooms from outside, we try to figure which rooms have people home. About half of the lights are on. I ask Mateaki Choro which room looks good to him, and he says he likes the look of a room on the 3rd floor with dark pink curtains. We aren’t sure which room it was, but I make an educated guess and push 3...0...5. 呼ぶ。 We wait as it rings once, then twice. Then we hear a voice on the other end, asking who it is.
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.” 
“What are you here for?”
“We would like to share a message about Jesus Christ.”
“Ok, come on in.”
I thought I had misheard him at first because no one ever lets us in at those type of apartments!! But sure enough, the locked door unlocked and opened to let us in to the apartment. We entered and walked up to the third floor, where we were able to teach our new friend the message of the Restoration and explain what the Book of Mormon is.

Second miracle—we are housing Saturday morning, and no one is home. An investigator we were planning on visiting wasn’t home, and we just finished a 2-story apartment building without a single answer. Looking over the city from the 2nd floor, we saw a prayer together for guidance. My eyes go straight to a gray and pink apartment up the street to the north. I point it out to Mateaki Choro and he says, “I was just thinking that that building looked like a good one.” We go there and not a single person is home—except one! A young, single mother and her adorable daughter. Clearly weighed down by months, maybe years of stress, we try to be really friendly and become her friends. Before we leave, we share just a little bit of how the Gospel has helped and blessed our lives and particularly our families. She took a pamphlet to read before we come to visit again next week!

Third miracle—Saturday afternoon, we are trying to contact a referral from 2 other missionaries who worked in Towada for just a day (during the blitz). We finally find the correct house, but the referral’s husband is not willing to listen to us for longer than a couple words before he slams the door. As we are leaving, we see someone pull up in a car, but immediately turn around and drive away. As we walk away, we see the same car pull out of a parking lot and come back to this house. The driver makes eye contacts with us and gives that laughing apology bow that Japanese people do when they feel awkward. We realize that it is our referral as we see her run out her car and into her house, worried that we would try and talk to her before she got in from the driveway. So we decide to drop that referral, but we still have hope that someone nearby is prepared for the gospel. We knock on door after door, but get only kekkoes and people who are offended that we go door-to-door trying to share religious beliefs. 

After enduring for a good while, I notice myself start to get a little cynical, so we decide to leave and try a different area. On the way out of this neighborhood, we pass by a street and my eyes are caught by this little sign on the side of a duplex house. The spirit says so clearly—knock on their door! But we had already decided to leave. Plus, I am sick and tired of this area. But with every step I take farther away, the still small voice pushes harder in my mind. I rationalize to myself, “we can always do it another day.” We continue walking, and my comp says, “we can always knock their door another day.” Yeah, that’s what was I thinking too. Then suddenly I stopped. “Wait, did you think we were supposed to knock on that door?” “Well, yeah. But, we were already on our way out of the neighborhood...” We said a prayer to confirm what we already knew through the spirit—and again I felt, go to the house! We knock on the first door—no answer. Second door—kekko desu. We knock on their next-door neighbor’s house—and an energetic 7-year old boy rushes to the door. えっー、外国人だ！！ (Oohh! Foreigners!)  And his 3 sisters all come running to the door and ask us all kinds of questions. The mom comes to the door to see what all the commotion is about, and asks who we are. We explain that we are missionaries, and ask permission to share a message with her family. Before she can even respond, the kids cry out in chorus, “Yes! Of course! Please come in!!” We enter and share John 13:34 about love. We share a 5-minute message about love and giving hugs, and the kids are a little shocked about the radical notion of hugging their own siblings. But we promise them that they will become good friends if they hug each other. 

After autographing various pieces of paper, answering their questions about Santa Claus, being graciously shown their different homework assignments, and taking a picture together, we leave. The kids all run to the window and wave us down the length of the whole street until we turn the corner, out of sight. Until next week!

The Lord is really working right here with us!! Every time we turn to Him in prayer, He guides us. I know He lives and directs this work. This is His church, and His gospel. I know it. I live it. I love it!!

愛してます！！

パスケット長老
Elder Paskett

1-3: Bandai conference! See if you can find me in all of these pics ;)

We had a capture the flag snowball fight, played volleyball, went in the group o-Furo, and made little glowing snow cave things (see pic 7) for a music video!

I sneakily switched name tags with President when he gave me a hug
at conference, so now he calls me President haha.

The A Kazoku

February 28, 2018--Happy March!

My beautiful, wise, fantastic mother who is mine,

Yeah I guess the cold really isn’t so bad! I think the coldest it has gotten is like -14, but usually during the day it get s up to 3 or 4. Nothing like Norway haha! Thats so cool about Rylee too! Tell her congrats for me :)

I had splits with my DL Terry Choro this week! We had a good time, we were able to go to a Shuwa circle and learn some sign language, and we taught English to a high schooler named U. He is so awesome! He goes to the American ward in Misawa every Sunday, mostly to practice English. He usually stays for the Japanese branch right after as well, which is where I met him first a few weeks ago. Apparently one of the sister missionaries in Hachinohe (where he lives) showed him a video of me singing a happy birthday song (the Michael Bolton one) a while ago, so he recognized me away and was like, “パスケット長老ですか?? ずっと会いたかったよ！” (You're Elder Paskett? I've been wanting to meet you!!) So we are tight now and had a good time learning English! He told us all about his future dreams, he wants to hug millions of people and help homeless people find jobs, haha he is great :)

We have a newish Investigator named H san who is Christian, but isn’t going to church right now. She doesn’t like crowds and is really shy, she lives alone with her dog. We wanted to make her feel comfortable enough to come to church, and our morning sacrament meeting right now is between 3-7 people so that actually helps. We do it at a member’s house, Tozaki shimai, so we decided to go bring cookies to Hatayama san with Tozaki Shimai, and invite her to church. She wasn't able to come this week, but she is friends with Tozaki Shimai now and is open to coming sometime in the future! When we went to the store to buy ingredients for cookies, we just happened to run into our Filipino friend J! He told us he was sorry he didn't add us on facebook yet, but he would as soon as he got to wifi. He is such a solid guy, we are excited to see where things go with him.

We brought cookies to our other investigator D who had the flu, and he told us he would for sure get better by Sunday so he could make it to church! We were waiting for him at our evening sacrament meeting at the community center, but he didn't show up. We went to visit him after to see if he was doing alright, and he apologized profusely that he had to stay late at work. As an apology, he took us on a tour of his bread shop and esthetician business, and gave us some sample bread and cookies and skin cleansing drink, and sprayed our faces with detox mineral water. Haha it was an adventure! He is such a funny, goofy guy. He felt pretty bad about not being able to come though, he promised he would come next week. We haven’t been able to teach any actual lessons to him yet, but I think he has a lot of potential.

We had a missionary conference at Bandai in Aizuwakamatsu, it was great! I got to meet a lot of new missionaries, we had some spiritual experiences and fun activities, I don’t have too much time to explain it all now but I’ll fill you in on the deets next week.:)

One cool miracle was on Saturday night, we had a goal to contact 100 people that day, and we were at around 93 but it was getting late so we started walking towards home. On the way, this good-looking apartment caught my eye for some reason. I turned towards Mateaki Choro and saw that he was looking at the same building. There were about 8 rooms so we decided to use a little bit of our dinner time to tract it up and try to reach our goal.

We got a few kekkoes, then person #98 was a super nice lady who had a lot of interest in the Book of Mormon! She was super interested in why a couple of young Americans were walking around in the snow too. We explained what we do as missionaries, and she happily accepted a Book of Moromon and said we are welcome to come back anytime!  That was a cool little testimony to me that God blesses and guides us as we do our best to carry out inspired goals. Our goals and plans don’t change God’s plans, but through making goals and plans, it enables God to guide us to accomplish His will.

I love being a missionary and I love Japan!!

Love you momma!!!

パスケット長老

Elder Paskett

Just 1 today! This was our sacrament meeting on Sunday ft. the Sasaki
family, Hansen Shimai and Tozaki Shimai: