Elder Landon Paskett's Journeys in Japan: January 2, 2017--Happy New Year!!!

In case you wanted to see how to cook a missionary meal in fast forward:

Time-lapse of us eating the tonkatsu...

My most wonderful, 美人の母おやさま、

Can't believe it's 2017 already!! New Year's Eve weekend is super hard for dendo so they had us inside cleaning all day on Saturday, inside studying on Sunday, and today and tomorrow will be no dendo as well.

We had one cool experience with the other Elders' investigator, T san. As we were walking home on Tuesday night, we stopped one last person on the street, and we found out that he had come to the Christmas sacrament meeting because he was invited by the other Elders in our apartment. They gave him a Book of Mormon as well, so we were able to bear our testimonies of it and encourage him to try reading it.

That was kind of a funny coincidence, but when we got home and told the other Elders, they told us that T san hadn't been answering his phone and they were trying to meet with him but couldn't make any contact. I thought, "man, if only we could re-do that moment, we would've set up an appointment with him for the other Elders!" But I
figured what's done is done, and there was nothing we could do about it at that point. Then on Wednesday, we were out street contacting, and we totally ran into him again! He must've known the church is true by that point. We were able to talk with him for a bit and set up an appointment for him and the other Elders for the following day. The other Elders were super grateful, it was cool to see the Lord using us to create a miracle for them!

We met with S once, but he has the hardest time staying focused during lessons. Usually he will just start talking really fast with the Nihonjin member we bring, and it will start off on topic but quickly deteriorate. And we try to tactfully get the conversation back on topic, but he kind of gets bored and stops listening...it's been a super tough situation. But we're trying to think of ways to channel his energy into the lesson, and keep him a little more focused.

We met this adorable little family last week, it was so funny--first, we rode the bus over to O's house to try and stop by and fix the situation with his parents. We figured we would just apologize for what happened with the last elder and try to be as transparent as possible, we even brought a little cake thing that a member had given us as an apology present. We rang their doorbell, and I got in probably 4 words through the intercom before the Mom said "shukyo? Iranai desu!!!" and hung up. That was really frustrating because it wasn't like she rejected our apology, but the fact that she wasn't even willing to listen for long enough that we could apologize.

So we walked back along the road for a while, in the pouring rain, still holding this cake slice in its plastic wrapping. We got to a nearby store and sat down inside to eat the cake before it got ruined, and to mourn that we would have to drop our only investigator with a baptismal date. Then right as we were finishing, we saw a Mom and her 2 ADORABLE little girls eating some ice cream at nearby table. She was using her phone to take a picture of them, so we walked over and offered to take a picture of the 3 of them. At least, that's what I tried to say, but I messed up and accidentally asked her if she would take a picture of me with her kids. So we were super confused as she gestured for us to get in the picture and took a few. I guess she wasn't phased in the slightest by two random sopping wet gaijin asking to take a picture with her daughters! I'll make sure and send you the pics, her daughters are 5 and 8, they are seriously the cutest! So that was kind of awkward and funny but we were able to strike up a conversation with her, we found out the Dad is from Peru, so they all speak some Spanish. And they know a bit of English as well. Elder Hall is super excited at the prospect of actually using his 4 years of high school Spanish. We talked a little about how our church is centered around families, and she said they would love to hear more! Her husband returns from Hokkaido this week, so we'll try and meet with all 4 of them. And that is the story of how my Japanese led to us asking a stranger to take a picture with her daughters and led to us getting a family of PIs!

So not too much has happened this week, but we have done a lot of walking in the snow and our apartment is very organized and clean! We did meet one new investigator on Wednesday, but he didn't show up to his return appointment. This next week will be similar, with very limited dendo time, then transfer calls come on Sunday! This transfer is just 5 weeks, still cant believe how fast it has gone though!!

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