This week was the start of a new transfer! Holdaway Choro left me which was way sad. We were having a grand old time, but now the Lord needs him over in Tsuruoka. Luckily I got to stay in Kitakami! I am here with Elder Pratt, and we are now the Zone Leaders of the Morioka Zone...that was really surprising because the ZLs have always been in Morioka before, this is the first time having them anywhere else. Starting this transfer, there are 4 APs, 2 down in Sendai (for the southern half of the mission) and 2 in Morioka (for the northern half of the mission). Learning how to be a ZL hasn't been too bad, so far life actually isn't too different. We just have kind of a crazy transfer planned because we have to attend each district's DTM once and do splits with the APs and with each DL (including twice with our DL) and each companionship with a new missionary as well...that plus 2 zone-wide conferences and 2 baptisms in our branch so far means our transfer is already packed pretty tight. But, it's wonderful and I definitely can't complain!
F has been doing great--we have been reviewing the lessons and trying to better gauge his understanding, there has been a lot that we have taught but that he didn't really remember or didn't really understand. But now he has a solid foundation and is learning pretty quickly, and he is just eating up the Book of Mormon! His date was in October but this week he told us he would be ok with being baptized sooner, so we moved it up a month. He sent us a pretty funny text during the week, basically telling us he had finally made a firm decision that he would spend the short time remaining in his life becoming a Mormon and not a Jehovah's Witness. When we came over to visit, he showed us that he sent a similar text to one of his JW friends that he took lessons from. He was so excited about it too, it was pretty cute haha. We found out this week there is no font in Kitakami at all, so all baptisms are done in Morioka (about 45 minutes north). One of F's concerns with baptism was that he didn't want to be baptized in a big church with lots of people like the one in Morioka. He wants it to be small and if possible wants 4 or 5 others to be baptized with him haha. And, I mean, we would like that too, but we are trying to help him overcome that fear because we can't promise him that he won't be the only one getting baptized at his service. So if we can overcome that fear and his smoking addiction, he should be good for his date on September 16th!
We have a new-ish investigator K who we were able to set a baptismal date with as well! September 30th. He said he still isn't sure if he believes in God or not, but he committed to be baptized if he gets an answer to his prayers that what we teach is true. He is 24 and looking for a full-time job right now, so we are trying to take advantage of the time we have right now before he finds a job and gets a lot more busy. He is doing great and we are taking him on a tour of the church this week since he was kind of nervous about the idea of attending church on Sunday. Hopefully that will help ease his concerns!
We had a cool miracle with M chan (the sisters' investigator who is in high school)--she got permission for her dad to be baptized! Before he had told her no, and then eventually he changed his mind to "ok but wait until you're 20," but then this weekend he gave her permission to be baptized now! So she will be getting baptized sometime in the next few weeks and we are so excited for her!
This last week we ran into so many awesome people--we kept trying to visit different PIs, and didn't really have much success with the people we were actually trying to contact, but we had a lot of success with unexpected people placed in our path. We ran into a college student one morning who was hitchhiking around Kitakami trying to get to Sendai--he lives in Akita and has actually met missionaries before who invited him to English class. We were able to talk a little bit about why missionaries are actually here, and he actually shared an experience where he was almost hit by a car but was protected by God. We taught him more about God and he was excited to take a Book of Mormon! Another time we were running late to a lesson when we passed by a young guy that I felt like we should talk to--he was so open and friendly and just happened to love English. He is a semmon gakkou student and he said he always prays to God when he is sad or when he needs help on tests and such. We asked him if he learned to pray from his parents, he said that no one has ever taught him about that kind of thing, but he just felt for some reason that it would be good to pray to God in those times of need. We gave him a Plan of Salvation pamphlet and hopefully will be seeing him again soon!
We taught F san yesterday, and as we left, we saw 2 young guys parked right outside his house taking a smoke break. We had barely gotten out the door when one of them noticed we were gaijin and called out to us in English. We talked about English class, but they didn't really seem like the type of guys who would be interested in religion. So we left it at that, then said as we were starting to walk away, "let us know if you ever have interest in God or Jesus Christ." And one of them was just like, "oh yeah I have interest in that." So we quickly stepped back, and had an awesome conversation. He had studied a lot of different religions but hadn't really heard about Mormons. We explained the restoration and the Book of Mormon to him and he thought it was the coolest thing--he lives in Morioka, so he asked if he could get his own copy of the book from the Morioka church. We told him we had one for him right there, for free! He was so stoked.
Kitakami is the best! I love being a missionary.
Hope you are doing well and having fun in Indonesia! Love you so much!
パスケット長老
Elder Paskett
Pics:
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| Some new homies we met on the street |
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| the new district...ft. Sisters Ishikawa and Mitsuyama, and Elders Paskett, Pratt, Strate, and Garaycochea |
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| This is what happens when you live next to a tanbo |
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