Elder Landon Paskett's Journeys in Japan: January 9, 2018--Hello, hello, hello!

Hello hello hello!

This week was MLC, it was so good! We watched a Ted Talk about grit. A bunch of psychologists did a study where they looked at students, athletes, employees, and various other people who were working or competing for something, and tried to find factors to predict who would succeed and who would give up. They found that the only common factor to success was grit--just simply sticking with it no matter how hard it gets. I think it's pretty easy to see the parallels to the gospel, and to missionaries. A professor at BYU once told me that "brick walls are placed between us and our goals to weed out the ones who don't really want it." How bad do we want to serve the Lord? At what height are we no longer willing to climb? There is no wall too high to keep me from serving the Lord with my heart, might, mind and strength!

I don't know if I told you about the K Kazoku yet, a single mother and her 6 year old son M kun. We housed into them a couple weeks ago and she was so open and friendly! We invited them to the Christmas party and it seemed like they would come, but they didn't. But, we decided to visit them again this week, and it was wonderful! Just one of those moments where we really felt like the Lord's hands extending out to His children. We asked if we could share a message with her and her son from the genkan, and we had originally planned to show the video "Earthly Father, Heavenly Father" and teach the first principle from PMG and introduce the Book of Mormon. After we showed the video, I felt like we should ask what she thinks about God and her experience with prayer. She shared with us how her parents both passed away unexpectedly while she was in high school. She went to a Christian high school so she was learning at that time about the bible and prayer. She told us how she has prayed many times to her parents, trying to build a connection there, but it was clear that there is still something lacking. We dropped whatever else we had planned and we were able to teach her about the Plan of Salvation and eternal families--we asked what she thought about being able to meet her same parents again, and still as their daughter, eternally. She just said "会いたい--たしかに会いたい！"

We offered to teach her everything she needs to know to make that wonderful goal a reality. At first she just said "wait--there are things I have to do for this to happen?" We said of course--that's why God has a church! To allow us to learn what we have to do and become to receive all the wonderful blessings that He is anxious to give us. I am so thankful for this church and all the amazing blessings I have already received from it! M kun (her young son) ended off our lesson with an adorable prayer--"Please bless that I will make lots of friends at kindergarten. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." K san agreed to read the Plan of Salvation pamphlet to get a better understanding of what an eternal family actually means. We are so excited to see them continue to progress!

We had a lesson with an eternal investigator, H san. Earlier that day I read a manual about parent/child relationships for some reason, and it talked about how parents can more effectively correct children by asking them how they feel and then letting the spirit guide the child into realizing that their behavior is bad. It was kinda random and I was worried I wasted half of my personal study but then I totally used what I learned during the lesson! H san was saying that he can't be baptized because he likes smoking too much. We asked him how his experience was at church, he said he really liked the violin musical number, so we asked about his feelings during that. Then we asked how he feels when he smokes. And he said, "you know I actually don't even like smoking. I don't feel good when I smoke. It's just been a habit for so long it's so hard to break. But I would like to stop if I can." Amazing right? We invited him to make a plan to stop smoking, and he said he is not quite ready to commit to stop yet. He needs to really think it over and get himself committed, then he'll stop. So in the next couple weeks I think either he will decide to be all in and start finally really progressing, or we'll have to drop him. Please pray for H san! :)

To celebrate New Years, we had Mochitsuki party! I got to pound some rice with a hammer and then eat it topped with all kinds of delicacies.

We have really been focusing lately on how we can rely more on the Lord rather than our own talents and abilities--that has been a recurring theme in MLC and my interview with Kaicho, that I need to be humble enough to rely on the Lord so the spirit can use my talents, rather than trying to rely on my talents and do everything myself. Last night we were really trying to focus on that and we were able to find 2 new investigators who agreed to have us come visit their home again! It was really a testimony to me that it doesn't matter how good we are at the language or at working with people, if we don't rely on the Lord. But, when we rely on Him, He takes our talents and abilities and works wonders with them.

I love you so much!!! Happy birthday this week :)

パスケット長老
Elder Paskett