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！！！
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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!
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