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
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| Celebratory Aisu! |
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| 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. |
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| The district! The new sister is from Idaho so now there are 3 Idahoans in the disutorikuto. |
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| Making St. Patrick’s Day cookies!! |
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