Once again from mainland Japan... / Week #35

Konnichiwa minisan!

So this week went by super fast. I feel like I just barely emailed. Which I guess technically a week isn`t that long anyways.

So I`ve decided my new district is pretty awesome. There`s eight of us. The four sisters, and then the Tsuboi elders, and the Shimizu elders. The Tsuboi elders are both Nihonjin, Elder Oshima and Elder Yanagida. They`re hilarious. They`re so Nihonjin it kills me. Just one example: Elder Oshima is our district leader. During district meeting he writes chirashi kubari on the board (basically sticking flyers in everyones mail boxes) and circles it and tells us that we should all be doing this because it`s way effective. Then he hugged the white board. Yeah it`s inspiring. Now all I want to do is chirashi kubari.

The shimizu elders are Elder Madsen and Elder Stump. I found out Elder Stump is somehow related to the Reynolds in our stake. So Shannon if you ever see this I know your cousin!

Anyways, so we had a lesson with the Noguchi couple on Tuesday. We reviewed the first lesson with them because it had been a while. The Noguchis are a cute old couple in their 70s. They were investigators before but then they stopped taking lessons for a while. He actually read the entire Book of Mormon though and then they started taking lessons again. They are such a sweet couple and I truly think that they are looking for the truth because his health is not so good right now. We challenged them to pray together as a couple and to pray whether the Book of Mormon is true.

Also one night when we were streeting on the way back, Pinzon shimai stopped this lady. And she actually listened. Pinzon shimai asked if she had been to a church before. She said that she had been to several churches. So then we started talking about baptism and how we can have our sins wiped away. So she said she was open to coming to our church and she even gave us her phone number! That`s really rare. Usually people don`t want to give us their information (technically I understand why). So she called us on Saturday to ask when church was and we told her. She didn`t actually make it to church because she thought it was on Monday. But she wants to come still and is open to meeting with us to learn more. How cool is that?

Also I love our Eikaiwa class. I teach beginners with Pinzon shimai. But our students are so fun and they come to any church activities we invite them to. I feel like in Okinawa it was hard to get students to come out to church things, but there was a ward party this weekend and we had 6-7 students show up. We even have a few Eikaiwa students that we are teaching the lessons to. I`ve also decided that talking to and teaching young people is fun. Before I was kind of afraid to talk to people my age, but turns out it`s fun. Who knew?

We had interviews and training with kaicho this week and basically we came away with the message that we need to involve the Spirit more in our planning and finding and teaching! So that is our goal from now on. We need to pray at decision points when it comes to finding people, and we need to mogi (roleplay) a lot more! This way we will find those who Heavenly Father has truly prepared.

I hope everyone has a great week! Don`t freeze in Utah!

Malone Shimai