Konnichiwa minasan!
This week was so busy I barely remember it all but here goes.
Tuesday: Renlund ι·θ taikai (conference)! Woo! Revelation was had. Precious humans were seen. Renlund ι·θ is actually an extremely hilarious dad joke person. So much dry humor. It was a good time. I've got lots of good ideas to help investigators and members now. Hopefully we can start using the stuff we learned when we help out members in the coming weeks.
Also I loved that he mentioned that missionary work is the second most associated action with forgiveness. I read a really cool story about that in the October 1980 New Era, "For Times of Trouble." There was a man named Eli H. Peirce. He was an "old, cigar-smoking, inactive, stern, swearing pool player" who had never read more than a few pages of scripture in his life was totsuzen called on a mission in General Conference by Brigham Young. He then dropped everything, bought a set of scriptures and went on his mission, never touching a cigar again since the day of his call. And he fulfilled a remarkable mission. One particularly interesting story from his mission is as follows. He had been asked to administer to a branch president's dying infant child. But the wife was waaaaay hantai and refused to let them give the baby a blessing, so they just prayed for the baby in a small room in the house. Suspecting they might do this, the wife sent her daughter to go spy on them and report back. They prayed until they felt that the child would be okay. When they arose, the child who was watching said to them “Papa, who was that … man in there?”
Her father said, “Brother Peirce.”
“No,” she said matter-of-factly, “I mean that other man.”
“There was no other, darling, except Brother Peirce and myself; we were praying for baby.”
“Oh, yes, there was;” the child insisted, “I saw him standing [above] you and Brother Pierce and he was all dressed in white.”
And all of this was done for a man like Eli Peirce. Missionary work really is deeply connected with repentance and forgiveness.
Wednesday: We visited Hayato and taught him about prayer cos there was no one in his shop. He's been responding really well to the concept of how the gospel blesses families, like he LoVES the Family Proclamation. So we focused on how prayer has blessed our families, and how daily prayer can bless him. He's actually really good at understanding blessings. And he said a beautiful prayer before we left! I drew him an o-inori houhou (Prayer Instructable) of him praying and he really liked it. As we've followed up with him, he appears to be praying every day! He's been making so much progress.
Thursday: We visited Mary at her new house, and it became very apparent that she needs the principles of the Family Proclamation in her marriage. It's really quite sad actually. She's starting to understand that our church and the Catholic church are in fact different, but she just doesn't care about the details it seems like. She doesn't want to change religions, partially because she's just been Catholic her whole life, and partially because she's socially converted to Catholicism more than the LDS church. So we're going to try to really connect her with one of the members and hope that that'll give her another incentive to start coming to church with us.
We went to visit Hayato again because he responds best to in person visits, and went over how to understand and recognize the spirit. He understands why we want to meet with him outside of his shop now, which is really helpful. Also we ran into Ai-chan guuzen ni at his shop! It was a literal miracle because she had dropped of the face of the planet. She had created a new LINE account so we lost all ability to contact her. But God is good and we were able to swap contact info again so she's still a good, healthy shigansha (investigator with a baptismal date).
Miracle number two is that Andrew messaged us and told us he could meet that evening. It was insane because we also had to teach TOEIC so we went on splits (miraculously there were shimai who could do it) and we were able to to both. I taught him Plan of Salvation and he liked it, but I think he was really exhausted from work because he had exhaustion and sadness written all over his face. He asked a couple really interesting, deep questions though. Like he asked how we all know about Jesus Christ and how it's possible to be happy even in hard times. I think he has a really hard life. Poor kid. But we committed him to a baptismal date and that's way way exciting, though his schedule is crazy busy so who knows when we'll be able to teach him next. We'll leave it up to God to help us with that one.
Friday: We met with Itsuki Shimai and talked about how we can help her dendo her friend Yuma. Currently the idea is a taco party and appealing to the fact that she really loves her World Religions class. (#resto amirite) Also we're starting up a mini mission prep class for Miyazaki Kyoudai and the twins in the ward so we can help them get out on missions. We're way excited. Gonna use all the sticky notes ever and make PMG Books of Mormon. Woo!
Saturday: We had a fun service project where we pulled grass from a nearby park with the ward. Idk why we were pulling grass but mah doesn't matter, it was fun. And also I obtained a new nickname: ebi tsuchi. I'm still confused how it happened. See, Katsu Kyoudai (our precious big brother in the ward) has a strange affinity for this shrimp sushi keychain I have on my bag (otherwise known as ebi sushi) and while we were talking at the service project somehow it became ebi tsuchi. (shrimp dirt. Idk. Probably because we were pulling grass and packing dirt and cos sushi sounds similar to tsuchi) And then somehow he decided that this new concept of ebi tsuchi should be applied to me as a human. Wakaranai. But it's a thing now. He calls me ebi tsuchi all the time now. I get back at him by calling him "onii-chan" in an outrageously high anime voice and he and Bagoyo Shimai die laughing every time. Our relationship is weird.
Also that evening we had a TAKOYAKI PARTY! Woo! (takoyaki is a ball of batter filled with various stuff you can stick into a tiny ball. Traditionally you put octopus in it. Hence the name takoyaki, which literally means "octopus cooked") It was such a good time. Hayato came and it was an actual miracle because he's so busy all the time. He was able to build the Friendship(TM) with Katsu Kyoudai and also he tried root beer for the first time. He thinks it tastes like poultice lol. Typical nihonjin. Hopefully from now on we'll be able to start meeting him outside his shop and he can start making some real progress ✌️✌️✌️
Sunday: We've finally got a Gospel Principles class up and running and Kubo Kyoudai is such a good teacher. We're so proud of him. Things are finally changing. I'm so excited. We're gonna get 10 shigansha by the end of the transfer. ✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️
ζγγ¦γγΎγ！ (*^^*)
Sherwood Shimai ππ
19ζ³ 20ζ³
1-2.) Takoyaki Party! π¦π¦π¦
3.) Chilling at Hayato's
4.) service with Katsu
5-6.) more takoyaki party! π¦π¦π¦
7.) takoyaki π¦
8.) we found root beer
9.) 8:45pm in the bamboo forest
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