Well this week sure was an adventure. It was transfer week! I'm staying here in Matsuyama with Bagoyo Shimai! Loving Shimai died (was released from her mission) and is back in Oregon now, living the regular person life again. She was 80% of our impulse control. Who knows what's gonna happen now lol.
We're seeing a huge increase in the effectiveness of our work because of the portable wifi now. Just yesterday we were able to contact every single one of our investigators and several of the members to set up appointments and follow up on commitments even though it was pouring buckets outside! Furthermore, the kankei (relationship) we've been able to build with the YSA in the ward has increased exponentially because of our increased ability to respond quickly.
Katsu Kyoudai especially is our new BFF. I've been using art to dendo a lot these days, and we've been wanting him to go visit Hayato with us for literally a whole transfer but he kept evading us until we just showed up on his doorstep at like 8:30 on Friday with a cookie and a dumb laminated doodle of him holding takoyaki (he's really good at making takoyaki I'm way impressed) and a crepe. (we legit couldn't find his house until he came out like "i heard you laughing why").
So now we're like his annoying little sisters and he's our hilarious big brother and we have a thousand hilarious inside jokes from our conversations over Facebook messenger. (see: this email's title) and he's a thousand percent more willing to dendo with us. We went from being ignored in favor of watering flowers with a bowl of water to sending dumb rabbit stickers to each other on a daily basis. The moral of this story is that art and cookie dendo is the bomb and is the secret to winning friends and gaining influence.
And then because that kankei is so much better now (literally 3 days and we're best friends) we've been able to make better progress with our investigators! We've figured out what's making it so hard for Suzuki-san to progress. He's been an investigator for so long that he's kinda forgotten the first lessons. Thanks to the help of the kyoudai who dousekied for us, we were able to get to that problem's root. So from now on we're going to restart the lessons from the beginning to rekindle that original spark.
Also we were finally able to reach the core desire of Hayato's heart: a family. Poor guy just wants to get married, but as we all know, the world's vision of marriage is not only stressful, but sad and disheartening. We read the Family Proclamation with him and he loved it! Both Bagoyo Shimai and I felt prompted to promise him that if he gets baptized he'll get married, but we also felt like we have to wait until we can teach him outside of his shop before we can promise that to him. The Spirit is just too hard to discern in his shop. But! A literal miracle happened! We visited his shop with Katsu Kyoudai on Saturday and they chatted and got to know each other and it was great. And then when we invited Hayato to the takoyaki and root beer float party we created with Katsu Kyoudai, he said he would come!!! Hayato never comes to things! He always says he's too busy! But this time he said yes!!! Literally this is all because Katsu Kyoudai came with us. What a hero.
On top of that, Ai-chan set a baptismal date! We're so excited! She's way interested in the Plan of Salvation and loved the idea of getting baptized. Brownie dendo is real yo. 10/10 would recommend. Food makes the tummy and spirit rejoice.
But yeah we're so excited about this upcoming week! We can't wait to see how the conference tomorrow with Elder Renland is going to transform our work!
愛しています！ ! 💕
Sherwood Shimai
1-2.) drinking really delicious (and expensive) mango tapioca
3.) Katsu Kankei (we're calling him big brother and his t-shirt is the rabbit we keep sending each other on Facebook messenger. He loled at this)
4.) My desk is a mess and I found a hilarious camera filter
5.) screenshot of planning the takoyaki party with katsu Kyoudai. The stickers are the most important thing
6.) Katsu Kyoudai was guessing Bagoyo Shimai's age. He was wrong.
7.) walking in the rain with the #squad
8.) Loving shimai says my hair is really blonde now I guess
9-10.) the squad at Matsuyama Castle
11.) in which I am physically incapable of hiding internal turmoil lol. The thousand yard stare remains.
19歳 20歳
No comments:
Post a Comment