Konnichiwa minasan!
Well it's been a long week and I am very tired.
Sofiah: she's a way nice lady we met on Tuesday. (the fruits of typhoon phone dendo are rich) She moved to Japan from Indonesia and is friends with Naganuma Kyoudai. She's way cool and let me just say it's nice to teach people with a Christian background. It makes our lives easier. Her faith is way strong and family is really important to her. She's really busy for the rest of the month, but we have an appointment with her on the 7th of August so our plan is to message her every so often until then because we swapped Facebook with her. (all of her posts are in Indonesian tho lol)
Kunitsu: we met with her Tuesday evening and we're beginning to think that she's not reading the Book of Mormon as much as she says she is because her levels of understanding are suspiciously low. Currently the plan is to just continue on with the lessons and read the Book of Mormon with her as we do so rather than trying to keep drilling daily study like beating a dead horse. We'll see how it goes.
Natsuki: She's 100% ready to get baptized and it's immensely frustrating. Why? Because even though we've been ganbaruing for ages, because her mom is still really hantai she wants to wait until she's 20 to get baptized, which, for obvious don't-procrastinate-the-day-of-your-repentance reasons, we're trying to discourage. But I don't really understand her situiation. One, because we still aren't able to meet her mom, and two, because I can't understand Japanese and not only am I currently the only one in the Kita Rokko Dendo Squad who isn't fluent in Japanese, I'm also the only one who speaks English fluently. Annoying.
Kusaka: Okay so this was actually insane. Privette Shimai and I went to visit this former investigator on our koukan and I'm like 90% sure we encountered the influence of an actual literal evil spirit. Kusaka-san is a perfectly nice lady, but let me tell you her house gave us the weirdest heebie-jeebies when we went there. The bajillions of fish in the genkan didn't help. At first we thought it was just weird but then she started talking about how she can't go anywhere or meet with us because there's this mysterious group of nihonjins who're watching her and gossiping about her and can see everything she does even at that moment in her house. Privette Shimai and I were way spooked. It was dark and scary. We offered to pray and ask for a special blessing on her house and she was like "yeah sure" but she wouldn't let us do it inside, we had to pray on her porch. It was way weird. I'm pretty sure here house is actually possessed. But then on Sunday Hattanda Shimai and I visited her again with Ooshima Shimai and the fuinki (vibe) was 100% different. She didn't talk about the weird mystery group at all and was relatively normal. I wonder if she didn't talk about it because Hattanda Shimai and Ooshima Shimai are nihonjins and the weird evil mystery group is composed of nihonjins...wakaranai. Idk what the protocol is for literal demons.
In other news, we had zone conference this week and it was great! We received a new Book of Mormon reading challenge focused on the Savior! Here's how it goes in case anyone wants to do it too!
Read three chapters a day and mark
Red - roles of Christ
Dark Blue - words of Christ
Green - attributes of Christ
Light Blue - doctrine related to Christ
Also our new Eikaiwa program is on its way to becoming a thing that's happening! I'm excited. Also the mission is starting a new online proselyting campaign and I'm way excited cos all the services we provide are gonna be in one place on a cool website that's an extention of Mormon.org. More to come as that happens.
Also let me just say I love the Okada family they're great I love them they spent $80 on us after our lesson with them so we could eat at a buffet together. Best members ever. They saved our tummies. We are eternally grateful.
Also there was a funeral in the ward on Saturday. It was interesting. Very different from the funeral I recently went to in my family. At my great-grandma's funeral I made the joke that my dad's family puts the fun in funeral. I mean, it wasn't anything even remotely like a sad event whatsoever. Everyone told stories about grandma and how cool she was and how she's probs giving grandpa an earful for leaving her so early. All the family got together and ate dinner and chilled and I got to meet the Guatemalan side of the family that I had no idea even existed for 19 years of my life. I figured that was just normal for LDS funerals. But this one wasn't really like that at all. It was like way serious. (granted that's part of Japan culture but still) Then again, the responses of the family members who were active and those who were less-active were suuuuuuper different. The members were sad, but like maa there was still hope and light in their faces, but the non-members were like super crazy grieved with zero hope whatsoever. And then on Sunday it was like nothing happened. Everyone was all happy and smiling again. The Plan of Salvation really is the only thing that gives people lasting happiness. It's way sad when people don't know about it. But hey that's why we're out here. Gonna spread all the joy.
ζγγ¦γγΎγ！ π
Sherwood ε§ε¦Ή
1-3.) koukan with Privette Shimai (and the biggest spider I've seen in my whole life)
4.) Hattanda Shimai got a ridiculous amount of Popsicles in the mail
5.) the dream team aka me and Hattanda Shimai
6-7.) festival dendo with Rina chan (I understand all the animes now. Festivals aren't this cute fun thing. It's like a fourth of July festival level of crowded nonsense)
19ζ³ 20ζ³
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