It sure has been a crazy week what with MLC and zone taikai all in one go. I feel like I've been outside my area more than in it! But it's okay because a great many things were learned and a lot of good things happened.
We had a lovely lunch appointment with Hattori Shimai, and it was actually really awesome because I discovered that she is basically me if I were old and Japanese. She's got a lot of awesome insights about the gospel and cares a lot about whether or not people are truly converted to the Lord, or if they're being cold gravy disciples. We had an awesome conversation about what true faith and conversion really is and how to help other people along the covenant path. We're really feeling like the key to the members here is friendshipping them.
Also! We picked up an old investigator this week! Her name is Iwamoto san and she's really cute. We're not super sure how it's going to go or if she'll be ready this time, but I have faith in the guidance of the Spirit so whatever happens it'll be fine.
On Wednesday we taught Los Angela san and her family, and it went very well. Taniguchi 長老, having the superpower of Portuguese, was able to teach the mom and the rest of us were able to help out the kids with English and teach them how to pray. I really enjoy teaching children. They're so pure. So willing to listen. I wish more people were like that. Our problem is that the kids speak Japanese as their first language and the mom speaks Portuguese as her first language, so it's hard to teach all of them together. We're trying to figure out how to set it up to be most efficient, but ideas are slow-coming currently.
Also we had a great meeting with Hasegawa Kyoudai, the family history specialist of the ward. We talked about how to get people to start, and it turns out that most people just have no idea what they're doing and are too afraid to ask, so we've got a plan to start meeting with everyone and teaching them about FamilySearch. Also we learned about how to get the family registers from the government! Because Hayashi shimai is Japanese, she needs to go get hers, and we found out that you can send for it real easy by mail or the internet. Hashimoto Kyoudai gave us a whole guide on how to do it and I sent it to the tech elders because it's actually brilliant and really helpful when trying to help members get going on their family history.
We also had a meeting with the bishop and the elders and got the whole lowdown on the ward vision. We learned a lot about the general state of the ward and where bishop wants us to help move them to. We can tell he's been thinking about this a lot, so we're going to move forward there and try to focus on bringing the spark of the joy of the gospel into the members' lives.
愛しています!💕
Sherwood 姉妹
1.) the garland of Apostles in the abeno apartment and origin of today's title. I want one.
2.) proof that Japan is stuck in the 90's
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