Patient is the Soul

Dear Family, 

I was able to watch General Conference this weekend! In English! And it was WONDERUL! Definitely every one of my concerns that I have had as a missionary was addressed. That is inspiration. One of my favorite talks was by Elder Bednar. Not necessarily about the tithing part because I am not even paying tithing as a missionary, but all the other lessons that were learned from his talk were super duper great! 

This week was another week with a lot of FINDING time. With only one investigator, Dobson shimai and I have had some (a lot of) sincere, humble, and faithful prayers this week. Then, we have gone out and worked. We have done street contacting, housing, bike dendo, and area book dendo. We rode all over the place this week! We found some great hills that worked my legs soooo hard. We talked to SO MANY people everywhere we went! BUT we were not finding any investigators!! This week definitely tried our patience and our faith. 

On Saturday, we finally had a lesson!!! And, this one lesson made a whole week of trying finding people to teach and not having any success, completely worth it. It was with Hassan san, somebody from Morocco. We found him from the area book. He speaks arabic and french. He does not speak English well and he barely speaks Japanese at all. He has a six year old daughter, and a wife but she speaks Japanese so they are having a hard time communicating. He had a couple lessons with the missionaries a few years ago but then got too busy to meet again. He is INCREDIBLE. Let me tell you just a few things I learned about him from what he said during the Setting the Table lesson: He loves God so much. Over and over again, he kept expressing how much he loves God. He feels Gods love when he is in the church and when he is with us. He recognizes that there is something missing in the lives of people here, and he believes that is the church. He wants to know where he came from and where he is going and what he needs to do in this life to be the best he can be. He wants to serve the church members and donate money to the church (we didnt say anything about tithing...he just brought it up!) He prays to God and he has SO SO SO Much faith!!!! It took everything I had in our lesson to keep my jaw from dropping. That is how amazing he is. And he wants to be baptized! Yahoo! 

So, we only have two investigators, BUT we are working hard and being patient, and after much consideration, I decided that if I had to choose between quality or quantity, I would choose quality, which is what we have! The Lord has definitely been working closely with Hassan san, just as he was with Matsuzaki san, and it is a privilege to be assisting Him. 

Eww story time. We got a new ward mission leader, so after DCS on Friday, he asked if he could take us out for dinner. Dobson shimai and I had already eaten, but we had to go anyway out of politeness. We went to a really cool restaurant! Each table is in its own separate room and it is down low on the ground and there are grill things in the middle. Well, here is the gross part: he ordered SO MUCH FOOD. They brought us out our food, and it was two HUGE plates full of big chunks of meat!! (uncooked meat. and you know how I feel about meat.) It was huge!!!!! It was fun cooking the meat right in front of us, but they kept piling more and more and more meat on my plate! And I do not even like meat!! AHHH I was SO sick by the end. Actually, I still have not recovered. It was so much foooood!! We figured out he payed more than 200 dollars on that meal. SO MUCH FOOD! 

While we were housing one day this week, this old Buddhist man started talking to us. He was telling us how he lives his faith. He was a very strong Buddhist man. Every week, he walks to Wakayama, which is about an hour long train ride, picking up garbage. Every morning he walks through his neighborhood picking up garbage. Also, it is very important to him to visit Buddhist temples. He does these things because he wants to live the best life possible so that wherever he goes after this life, he will be rewarded according to how he lived here. This is the thing: we talk to so many people who believe the same way he does. The people in Japan are SO GOOD. They give up their lives to serve others. They center their lives on families. They are modest and hard working and spend money wisely and so kind. They are so close to being exactly the kind of people who Heavenly Father wants in His kingdom. However...they are just missing one thing, and that is the gospel! The problem is, they do not realize that. Like Hassan san was saying to us, these people spend so much time working hard and they are diligent and disciplined, and it is all because they are searching for a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction, but they never quite reach that, and it is because they are missing the gospel. I know some day though that the gospel will penetrate this area and once it starts, it is going to spread like wild fire! I am doing my very best to get that fire started. 

Well....the church is true everybody! That is it for this week--I hope you all have a fabulous week!!

Love,

Crofts shimai