Dearest Kazoku,
Konnichiwa!!
This week was the shortest week of my life, and at the same time, the longest week of my life!
I LOVE BEING COMPANIONS WITH GRIFFIN SHIMAI!!!! She is wonderful! She is so good at Japanese and at planning/teaching lessons and at doing all the things missionaries have to do. She is amazing. Because it is just the two of us, we combined our investigator pool, so now we have 18 investigators! For two sisters who do not speak Japanese and who do not have a lot of experience, that is a lot of responsibility!! In a way, you could look at our situation and think there is no way anything good is going to come out of that companionship. BUT the Lord is wonderful, and this week, SO many miracles have happened!!!
On Monday night last week, we began our journey by calling our investigators. I called Yamauchi kyoudai, and this is what happened: he started talking, I had NO IDEA what he was saying, I said *do you want to meet at the church for a lesson on Wednesday at two?* and he said something, I was hoping yes, and then we hung up. Well, on Wednesday at two he showed up at the church for a lesson!!
The same type of thing happened on Tuesday. We went and visited a potential investigator, and we really did not know at all what she was saying. Eventually she came out of her house and was talking to us face to face, and we could sort of understand, but still, it was kind of like the following: she said something, griffin shimai looked at each other and then back at her and mumbled a few random words, she said something back, and we did the same thing. Eventually though, we were able to figure out that she wanted us to come back! She gave us a specific time, so we are visiting her at that time this week!
On Tuesday we also visited another potential investigator named Leonard. He is from the Philipines and he speaks English! Yay! We tried to teach him a lesson, but he was just talking and talking and talking and we had the hardest time taking control of the situation. BUT he has so much faith! He was just talking about how he is having a hard time because he does not speak Japanese and he does not have a job and he does not have any friends here, but he wakes up every morning grateful to the Lord and he knows good things will come to him as long as he keeps serving the Lord. He even offered to help us out by going around the apartment and knocking on the doors for us or talking to people on the street for us haha! We are going back to teach him tomorrow and we are hoping to get a few more words in this time and then teach him about where he can find the full truth!
Wednesday was a day full of lessons! I taught more lessons this week than ever before on my mission, but this week, I did not have my trainer there to tell me what to say the whole time! However, the lessons this week all went REALLY well. We taught Masumoto san on Wednesday morning. We retaught the prayer lesson because when Griffin and Murayama shimai were teaching it to her before, she got up in the middle to answer the door and they were never able to finish the lesson. So we redid it and at the end of the lesson we asked if she would pray for us. She said no, which Griffin shimai said was normal because she would never pray for them. But then because we do not know much of the language, we just kept sitting there smiling and nodding our heads, and eventually she gave in and prayed!! Yippee!! And she committed to pray everyday and she asked us to come back again!
After Masumoto san, we went to visit Taniguchi san ( a potential investigator) but she was not home. As we were about to leave, we received a referral, so we stopped underneath somebody:s driveway cover to find out where they lived, in case we could visit them right away. It was raining super duper hard and we were freezing, and after navigating around our gps for a long time, we figured out where they lived...FAR AWAY!!!!! super far away. Ha it was on the other side of our area! And that is a story for another time, but right now I want to finish Wednesday.
We taught Yamauchi kyoudai on Wednesday. Again, we have no idea what this man says when he speaks to us, and he has heard all the lessons over and over again, so we did not know what or how to teach. We taught about the holy ghost in the lesson, but we ended up mainly talking about the gift of the holy ghost which lead us to speaking about baptism. He really does not like when the missionaries speak to him about baptism, but we were just trying to follow the Spirit. So we were talking to him about baptism and the douseki was really nudging him toward baptism. We thought he was so mad at us after that lesson. But then Friday he called us again and said he wanted to meet us at the church the next day for a lesson! We taught him about eternal life and how we need to follow Jesus Christ in order to receive eternal life and how baptism is one of the steps to following Jesus Christ. He said he wants eternal life and he wants to follow Jesus Christ and he knows he needs to be baptized, but he does not want to be baptized. It confuses me. Anyway, he called again and set up another appointment for a lesson this week.
Wednesday night after Eikaiwa we taught Kurosaki san. You would love this lady! She really is a hoot! She lives right across from the church, so she visits us all the time. She is a talker!! She talks and talks and talks! Griffin shimai and Murayama shimai would always try to teach her, but she would mainly just talk the whole time. Also she never makes commitments, so she would never promise to meet them for a lesson again, she just knew it would happen. But on Wednesday, she listened to our whole entire lesson, then when we tried to set up a new lesson, she agreed to a specific day and time! It was crazy!
Thursday we went to find the referral. It took us 3 hours to find the house!!! And we only got lost a couple times. It was just FAR AWAY!!!! Wow we were so pooped by the end of that bike ride. But there were lots of houses with the address that we received, so we had to house them all. None of them were the referral! Even the people who did not answer had different names on their mailboxes. We housed around the area and still we could not find the referral anywhere! Finally we housed a lady who brought us out a map and we looked at all the names on the map, and the referrals name was not on it. At that time, it was about 3:45 and we had a meeting with
our ward mission leader at 6:30 that we still had to prepare for. Because we did not know where else we could go to find the referral, we decided to go back. We had to go FAST so that we were ready on time for DCS. And wow did we ever go fast. We got back in less than 2 hours!! We were SO SORE. haha but I love bike riding. I felt so good the next day.
DCS was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The members have all been super helpful and supportive to us, and they really help us out with the language. (Except one member who called us and asked who the new missionaries coming are and we said no new missionaries would be coming and he muttered under his breath *what should we do?* haha.) But at DCS the mission leader was actually being more helpful than ever before and he is offering rides and setting up meetings and stuff to help us out! The ward members have been very willing to douseki for us this last week and they have all been so helpful and involved! Yay!!
Friday we taught three more lessons, and they all went really well. On Saturday, we taught a couple more lessons, one of them being Arisa chan. I LOVE ARISA CHAN!!!! And I love the Lord for helping Arisa chan so much! On Tuesday we taught her the Restoration, and after it, we asked how she felt and she said she did not really know if it was true or not...she seemed very hesitant. But on Saturday when we followed up, she said she prayed about it and she got an answer and she knows it is true!!! It is such a miracle! First of all, that she even understood us trying to teach the restoration in a language we dont speak. But also, God is working so closely with her! We taught faith on Saturday, and her faith is so strong!! She is receiving answers to her prayers and she desires baptism and eternal life so much. I love working with her!!
Yesterday at church we had to give two talks!!!!! 5 minutes each!! We gave one in sacrament meeting, and then one at the missionary fireside after church. Phew yesterday was definitely the most nerve racking day of my mission. It was already nerve racking in the first place because we were in charge of helping all of our investigators get to church and we no longer had Dobson and Murayama shimai to speak to the members for us and translate everything for us and help the investigators...we had to do it all on our own! And on top of that we had to prepare two talks! BUT as the Lord had done all week long, He really helped us out! In sacrament meeting I spoke about how God:s purpose is for all of His children to return to Him, and how we (members and missionaries) get to help God with His work! After sacrament meeting, so many members came up to me telling me they were so surprised at my Japanese and that I could actually speak!
Through everything we did this week, I learned more than I ever have in a week! Most importantly, I learned that God is so wonderful. He took two WEAK weak missionaries, and allowed wonderful things to happen. Our investigators are progressing well in the gospel, and it is all thanks to the Lord. What a wonderful week in Mikunigaoka!!
I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving week! I am so grateful for each one of you and I love you so so much!!
Love,
Kris :)
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