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| My "Flower Lady" friend |
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| It's cherry blossom time! People come from all over the world to see these blossoms and they only last 5 days!!!! Pictures absolutely cannot depict the beauty or (of course) the magnificent smell of these blossoms. |
Dear Family,
Hello!! How are you? How is America? And more specifically, how is Idaho? Well I will tell you, here in Kyoto Japan, things are going wonderfully! There is not a better time to be doing missionary work!
We had an announcement this week: sister missionaries now have a new role. We are putting 100% of our efforts toward helping less active members. That means we will stop going to train stations to find people, and stop knocking on doors to find people, and stop everything with non-members--ALL of our efforts are now toward helping the less active members come back to church! Everything about missionary work is going to change for us! Let me explain a little bit why I am THRILLED to be doing this! There are about 120,000 members in Japan, and about 5% of them are active. We received a ward list last week, with about 20 names on each page, and only 1-2 active members per page. Every night as we do our planning, we stare at the map of Kyoto. It is an old map from Elders a while ago, and it is covered in yellow stickers with a few blue stickers here and there. We always wondered what the stickers were and assumed they were for potential investigators/real investigators. When we got the ward list with the addresses, we found out the yellow dots are all the less active members! The map is covered in them! For my whole mission, I was under the impression that it was the ward members responsibility to help the less active members, so I did not think much about it, but when I saw that list of less active members and then looked at them scattered across our map, my heart went out to them! I wanted to spend my time helping them! This was at the beginning of the week, and on Friday at Zone Training meeting we received the announcement about sister missionaries now working to rescue the less active members. I was SO excited. I feel like this is an opportunity for us to really act as Christ would to go out and search and rescue the lost sheep. I think of the hymn *Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd.* We are to go inside the less active members homes and just give them an outpouring of Christs love. What a special opportunity! (we have not started yet because we do not have the less active member information, so for now, we are doing missionary work how we normally do, which is wonderful.)
Heber J Grant made a prophecy in about 1903, in which he said that this mission will start out slow at first, but it will eventually be one of the most successful missions in the church, and that it will astonish the world. I believe that completely. As the less active members begin to come to church, the members will begin to be involved in missionary work, and their friends and family members will also have opportunities to come into the church, and as the missionaries rely on the Lord to receive His power and guidance, I see things happening here in Japan that really will astonish the world.
The Lord astonishes me every day. This week, I noticed how when we put our trust in the Lord, things just happen. It started last week on Preparation Day, when we went somewhere to buy Hunt shimai an electronic dictionary, but when we got there, we found out the zone leaders did not give us permission to go inside the electronic store, so we were just walking around talking to people. We stopped somebody and asked what she was doing. She said she was just walking. She asked what we were doing and we said we were just walking too! We were all hungry, so we went to Ramen together, and she is AMAZING! She is a college student who loves to compose music, she speaks fluent English, she has been to church before and she said she would love to go with us!
That was just the beginning of things just happening. *Things just happening* led to us finding many strong potential investigators this week. One of my favorite things that *just happened* was on Saturday night when we were planning for Sunday. We received a text from Yamaguchi shimai saying she could come to church!! She talked to her boss and he said she could take off her morning Sunday shift and come to church!!! We were SO EXCITED. This means that next time she comes to church (Which is April 20, she has that day off!) she can get baptized!! On Sunday when we announced it in the missionary meeting (forgot what they call it in English) our ward mission leader was so excited too! But the person who was most excited was Yamaguchi shimai! She had to leave right after church, and as we were walking with her to the train station, we told her that the next time she comes to church she can get baptized, and she just went speechless. She started crying tears of joy! She was SO SO SO EXCITED! The reason we are all so excited is probably because she is so prepared for baptism. She has been a golden investigator all along, and it is clear every time I am with her that the Lord has been working so closely with her. It will be a special experience when she gets to enter the gate at baptism! I love missionary work!
Last night was freezing. It was like a February rainy day here in Kyoto. And that is COLD. And we were tired and hungry, but we made the decision to go out and show the Lord our faithfulness anyway, so we cheerfully went out to work. And another wonderful thing *just happened.* We were housing, and a man came to the door and said he was part of our same church! We were caught off guard, but after talking, we discovered that he is a less active member. He had a work accident which makes it very difficult for him to walk, and he has not been to church for years. He seemed to be very very touched to have a visit from the missionaries. He asked if we could pray together, and then he told us his schedule and all the days that he is just sitting around his apartment. My heart went out to him immediately...I want to do everything I can to help him! I think it was perfect timing for the Lord to lead us to him yesterday, because prior to this week, if I met a less active member, I probably would have just said *please come to church!* and moved on. But because of the role we are now playing with less active members, we stayed and talked for a while with him. We learned a lot about him and I felt so much love for him. We have plans now to go back and visit him again. It was such a blessing to be led right to his door!
These are just a few of the things the Lord did for this area last week. Everyday I see His hand in the work, with the people here and the ward and with my own self too. He is the light and the life of the world. He is the Almighty God. And He is hastening His work...what a joyful privilege to participate in it!
I love you all! I hope you learned a lot at general conference and enjoyed the weekend together! Have a great week!!
Love, Kris
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