Dearest Family,
I love you all so much. Thank you for being the best family in the world! One of my favorite things to do (among many) is to pull out my picture book and show people YOU! Everybody notices how happy our family is. Also, they think you all look like movie stars. Its funny. Sometimes they ask which movie star the picture is, and when I say it is my brother or sister (people have asked about almost each one of you) they are shocked.
It has been a great week in Yonago! I am so grateful. The Lord has blessed us to be able to meet wonderful people this week.
When we first got to Yonago, the previous sisters left us a note about a potential investigator. It is a man who has an udon/Ukranian food shop. They said it is delicious and he is really nice! We decided to go check it out. The food was good, and he was REALLY nice. He is married to a Ukranian woman, and they have 6 kids!!! He told us that after he met the other missionaries, he went to search for our church, but he could not find it. We gave him a map and he said he would come when he had work off! We left the shop to go to an appointment, but the appointment cancelled, so we had some time, and we decided we really wanted to meet this mans family. We knew it was a little bit weird and maybe forward, but we went back to the shop and asked him where he lived. Surprisingly, he was more than willing to have us meet his family! In fact, he biked with us back to his apartment, and let us right in! His wife was so welcoming and his kids were SO happy to see us. They are GOOD GOOD kids. And half ukranian/half japanese kids are beautiful. Anyway, the family was absolutely wonderful. Apparently the wife also has a lot of interest in church, and they said they would love to have us over whenever! They are not investigators yet, but we are excited for the future!
My favorite part of the week: Dateyama kyoudai. Dateyama kyoudais wife was baptized about 30 years ago. He took the missionary discussions on and off from that point, but he had absolutely no interest. He was especially bothered by people pushing him to be baptized. His wife was a faithful member. She passed away a little over a month ago, and he has been coming to church in order to feel close to her. We decided we wanted to help him. Last week at church we went up to meet him and ask if we could visit him, and he was very stand-off-ish. He was hesitant to even be talking with the missionaries. We told him we heard wonderful things about his wife and wanted to learn more about her, and that we would not talk about church things. He finally agreed to let us visit him. When we visited, we talked for about an hour about his wife, and then he brought up prayer. He said his wife always prayed and he began to pray for help before she passed away, but now that she has died, he was confused (especially with the Buddhist beliefs about prayers) and he did not know how to pray. He asked us to teach him! Then he began to ask about God and about the restored church. Then he brought up baptism by himself! He said he still does not want to be baptized, but he understands that it is necessary and he wants to become like the members of our church. We had a very good discussion, and at the end, we sang his wifes favorite hymn, Come come ye saints. He was crying and he said he realized he NEEDS the missionaries. We saw him again at church yesterday and he was a completely different person. He had a nicely prepared gift for us and a smile on his face. It was wonderful.
Missionary work is the best. The Lord is preparing people everywhere. He loves His children and He has a plan for each one of us! This gospel is true. Thanks for loving it and living it so well.
I love you!
Kris
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