Missionary Moments

To answer your question first, yes, my companion doesn't speak any English. Imagine how much Japanese I knew when I left home, that is about how much English he has. Which is why my Japanese is on the up, because I have no other option!

I am used enough now to speaking Japanese that there isn't really a language barrier, but it sure makes my week interesting, as half of it is generally in English, with other missionaries, meetings, English speaking investigators and people on the street, etc. And so I can't just race on ahead, but have to translate or force the conversation into Japanese, so my companion can participate. Which I prefer, because he is fast becoming a powerhouse missionary.

On Sunday, we had a friend from Japanese class come to Church, he is one of the teachers and Elder M. made friends with him enough to make coming to Church a pretty normal experience for him. We had a rather interesting and slightly too deep lesson in Gospel principles about the spirit world, and afterwards the guy had a billion questions. He was quite knowledgeable about Christianity, and he reckoned it was completely different to anything he had ever heard. I was gearing up to start getting into a good discussion in Japanese about how it wasn't so different, but he ended up being fluent in English, and I was able to enjoy one of the best deep doctrinal discussions I have had in my own language for once, ..... Lets just say Seminary and Institute really help, but learning another language is almost as important, I think, because you need both out here. It was a good lesson.

We had downs and ups with H., he was close to baptism a few weeks ago, but now he is kind of far away, but closer than he was at the beginning of the week, thanks to Members, and a bit of a change of focus from us.

We got to spend time with L. and K. again, yeah. We went to a lights festival in Kusatsu with K. and the other elders, and a less active. That was pretty good, and at the end they ran into K.'s sister, who the less active invited to dinner, and we were able to make good friends with her too.

The next day the other elders and the Sisters got to go to lunch with K.'s family, who are all really nice Filipinos (which means they speak English). We had another appointment, so couldn't go, but it looks like the other Elders will be able to pick up and entire family of investigators soon! We joined them, K. and L. afterwards with the Omihachiman Elders and their investigators to play soccer afterwards, it was fun! Japanese class was a blast too after that. I take a look back at the activities that we do sometimes, and I think maybe we have too much fun as missionaries.. However, the surprising thing is, the more fun we seem to be having, the better results we get too in terms of investigators and bringing others unto Christ. The Gospel is based on Happiness right?.....

Elder M. at the Lights Festival