Missionary Moments

We got the news for my last transfer in Japan. No one is transferring! There is not that much movement in the mission, which is nice. Everything will just glide smoothly until my group leaves, taking a huge chunk out of the missionary force. 

My past week was pretty good, we had two or three experiences that felt kind of miracle-ish.

The first was when we were checking on a PI (potential investigator) who we had housed into last week. He was alright, but a little shy, 20 years old, although he could have been about 15. We taught him about God and gave him a Book of Mormon, but his interest was only so-so. We came back this week and his Mum came to the door, apologised for her sons rudeness and gave me back the Book of Mormon, I tried to convince her that it didn't matter, and if the Book of Mormon were to just sit on the book shelf that would be fine, but she insisted on giving it back because they were too Buddhist. So, having an extra Book of Mormon on me, I decided to get rid of it as quickly as I could, which made me think of another PI close by from almost 4 weeks ago, who I had already given up on. We went there and she was home (a young mother of 2) and was very happy to receive the Book of Mormon and hear a lesson. The next day we had met with the older lady, who we are trying to get to come to Church. She loves meeting with us, but it is hard for her to commit to stuff. We met with her after lunch, but didn't get much time to teach a lesson and invite her properly before one of the members who helps us out with her took her and us to a small festival going on nearby. We then went to the really far away area for the day and from that were riding home at about 7:30pm when I decided to take a different road (a.k.a get lost), while we were riding down it we ran into her again, walking in the dark, which she thought was a miracle, and we got to finish from where we had started like 7 hours ago. Japan is the sort of place you don't find the same person twice, because of the amount of people all around, so it was pretty cool. One more is we were coming home from the almost as far away area and I decided to go housing in this unusual looking building a lot later than we usually do, which just so happened to contain an old investigator who wants to meet again, and some young guy who is Christian, recently divorced, needing the gospel and interested in our message. That is rare!

This week was pretty busy I guess, aside from those experiences we were all over the place with lots of surprisingly effective finding and also having 3 new students at Eikaiwa..... our efforts at trying to grow the small class are starting to work. I am trying to think of why it is so much easier to have success this end of my mission, and of course skill helps, but perhaps the biggest is preparedness, we are trying to be ready always to teach and give a lesson even on the door step. Elder M. was big on that, and it works for us too!

I look forward to the next 6 weeks,.....

At a Shrine

The District