The Rowlings Family: Missionary Moments

First of all, I got my death packet this week. I haven't got the official itinerary yet, but I am going to be coming home on the 11th of April (Saturday) at 1:30pm, ...... It looks like there will be a lot of waiting and hanging out with Elder S., as the Americans leave a lot earlier than us, and also possibly no sleep, but that's okay. At least I know I will make it home now.

I had an awesome week, because I got to shake hands with a General Authority! On Friday all of the missionaries in the mission went to Kobe to be with Elder Nelson and Elder Ringwood, the Asia north area president. We also had a talk from Brother Randall L. Ridd, the head of the missionary department in the Church. Why all the excitement? Everyone is getting IPADs this week! Except for me and the rest of my group :(.

We had a whole bunch of training and stuff related to that, however, a lot of it is stuff I can use back home, particularly with my kids in the future. It focuses a lot on the preventative, more than the cure, for pornography and other dangerous things on the internet. It is such a common problem that the Church is really focused on training us missionaries to be a 'sin resistant strain of future leaders' in the Church. Apparently one of the big reasons for rolling out technology like that for missionary work is not just for the hastening of the work, but preparing us to be able to handle it well and righteously for the rest of our lives, and in turn teaching those around us.

The rest of my week was alright. We had a good lesson with O., the older lady. Apparently Baptism is no longer a question of yes or no, but simply of when. It has been really nice to see her testimony and confidence in God grow over the last couple of months. The members have helped a lot!

We met with a couple of our hit and miss investigators, and managed to have good lessons with them too. Also our finding this week was a lot stronger. We gave out quite a few copies of the Book of Mormon and have some places to go back to. We also got given Chocolate by some random old ladies.

On Wednesday we got to do 3 lessons, which is always nice, but the 2nd and 3rd were kind of fun. We visited K., a Filipino friend (so we get to teach in English), and while I taught him, some Spanish speaking guy we made friends with was there too, so Elder H. taught him, and both lessons turned out really nicely. At the end I got K. to pray for us, which he hasn't done before, and all the other Spanish guys in the dorm immediately stopped what they were doing and bowed their heads, even though they all look kinda rough, don't speak English and weren't even participating, they know to really respect God and prayer......

To compare with our day full of teaching, on Thursday we had 3 meal appointments, from lunch onwards. The first was with the guy that owns a pub, who gave us Okonomiyaki, then we went to the N.'s and after doing a year end final lesson for two 5 year olds and their Mums (the Japanese school year starts/ ends April), we got fed a okonomiyaki feast. We rolled out of there feeling like cabbages sweating Okonomiyaki sauce to make it in time to go out with Brother T., who takes us to visit LAs. After we finished there he was thinking of taking us to get Okonomiyaki... we almost vomited at the thought, but managed to convince him to take us to a tonkatsu place instead, although we were not very hungry at all... but who can say no to free food?

The clock is ticking, only a couple more full weeks,.....