Elder Bryson Viehweg's Mission: September 14th, 2015

Hey everyone,

This week has been insane. I was really relieved when I found out that I would be working in a three some with a transfer sixteen to help contain the new missionary. We are still trying to find unity and work together the best we can, but with three brains and differing abilities, it is pretty difficult. Each day there are so many incredibly awkward encounters we just slap our faces and laugh. Luckily both Elder Nukaya and Elder Horne are really good workers.

This last week, as you may have seen from the news, we had a typhoon race through. It rained all day everyday for a week pretty much. Much of the time it was going sideways into our eyes and faces while we tried to ride our bikes and 'talk' to people, haha. We did a lot of housing on those days, and got really wet. I'm pretty sure much of what I own will still be wet for another week or so. The sad thing is that there was a lot of flooding around the Tokyo area and we were hit with a fairly good sized earthquake which shifted all the wet earth and caused some pretty good landslides and stuff. Luckily all the missionaries are okay and the earthquake was actually pretty fun!

This week we have tried to meet with a lot of people and haven't really been able to get ahold of any. We did get called by one man who met us at an Eki to talk about the church. This never happens so we were all really pumped about it. He ended up bringing a friend and we walked to a nearby restaurant to talk for a while. They were pretty much golden investigators the whole time. They asked awesome questions and were very polite to us. We ran out of time and were able to make an appointment for this next Sunday to teach a lesson about God and they agreed to come. We got back to the apartment feeling really great about it all until we opened the area book and read his teaching record. Apparently these two trick missionaries into thinking they are interested, and then two or three lessons down the road ask the missionaries to meet them at their Buddhist temple, where they pretty much try to keep them there until they denounce their faith and God. The history said that they would get pretty worked up, almost scary, and advised us over and over to not meet with them. That was a pretty big bummer, but we are really grateful that we decided to look into the history before having them come meet us at the church. We may still meet with them now that we know what to expect, but I doubt it will go anywhere past that.

On Friday the rain finally stopped and we were able to work outside without getting immediately drenched in the monsoon type weather. We went to a nearby small Eki to do some street contacting where we had had some good contacts before. As we were walking, I was looking down at my shoes and brought my eyes up to the road in front to see this ancient, crotchety old man riding his jitensha (bicycle) toward us with a big toothless smile pasted on his face. He held up his fist and in it was a baseball. Looking right at me, he tossed it through the air into my hands, waved and sped on by and out of our sight. We sat there for about thirty seconds just trying to process what happened. The old Japanese men are usually the ones who ignore us or yell at us the most, so we couldn't believe what had happened! At that point we just started laughing. Nukaya choro was sure to tell me to write that story down because it will NEVER happen again hahaha. The baseball is sitting in my desk.

We did manage to meet with one other person this week for about ten minutes. His name is Suzuki Daisuke. He is a twenty four year old who dropped out of high school and became a pro sumo. He isn't far along, but one of the super strong tree-trunk like people. Anyway he was horribly injured and spent about a year and a half in the hospital. It really humbled him and now he is taking night school class to catch up and become some kind of city officer. He is super kind and loves that he can talk to us and relieve his stress, just feel better about life. I think he has some serious family concerns, but he won't tell us about that. This last time we really got into why we are here and what we do, and he said he knows what we do and really respects it, but he is so stressed about life that he really doesn't have time to meet regularly. It was a heartbreaker. You can feel a very strong and sweet spirit when you spend time with him. We assured him that if he ever needed help we would be happy to help. He said he may call us for help learning English so we will see where that goes. Such a bummer. He says he doesn't believe in God, but he likes talking about it so he really has so much potential. Maybe future missionaries...

The sisters had an awesome week. We have fed them a bunch of referrals, because women are really the only ones who listen most of the time, and a few of them have led to some really good contacts. Being the district leader and hearing about how awesome they do each day has really been a blessing for me. I love hearing about how they help the people they teach. On Sunday they had three investigators at church which is basically unheard of for Japan. That NEVER happens. It was perfect. The lessons were all on the sacred calling of motherhood and all of them Just ate it up being mothers both young and old. It was a really great day. They do work with people we never could do as elders.

I gotta say how hilarious elder Horne is. His voice is still so loud, and bless his heart he sooooo clueless about the world and everyday life, hahaha. It's really funny. He simply acts like the eighteen year old kid he is, which isn't a bad thing at all! He's learning and adjusting like we all do. Each night he still rolls over and mumbles something outrageous in his sleep haha. He acts so American and like SUCH the typical Utah boy it is really funny. Sometimes I just shake my head and giggle. I have to answer a lot of questions about why things aren't like America in one way or another. He just doesn't get that there are different places than Orem Utah! I love hm to death and hope he stays patient with me, because I really don't know how to be a trainer haha.

On that note, we received some pretty crazy news this week. Last night we got called by the assistants at about ten twenty five. So it was about as late as a call could be. Assistant Chugg asked for Nukaya Choro and they talked for a few minutes. From what I heard it was something big. He looks up at me after the call and says,"I'm leaving..." I thought he was lying since he is a pretty funny guy and likes to joke, I called him on it about ten times. Then I realized he was serious. Originally he was supposed to be training during this transfer and I was supposed to be alone with the new missionary here. The other trainee had visa problems so they stuck Nukaya Choro with us. And now he is leaving tomorrow morning to pick up the missionary who resolved his previous visa problems. Needless to say I said an extra special prayer last night. I'm pretty intimidated. I have just barely started to get the hang of talking on the phone with people and still don't understand most of it sometimes. Those are the times I just hand it over to Nukaya Choro and he prevents the disaster. It's the same thing with talking in the street or helping to train elder Horne and help him know what to say in Japanese. Soooo that's a pretty big Boulder looming over my head, but president Nagano gave me some really good council. He said in his letter,"ultimately, it doesn't matter what you think or whether or not you feel like you are not good enough, God called you to do this, and he knows what he's doing". So I'm just taking the step off the edge of the cliff this week. A 'Jesus take the wheel' kind of thing. Should be fun! And I should learn ALOT from this transfer.

Dad I'm really sorry I didn't wish you happy birthday in the last email. I sure do love you and can't thank you enough for all the time, sweat, and energy you put into our family all these years. You are my hero and I can't tell you how much I love and look up to you. You are the greatest man I know.

Danielle and Krisitin thank you so much for the letters. I love hearing about your lives and Mazor sounds like he's a blast.

I love you al, so much and pray for you each night.

Love,

Viehweg 長老