February 7th, 2016

February 8, 2016

Hello all you Americans,

This week was actually a little tough for us. All of our stats and numbers took a huge plunge which was not good. The Lord blessed us for several weeks but I believe now we are being tested! Either way all we can do is keep doing all we can do. 

On Monday this week I had my first bike accident! I decided to take a ride through this small artificial stream bed made of some kind of smooth volcanic rock and a tree branch was blocking my view of the two puddles of water in front of me around a bend. Anyway, I came around and hit the small puddle causing my tire to slip out, and me to go belly down just in time to slide through the next ten foot long puddle of muddy water! All I could do was remind myself of my own silly use of agency, and the decision to ride through that small stream bed next to the sidewalk. It was pretty funny though and both me and my bike are okay.

We had a very slow week until Friday, at which point it really started to pick up. On Friday we had an appointment with a guy named Daisuke who had a baptismal date a while ago, but had to go to Canada to study. The other elders transferred out and he came back and messaged us on our phone. Anyway he asked us if he could bring his wife to meet us at our ping pong activity, which of course was fine by us! That was last week. This week we met before ping pong and ate some tsukemen. Dad knows what it is, but it was soooooo good. We really built a good relationship and then at ping pong basically taught and reviewed what he had learned in the past. He is pretty kin (golden). He loves missionaries because of how much love and happiness we show. He also thinks the church is a great place for his soon to be born child to make friends and grow up! His wife has no interest right now, but he said she will come around soon. It was a way cool experience and we have plans to meet regularly and review everything from here on out.

Before going to meet him, I'm sure you all saw the picture, we found a random Vietnamese kid who loves Americans! I just said hi to him as he walked by and we tried to communicate through Japanese for a while. He and his friend are trade school students and don't speak well still, but it was way cool and we are now friends. We offered to help them with Japanese so maybe that will lead somewhere. Super nice kid, can't for the life of me pronounce his name. So far on my mission I have met Vietnamese, Chinese, Mongolian, Uzbekistanian, Pakistani, Indian, Sri Lankan, Indonesian, Taiwanese, Chinese, Korean, British, French, Ghanan, and Polynesian people.  It's nuts!  Way cool experience though.

Saturday was a really busy and fun day. We had Bible study right after our study with two people who always come, and then had to change and book it over to the opposite end of the area. There is a futsol center there about an hour away if you burn it out on your bike, so it's a ways out, but a member from the neighboring Ward who's wife we visited and helped while she was hospitalized in our area set up an activity for us to meet people, so we had to go. By the time we got there our legs were hammered so the next two hours were interesting. Also, there was an uneven number of players so I took the whole two hours switching from team to team to keep things going!  It was soooo much fun. The Japanese guys we played with were all super nice and patient with us and we managed to both do fairly well, and make fools of ourselves periodically, so I think they enjoyed us being there, hahaha.  By the end of it I was poooped.  We never have chances to excercise like that and from there we had an even farther bike ride to a recent convert's house on the opposite end of the area, about an hour and a half away.  We stopped by the church and then biked as hard as we could to make it in time.  By now we were beyond tired and our legs were cramping pretty well.  The dinner and lesson with the recent converts was so great.  They are the Minami's.  Both are about seventy and the wife was baptized three years ago after her son died.  Until that point she had visited Salt Lake and filled out the referral card, so missionaries kept coming by her house trying to teach her. Eventually she softened up to the elders and that was the end.  Her husband, who was an Olympic track star, soon followed suit.  He had a stroke which left him unable to do much and got into heavy drinking, but soon changed when he saw how happy his wife was.  He followed suit a year and a half later.  They both are incredible.  Each Sunday Minami Shimai carries his wheelchair down three flights of stairs to the sidewalk, then basically carries him down afterwrds and pushes him fifteen minutes to the Eki in order to come to church.  After church she does the opposite on the way home!  Unbelievable.  Now the Ward has someone there at their apartment on most Sunday's to get it done.  Bottom line, we all have NO excuse not to make it to church on time.  No excuse.  Incredible faith.  We had a great lesson with them and they fed us really well.  After that they taught us some Kansai Ben (a dialect from Osaka, their hometown) and then we left. They love the elders so much and treat us like their grandchildren.  Both strengthen each other so much and they study daily from the scriptures despite not understanding a whole lot.

Sunday we had two investigators at church which was good. One is the guy with schizophrenia. He had a good time but no one can tell.  He isn't exactly friendly, but people love him anyway which is what he needs.  He is going to start coming weekly which is great!  The other  guy named Fujieda is my age and has been an investigator for a while.  He has had several baltismal dates, but his family hantai (anti) and he still needs more understanding.  Previous elders just pushed for baptism but never really helped him understand the why behind it.  Not good.  After church a sweet old lady named Nengaki Shimai had us al, over to eat and teach a lesson with him.  We read from the Book of Mormon and testified about families being strengthened by the gospel. One member who converted despite his parents being hantai talked about the blessings his family got despite not being members.  Good lesson.  The tako yaki (barbecued squid) after was AMAZING.  We ate so much and it was so delicious.  I learned how to make it so maybe in the future we can eat some.  That was a really fun appointment and our investigator had a great time.

After that it was reports, stats, investigator updates, and call in reports with all my missionaries.

That's about it for the week. It was slow but we have a goal to hit all the standards this next week which should happen! Love you all and miss you...sort of ;-)  iI's just so fun here and God literally carries me all day long.  I'm so tired at the end of each day, especially today.  But I wouldn't trade the world for it.

Jaa ne!!  (Later...)

Viehweg Choro

Spagetti Sandwich

This does not look tempting!