My dearest Family and Friends,
Another week has flown by as quickly if not quicker than the other ones. We had a full week and several funny things happened to make it a pretty fun one.
My new companion is Elder Banks and he is an eighteen year old kid from American Fork, Utah and is as solid as they come. He studied Japanese for four years in high school and is already way good at speaking, he works hard, and he likes to have a good time. Best of all he knows how to be clean!
Another week has flown by as quickly if not quicker than the other ones. We had a full week and several funny things happened to make it a pretty fun one.
My new companion is Elder Banks and he is an eighteen year old kid from American Fork, Utah and is as solid as they come. He studied Japanese for four years in high school and is already way good at speaking, he works hard, and he likes to have a good time. Best of all he knows how to be clean!
This past week a bunch of things happened. One of the coolest was last Sunday when we were biking to the church to send off the stats and reports for the district. As we passed by an older man he looked up at us and said, "Hey missionaries!" We rode past and stopped and said "That kind of thing never happens in Japan," so we turned around and caught up to him. He knew we were Mormons and was happy to talk. He ended up asking about why we are different from Protestant churches and accepted a Book of Mormon. We got his contact info as well, but were bummed to find out we couldn't call because the phone would not accept calls from people it didn't have entered into the memory. It turned out okay because we got a call from him last night saying he had been reading from the Book of Mormon and it was very difficult to understand, but he wanted to meet again and learn more! Way cool. We will see him on Saturday.
We also had a great lesson with the man named Shouda. He was very open to talking, and the second counselor in the mission presidency who happens to live in our ward, attended for us. It was so powerful. He admitted to wanting to find truth and become happy and said that if he found our message true he would be baptized, but he still needs some work on expectations for reading and praying and meeting with us. Good lesson though.
Another day we took a huge long bike ride out to the end of our area to visit some members who never see the missionaries and ran into a very young college kid on the way. He was about an hour from where his college, or anything else for that matter, was located. He said he simply felt like he needed to come out to that area for some reason. Definitely not a coincidence. We met with him one more time after that, but unfortunately he simply likes learning about religion. No real interest in becoming a member I don't think. Either way he will come to church next week so that was cool. Maybe his heart will change soon.
We also had a great lesson with the man named Shouda. He was very open to talking, and the second counselor in the mission presidency who happens to live in our ward, attended for us. It was so powerful. He admitted to wanting to find truth and become happy and said that if he found our message true he would be baptized, but he still needs some work on expectations for reading and praying and meeting with us. Good lesson though.
Another day we took a huge long bike ride out to the end of our area to visit some members who never see the missionaries and ran into a very young college kid on the way. He was about an hour from where his college, or anything else for that matter, was located. He said he simply felt like he needed to come out to that area for some reason. Definitely not a coincidence. We met with him one more time after that, but unfortunately he simply likes learning about religion. No real interest in becoming a member I don't think. Either way he will come to church next week so that was cool. Maybe his heart will change soon.
Another really fun thing that happened was Thursday night we decided to have a sleep over. Elder Banks and I took our futons into the study room and laid them out in there for the night. It's something pretty simple and lame, but we were SO stoked to be doing something different from the normal daily routine. We took some pretty stupid pictures which I'll send along. It was a pretty fun night though and we had a great day on Friday at zone conference.
It is always so good to see president and sister Nagano. They emanate love and light and are so dedicated to the work going on here in Tokyo. We had a great day learning from them and he assistants about how we can better work from here on out.
Yesterday was a bummer. I woke up not feeling well and we had to stay in for the day. Sister Nagano didn't want me to go out and get more sick so we were told that dendo (proselyting) was off for the day. We decided to cook some fish for lunch in the small shoebox sized oven/fryer in our kitchen. Unfortunately NONE of the previous missionaries had ever cleaned the oil out of the fryer and it made for a very hilarious turn of events. I was cleaning some fish off and heard a small 'poof' come from the oven and looked down to see the thing full of flames!! I just straitened up and said, "Well, we have ourselves a grease fire." Everyone thought I was just kidding until they came and looked to see our tiny shoebox oven full of flames, hahahaha. Luckily we have a huge industrial sized fan in our kitchen that handled most of the smoke, but it got pretty thick for a minute. At one point there were flames coming up out of the vent towards the rear of the stove that leads down into the fryer/oven near the wall, hahaha. We looked and there was no fire extinguisher, and we thought it would be better to let it burn rather than open it and throw a wet blanket on it. If the smoke hit the detector, the whole building would evacuate, and everyone would hate the four gaijin (foreigner) Christians on the eleventh floor. SO, we prayed, opened all the windows and doors and watched the flames to make sure they didn't spread, haha. Eventually they slowly died out and all turned out okay. It was pretty funny. Elder Banks was in the middle of chopping veggies when it all happened and we found out afterward that he had been running around trying to help with the half-cut onion still in his hand. He forgot to put it down. Anyway, the old grease all burned out and we had a nice clean oven after that!
Sunday a really great less active from Sri Lanka came to church. It's always nice getting people to church and showing the members that we ARE working.
Today was temple p-day. That's all I have! My letters may get shorter. I'm coming up on a year and there are other things I feel I could do with my time... I feel a very strong sense of urgency about this work, so forgive me if I begin to shorten some.
I love you all. Mom congrats on the grandchild, he is precious.
Elder Viehweg
It is always so good to see president and sister Nagano. They emanate love and light and are so dedicated to the work going on here in Tokyo. We had a great day learning from them and he assistants about how we can better work from here on out.
Yesterday was a bummer. I woke up not feeling well and we had to stay in for the day. Sister Nagano didn't want me to go out and get more sick so we were told that dendo (proselyting) was off for the day. We decided to cook some fish for lunch in the small shoebox sized oven/fryer in our kitchen. Unfortunately NONE of the previous missionaries had ever cleaned the oil out of the fryer and it made for a very hilarious turn of events. I was cleaning some fish off and heard a small 'poof' come from the oven and looked down to see the thing full of flames!! I just straitened up and said, "Well, we have ourselves a grease fire." Everyone thought I was just kidding until they came and looked to see our tiny shoebox oven full of flames, hahahaha. Luckily we have a huge industrial sized fan in our kitchen that handled most of the smoke, but it got pretty thick for a minute. At one point there were flames coming up out of the vent towards the rear of the stove that leads down into the fryer/oven near the wall, hahaha. We looked and there was no fire extinguisher, and we thought it would be better to let it burn rather than open it and throw a wet blanket on it. If the smoke hit the detector, the whole building would evacuate, and everyone would hate the four gaijin (foreigner) Christians on the eleventh floor. SO, we prayed, opened all the windows and doors and watched the flames to make sure they didn't spread, haha. Eventually they slowly died out and all turned out okay. It was pretty funny. Elder Banks was in the middle of chopping veggies when it all happened and we found out afterward that he had been running around trying to help with the half-cut onion still in his hand. He forgot to put it down. Anyway, the old grease all burned out and we had a nice clean oven after that!
Sunday a really great less active from Sri Lanka came to church. It's always nice getting people to church and showing the members that we ARE working.
Today was temple p-day. That's all I have! My letters may get shorter. I'm coming up on a year and there are other things I feel I could do with my time... I feel a very strong sense of urgency about this work, so forgive me if I begin to shorten some.
I love you all. Mom congrats on the grandchild, he is precious.
Elder Viehweg
 |
| Sleep over in the study |
 |
| In front of the Temple |
No comments:
Post a Comment