Area: Furukawa
Companion: Hill Choro
Hey everyone! It was great to hear from you guys! Sounds like you all had a good week. I wish I could have been there to go on a jeeping adventure with you; I miss those a ton. Can you believe it's already June!? It's nuts that it's been a year since I graduated. That felt like yesterday. I still feel like an immature 15 year old kid, not a year out of high school! Anyway...
My week was pretty good. We saw some good things happen with our investigators and got to do an odd service project, which was pretty interesting. I'll tell you some of the highlights. Sorry, this email probably won't be as exciting as last week cause last week was pretty nuts, but I'll try my best to make it interesting.
Well, like I told you last week, since we were busy attending a cremation, we did some of our pday stuff on Tuesday, so we didn't have a ton of time to work. It was kind of a slower day; everyone we tried to visit wasn't home and every door we knocked on rejected us pretty fast, so not a whole lot to report on that one.
Wednesday, I got to do the famous Furukawa service project. I've heard about it from the other missionaries, that it's really "fun," but they would never tell me what it was, just that we did it once a month. It turned out that it is going to a care center for handicapped Japanese people and we entertain them with some other volunteers for an hour. It was a pretty interesting experience. We sang some Japanese songs that little kids sing in school, danced around and played games. My favorite guy there was this mega obese dude who is a spitting image of Rauz (I don't know how to spell that) from Monsters Inc.; you know that old slug lady who ends up being an undercover agent. The guy would always make these sounds that sounded just like her. It was hard for me to not just bust out laughing every time I heard him talk. It was a good time I guess, just a little weird and awkward. I'll probably be able to do that a couple more times before my time in Furukawa is finished.
My week was pretty good. We saw some good things happen with our investigators and got to do an odd service project, which was pretty interesting. I'll tell you some of the highlights. Sorry, this email probably won't be as exciting as last week cause last week was pretty nuts, but I'll try my best to make it interesting.
Well, like I told you last week, since we were busy attending a cremation, we did some of our pday stuff on Tuesday, so we didn't have a ton of time to work. It was kind of a slower day; everyone we tried to visit wasn't home and every door we knocked on rejected us pretty fast, so not a whole lot to report on that one.
Wednesday, I got to do the famous Furukawa service project. I've heard about it from the other missionaries, that it's really "fun," but they would never tell me what it was, just that we did it once a month. It turned out that it is going to a care center for handicapped Japanese people and we entertain them with some other volunteers for an hour. It was a pretty interesting experience. We sang some Japanese songs that little kids sing in school, danced around and played games. My favorite guy there was this mega obese dude who is a spitting image of Rauz (I don't know how to spell that) from Monsters Inc.; you know that old slug lady who ends up being an undercover agent. The guy would always make these sounds that sounded just like her. It was hard for me to not just bust out laughing every time I heard him talk. It was a good time I guess, just a little weird and awkward. I'll probably be able to do that a couple more times before my time in Furukawa is finished.
The rest of the day was kind of tough. I was kind of in a bad mood because we were trying to visit a bunch of less actives, but they all told us to leave or their house didn't exist anymore. One thing we get sometimes here is when we approach a door and the person sees us, they give us the "batsu" sign which is making an X with your arms. We got that a few times too. It was kind of a frustrating day. It was just one of those days.
The next day was pretty awesome though. I had splits with Elder Hanson. He is in his 7th transfer, so he is still relatively new, but we were able to do some awesome things. We didn't have any appointments, so we had a bunch of finding time. We decided to go to the front of the station to try to talk to people. The first guy we approached was way nice. Elder Hanson's approach was telling him that I was still pretty new in Japan and I needed to practice my Japanese, so we asked if we could tell him about ourselves a little bit. It was cool. The guy is actually an interpreter for the military, so his English was decent. We got to know him a bit and I taught him some of the first lesson and gave him a Book of Mormon. He lives in Misawa so he won't be our investigator, but hopefully, he finds them up there. Later, we were able to do the same thing with a girl in a nearby park. At the end of the day as we were about to head home, we started talking to this 18 year old kid who was pretty cool. We got his contact info and the other elders are going to teach him this week, so we may have found a new investigator! It was a way cool day; even though we are both young and didn't really know what we were doing and our language skills aren't amazing, we tried to talk to everyone and were able to find some success. It was pretty awesome.
On Friday, we were finally able to meet with Chiba Yuya San. He has been in Tokyo so we haven't been able to contact him, but fortunately, we finally got to teach him. He said he still wants to be baptized, but still won't come to church. So hopefully, we can help him exercise some faith and come to church and trust his that job will be okay.
The next day was pretty awesome though. I had splits with Elder Hanson. He is in his 7th transfer, so he is still relatively new, but we were able to do some awesome things. We didn't have any appointments, so we had a bunch of finding time. We decided to go to the front of the station to try to talk to people. The first guy we approached was way nice. Elder Hanson's approach was telling him that I was still pretty new in Japan and I needed to practice my Japanese, so we asked if we could tell him about ourselves a little bit. It was cool. The guy is actually an interpreter for the military, so his English was decent. We got to know him a bit and I taught him some of the first lesson and gave him a Book of Mormon. He lives in Misawa so he won't be our investigator, but hopefully, he finds them up there. Later, we were able to do the same thing with a girl in a nearby park. At the end of the day as we were about to head home, we started talking to this 18 year old kid who was pretty cool. We got his contact info and the other elders are going to teach him this week, so we may have found a new investigator! It was a way cool day; even though we are both young and didn't really know what we were doing and our language skills aren't amazing, we tried to talk to everyone and were able to find some success. It was pretty awesome.
On Friday, we were finally able to meet with Chiba Yuya San. He has been in Tokyo so we haven't been able to contact him, but fortunately, we finally got to teach him. He said he still wants to be baptized, but still won't come to church. So hopefully, we can help him exercise some faith and come to church and trust his that job will be okay.
We were able to teach Uno San again on Saturday. We taught him the first half of the plan of salvation and it went pretty well. He has a hard time understanding the Book of Mormon because he's pretty old, but he asked us how long before he will know that the church is true. At first, he didn't really care about finding if it was true or not; he just wanted to study the Bible, but he told us that now, he really wants to learn if this is the true church. He is progressing really well and he said he'll try to come to church this week, so we are pretty excited about him.
While I was on splits, the other elders taught our investigator, Kanno San. He said he believes in everything we taught him and that the Book of Mormon is true, but he said he still won't come to church, although he lives right across the street from it. We don't know what's up with that; hopefully we can help him to have a desire to come.
The weekend was pretty uneventful. We had Stake Conference Saturday and Sunday in Sendai. It was way cool to see all of the stake members gathered in one meeting. I haven't seen a congregation that big since I left home. I'm used to having 15 people at church, so it was awesome to see. The talks were pretty good, at least the parts I understood. They talked a lot about keeping the sabbath day holy and taking the sabbath more seriously because that is kind of a problem in Japan. There were some good meetings.
Well that's about it. Sorry that this week was kind of boring compared to last week. It was a good week though; we were able to see success with some investigators and talk to some cool people. I hope you have a good week! Love you guys! Talk to you next week!
The weekend was pretty uneventful. We had Stake Conference Saturday and Sunday in Sendai. It was way cool to see all of the stake members gathered in one meeting. I haven't seen a congregation that big since I left home. I'm used to having 15 people at church, so it was awesome to see. The talks were pretty good, at least the parts I understood. They talked a lot about keeping the sabbath day holy and taking the sabbath more seriously because that is kind of a problem in Japan. There were some good meetings.
Well that's about it. Sorry that this week was kind of boring compared to last week. It was a good week though; we were able to see success with some investigators and talk to some cool people. I hope you have a good week! Love you guys! Talk to you next week!
Elder Nathan Didericksen
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