I know some of you were expecting an email yesterday but because the Tokyo temple is closed on Mondays Pday was moved to Tuesday! I'm still alive! I also apologize for the shortness of the email. I wrote it once already and my computer decided to freak out and the email got erased. Since i'm pressed for time I'm just going to quickly re-cap what happened this week and write a longer email next week!
As for this week nothing super extremely exciting happened although we did do a couple of cool things. We Had a lesson with Sato Kyodai, a less-active member again who is super cool. We taught him about the plan of salvation however he did not understand a lot of the more "Advance" concepts. Elder Merrill and I didn't have a member present to help explain so we were by ourselves to answer his questions. We ultimately did our best and we believe that his questions were satisfied! I believe that that was the influence of the Spirit helping to testify instead of what we said specifically.
On another day we went and visited the house of a certain Mr. Sherman Carter. He was a person that the Elders had previously met with and he spoke English. So we had to follow up with him. We called him and set up an appointment and on Wednesday we went and talked to him. Turns out that he is a protestant preacher and just really wanted to talk about the Word with us. It wasn't a bible-bashing session thankfully he did most of the talking and after an hour or so we decided that it wasn't worth our time to meet with him since we weren't actually teaching anything. More so he was witnessing to us or something like that.
On Wednesday morning we meet with one of our old investigators Vijay after as soon as we had woken up and turned off our alarm he had called. At 0631! He wanted to meet within the hour for a lesson. We were ecstatic and so we meet with him. I was so happy to see him again! So we met with him again and had a lesson. We invited him to come to the dual-ward Japanese and English Ward Christmas party that was being held on the base this past Saturday. He had a lot of questions concerning the church and wanted to find proof of the Book of Mormon and other practices of the Church within the Bible. We told that that we would study the scriptures that week and would get back to him with the answers on Sunday.
The Christmas party was AMAZING. The Japanese and the American Wards really really know how to party. The food was awesome however about 1/3 of the way through the night they ran out! A couple of members ran out to the on-base popeyes and got boxes upon boxes of chicken to feed the masses of hungry people. It was essentially a traditional Japanese Christmas dinner, minus the cake! The youth did several musical numbers and the combined youth programs put on a play concerning the real reason behind the Christmas season. There were tons of members and non-members as well. Essentially all of our English class students came to the party. Elder Merrill and I had a ton of meaningful contacts with these people and they all seemed to enjoy being able to get onto a US airbase even for only a night.
On Sunday Vijay called to tell us that he had not gotten a good nights rest and wasn't coming to church. He hasn't returned any of our calls or texts. We think that this might be the last of him that we see for a little bit. His family owns an indo curry in town. Were hoping that if we swing by for lunch this week we might be able to catch him and see why he is avoiding our calls.
The rest of the Sunday was un-eventful. One of our investigators (Kim-san) came to the wrong ward (English ward instead of the Japanese speaking ward) but as soon as he walked in a Chinese family welcomed him to the ward and invited him to sit down with them. It was really really awesome seeing just how Member missionary work can be so fluid and without awkwardness. Elder Merrill and I didn't even have to do a single thing! Member Missionaries are the Best! *hint hint*
This week wasn't the most exciting week teaching wise but Elder Merrill and I had plenty of contacts with people. My Japanese has seen significant improvement since I have been using our district's native Japanese speaker. In a week or so we will be having transfer calls. I fear that I might be training a Japanese Missionary in the next transfer. Hopefully that's not the case!
Thanks everyone for all the support and the letters. They're very warmly received!
Love,
Elder J. Alan Farr
Attached is a picture of me channeling my inner Japanese. In the background you can see the sun setting behind Mt. Fuji and some of Fussa. The area that I'm in. Pretty cool huh?
No comments:
Post a Comment