On Wednesday, Elder Terry and I studied normally. We got out around 1pm and I decided to take Elder Terry to the Big Buddah. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. The Sakura in full bloom, we headed out down the back road to the Big Buddah. We talked to a couple of people on the way over. Nobody seemed really interested, but were nice none the less. We got to the Buddah and walked around talking to several tourists. We ended up talking to this woman who was running a kanji joke t-shirt store right by the Buddah. I explained to her that I couldn't buy any since they wouldn't fit me and I don't understand Kanji. She was really nice nonetheless. Down the road we talked to a man who owns an Indian goods import store. He talked to us about his life in India, the food, and his experience here in Japan. He was really cool. He talked a little bit about religion with us, but customers came in wanting to buy stuff and since we were just hanging out talking we left. We then found a man who was trying to sell people honey. He was a beekeeper and traveled all over Japan taking his hive with him to have them create different different flavors of honey. He gave us at least ten different honeys to try. The best ones were the Sakura flavored honey and the mikan flavored honey. I wanted to buy some but they were all wayyyyyy too expensive. The rest of the day was uneventful, we mostly ran around talking to people but had many really cool
Thursday we woke up to rain. Lots and lots of rain. It rained the whole entire day. Luckily for us, Thursdays are the days that we do our weekly planning. Because of this, we spent much of the day indoors trying to,set up the next week for success. After lunch, Elder Terry and I went to the church and sat down in the Primary and went to town with planning. We essentially planned out what we were going to do each day for the next 7 days. We talked about how we can help our friends come closer to Christ and how we could serve the people of Kamakura Better. When we were finished, it was raining hard so we decided that instead of walking around and talking to people while being cold, wet, and miserable. We were going to go through the old area Book and call people that had previous contact with the missionaries. We did this for about an hour or so. I was only able to get a hold of one man named Dieter and then we broke for diner. Afterwards, it was raining so much that that we didn't want to go outside p, so we called our investigators, set up appointments for the coming week and then proceeded to continue calling people who had previously met the missionaries. What happened next was nothing short of a miracle. As we continued to call people, people started picking up! And then people started talking, and listening! By the time the night was over, we had several appointments, commitments from people who said that they were coming to church, and I even taught the first lesson over the phone from a man who called back and said that he had time to listen to our message over the phone. It was absolutely miraculous. Here in the Tokyo south mission, President Wada is always talking about working Hard, smart, and Inspired. I think that we were definitely led by the spirit that night to find the people were prepared. This has definitely strengthened my testimony about the truthfulness of our message and how it can help the people of Japan!
Friday morning the rain stopped. Elder Terry and I went and ran sprints along a Sakura tree-lined cobblestone road that nobody was driving on. It sucked. After our morning stuff, we went out to the church to make some phone calls. Along the way to the church we talked to about five different people about our roles as missionaries a and even talked to this one man who lived in the next city over about the history of Kamakura and Japan. He told me that I should go and visit Kyoto and other places here in Japan. It's really cool swing all the history in this country. I am so blessed to be living here in Historic Kamakura. We made a few phone calls and then left the church to go and try our hand at talking to people on the street. It was absolutely AMAZING outside. The great weather gave me and my companion and I an Energy boost and we talked to just about every person that we crossed paths with. We walked to the beach to see if our English-speaking friends were there but the wind was so intense that it was blowing sand into my eyes causing them to hurt. We returned back to the apartment, ate some dinner and then went back out. We decided to go and knock on houses. I threw Elder Terry under the bus a few times But, he's really improving. It's crazy how quickly he is. We finished the day off with some more phone calls and retired for the night.
Saturday was super busy. We went to 保土ヶ谷 so I could conduct District meeting. That finished after 90 or so minutes and then we had to rush back to Kamakura by 2pm so we could meet Alexander one of our friends to hang out in Kamakura with. He texted us that he was going to be a little late so we went to a seven eleven type store and bought some onigiri and then went and bought some bread at the next-door bakery. We sat and ate our onigiri. The thing with onigiri is that I can't read the kanji or know the hiragana meaning even though I can read it. So every time I bite into one it's the rice based equal of Russian-roulette. Usually I win, but every so often I lose and get something absolutely disgusting. We went and saw the Sakura with him, then we went to the biggest shrine here in Kamakura 八幡宮 (Hachimangu Shrine) and took some cool pictures. In a few weeks they will be having a spring festival all full of Japanese archery and Kimonoed people and other super cool traditional Japanese things. After we hung out we trained over to Higashi Totsuka where we met Brother Sasa for a practice lesson. We were there for about 39 min teaching the first discussion and afterwards he gave us plenty of good advice and constructive criticism. We went back home after for dinner, then we went to the church to type up some stuff for Sunday missionary meetings. It was a long day, but I'm glad.
Sunday was pretty good. We woke up. We went to the missionary correlation meeting with the Ward council and the Ward mission leader but had to peace out rather quickly because we had to meet two people at the train station and walk to the church. Unfortunately they never showed up. We tried to call them, but they didn't pick up. So with five minutes until the start of sacrament meeting, we sprinted back to the church and snuck in as the opening prayer finished and the opening hymn began. I'm sure the members were wondering why the missionaries were sweating so profusely. Church was uneventful, we talked about the sacrament and passover and their similarities. In elders quorum we talked about bearing a proper testimony. After church, we went to the apartment and got umbrellas and spent the rest of the day in the pouring rain talking to people and ringing doorbells. After dinner we went to the church and took care of some things that we had to do there. Even though it rained, it was a really really nice day. We definitely helped improve the lives of people here in Japan.
This week was a fun, miracle-filled week. I'm so excited for what's in store next week!
Very Respectfully,
Elder J. Alan Farr
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