March 3rd

dear family,

yay I get to write again so soon! we have a new investigator I am really excited about. her name is yasuda san. she came to the church building asking about the free English class. she isn't available in the evenings for the weekly class so we suggested the half English/half gospel program to her and we started meeting with her last week. we have so much fun with her. she followed through with the commitment to read the introduction to the Book of Mormon and she came back with questions for us. when we talk about the gospel she pays close attention and really tries to understand what we are teaching. she downloaded the scriptures to her phone and said she would read 3 nephi 11. she says she has thought before that there might be a god but she gets busy with life and forgets. we talked about how praying and reading the scriptures help us to feel Gods love and to remember him. we talked about how the spirit is Gods messenger and he brings us peace and good feelings and revelation. we shared that when we are baptized we promise God that we will be obedient and he promises us many blessings. one of which is hope... yasuda San says she wants hope. we explained that after baptism we can receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and have the spirit as our constant companion. the spirit doesn't have a body... that way he can reside within us. we shared part of elder Eyring's talk from oct 2007 general conference (oh remember, remember) which talks about how the spirit brings everything to our remembrance and helps us to remember God in our busy lives. on Friday night we met with president wada and he did a role play lesson for us. I acted as the member friend in the lesson and he gave me opportunities to share my testimony. we learned so much from him about how to be better teachers and how to focus on the individual and not on the lesson and how to check their understanding and level of desire to come to know the truthfulness of the message. he encouraged me to take notes of the Japanese that I didn't understand. I've been keeping a notebook of new grammar and words while I've been here and it's getting so big but lots of the time people talk so fast that I can't even pick out individual words! my talk got moved up to this coming Sunday! wish me luck! my topic is humility... which is perfect because I'm learning a lot of that right now. haha we have lots of missionaries in the ward because we live near the mission home. we have the mission president and his wife, a set of couple missionaries, the assistants to the president, two sister companionships, and three other elder companionships. It's crazy but I feel so lucky to be in this area. Yesterday we were asked last minute to help teach a youth Sunday school class. It was fun but sort of intimidating. We taught about the atonement of Jesus Christ and the blessings that we receive because of his sacrifice for us. After church we met with an investigator of president wada. He wanted us to be there as they studied the scriptures. I basically understood nothing. It was so exhausting but I was able to share my testimony even if it had nothing to do with the conversation. We read about baptism and she wanted to know if God could really answer her prayers and how she could know if the teachings of the church are true. She said the closing prayer and apparently it was the first time she was willing to pray in front of them!
Yesterday we tried to do some contacting outside but it was freezing and rainy so we got rejected so many times and hardly anyone would even say hello back to us. We came home so frozen and worn out, but hopefully our efforts made a difference to those couple of people we were able to speak to. While we were walking home I said konnichiwa to a group of little kids and they screamed and started giggling and said to each other "that foreigner said hello in Japanese!" At least we got some laughs :) Today we were walking to the church to meet our investigator and on the way I heard footsteps behind us and I kept thinking... We should talk to whoever is behind us but I couldn't think of how we would just turn around and wait for her to catch up and just randomly start talking. Eventually she walked faster and caught up to us and started speaking to us in English. It turned out that she was here from Taiwan visiting her daughter who just had a baby. And she doesn't speak Japanese and she needed help finding the train station. We were able to talk about her family and share in her excitement in becoming a grandmother. I explained what I was doing in Japan and we left her with a card with information about Mormon.org and our phone number. Today we went shopping at a thrift store that had tons of cute stuff for just three bucks! And I had my first experience at a Japanese dollar store. So cute and fun. The other day we were invited to attend our investigator, Yu chan's daughters school performance. Her daughter (Ayana chan) is in junior high and she plays the koto which is a traditional Japanese instrument. So cool. I took a video so I will attach it in another email!
Anyway... Love y'all guys. Peace.

 

                              picture sister Sasaki drew to help explain the godhead to Yasuda Nobu
                               San (so cute)
                                                      picture of あやな's (Ayana's) koto performance