Dear Family and
Friends,
I feel like it
gets harder and harder to remember what happens each week. This last week was fairly
slow. All of our investigators were out of town for the New Year and are now returning.
We spent the first half of the week in Kasukabe, preparing Sister Nicholes for her
new trainee! We are so excited for her to train (yeah, training at transfer three!).
She will be great. We stressed a lot about transfer plans, but luckily everything
went smoothly. All of our sisters got to their new places safely and on time!
We had MLC on
Saturday, and we talked a lot about finding and stats. Many of our missionaries
are anti-stats (I may or may not have been one of them), and we have seen that as
missionaries stop focusing on the key indicators the baptisms also stop. The teaching
pools in every area are fairly empty, so we are going to focus on going out and
finding through our own efforts. I look forward to having more finding time and
improving my skills (which are fairly low level as of right now). President Nagano
wants to change the mission culture. We didn't have much time to discuss that, so
I really look forward to seeing what he decides.
Yesterday one
of the primary kids was baptized! Yabumoto Yuta kun turned 8 last week (we called
and sang happy birthday to him on his birthday) and was baptized right after church.
One of our investigators was able to come, so that was a huge miracle. Sister Gottfredson
and I had the opportunity to teach Yuta kun a little bit last month, and seeing
him get baptized was like seeing my own investigator getting baptized! It was a
very tender mercy.
Here is an adventure
from last week. We went to visit a referral from the elders, and as we were parking
our bikes at the apartment a lady walked up to us and told us we couldn't park there.
She pointed at a sign that said only residents could park there (it was all in kanji,
which is still a foreign language to me), and she refused to let us park there for
even five minutes to go knock on one door. She started walking away, but when she
heard us discussing which building the referral lived in, she came back and tried
to help us. She was very perplexed when we told her we were trying to visit someone
but we didn't even know her name. She showed us where we could park – another spot
with the same sign as the first place. She said, "well, if it's only five minutes
it should be okay..." She left, and we ascended the building. We were about
to knock on the door, when suddenly she yelled up to us from the street: "no
one lives there!" We told her that there were signs of someone living there.
She then said, "no a man lives there, no woman! You're at the wrong door!"
She then ascended the building to try to help us again. It was really frustrating.
I finally decided that maybe I was supposed to talk to her about the Gospel, and
when I asked if she had ever been to church, she fled faster than anyone I've ever
seen. After she left, I turned to Sister Gottfredson and said, "wow, I should've
done that at the start." Anyway, we think we were at the wrong building, so
we'll probably go back some time this week. Hopefully we don't see that lady again.
Lastly, a miracle.
We were about to return home after tying to visit another referral from the elders
when a man came up to us and said, "hey, you're missionaries, right? My wife
is in a hospital near here and she wants to see the Koshigaya missionaries."
We were a little confused until we remembered the Kasukabe sisters telling us about
a member in their ward who was hospitalized in our area and really wanted to meet
the missionaries. Apparently this woman has been sharing the gospel with all of
her nurses and wants us to meet them. We went with the member to the hospital to
meet his wife, and it was such a tender moment. She had been planning on calling
us that day, but then we showed up in her room! We're going back tomorrow to meet
with her again.
I love you all!
There are no such things as coincidences!
Love, Crandall
Shimai
No comments:
Post a Comment