Training, Round 2

Dearest Family and Friends,

As expected, I will be training this transfer, and probably for the rest of my mission!  I am so excited to have this opportunity to work with bean faith again!  I love training.  I'll meet my new companion this Wednesday at the Honbu.

This last week, our zone had a goal to prayerfully drop those investigators that were not progressing.  As we have had zero focus investigators all transfer, we decided to prayerfully choose which less actives to stop focusing so much attention on.  We've been able to narrow our list down to five names, and this last week we had WAY more time for finding.  I've never cared much for housing (I've always preferred street contacting), but I finally bit the bullet and we spent most of the week knocking doors.  On Saturday, we prayed and decided to go house around one of our investigator's (Okay, so I guess we do have investigators?  They just never meet with us because everyone here is too busy) apartments.  It was a small neighborhood, and we didn't have too much time, but we found two women who said we could come back later (they were too busy right then) and a man who was WAY interested in learning more.  He came out of his house to talk to us (usually people just talk to us through their interphones) and asked me for the Restoration pamphlet I was holding!  We're hoping that we can teach his whole family so that we don't have to refer him to the elders... We decided to go back yesterday, and we knocked a few more doors.  We found another woman who said we could come back later, and we found ANOTHER man who was way interested in religion!  We even set up expectations that we are going to come back with a friend.  We gave him a Restoration Pamphlet to prepare, and we invited him to include his whole family.  In this little neighborhood of 20-30 homes, we found three women who said we could come back later and two solid men who are interested in learning more!  I think we're going to go back again when we can.

We found another lady this last week.  Her name is Lyne, and she is from Laos.  She was way interested in church, and she really wants us to meet her sons (probably to help with English...).  Hopefully we can meet with her again before she moves back to America at the end of this month...

Yesterday we had Stake Conference, but it was really interesting.  The first thirty minutes we heard from the Stake President via broadcast from Matsudo, and then we watched a broadcast of Elder Bednar and some other general authorities.  It was really new, and it was amazing to me to see how technology allows us to be connected all over the world.

I am so grateful every day for the opportunity I have to be in Japan at this time.  I know that this place is so ready for the Gospel.  I feel that the people are just waiting for someone to invite them!  I know that as we invite others to come unto Christ, we are fulfilling our missionary purposes, whether as full time missionaries or as member missionaries.

Have a fantastic week!

Love, Crandall Shimai