Fujieda, Shizuoka | Week 1 T6 :: So Many Things This Week
Aloha♡♡♡
Be prepared for a longgg email.This past week was filled with so many things, hope I can remember all of them! But really, wow. I'm so excited just thinking about this past week!
First off, remember how I came here only 3 weeks ago and now its a new transfer with a new companion? Yes, so I tried my best to learn all I could from my past companion here but I still feel like I dont know that much. Basically we’re now whitewashing this area haha. Now that its been a week I totally see that this whitewash was meant to happen.
At first it was a bit rough because our referral dropped us, and we also dropped another person were teaching out of our small teaching pool. Our friend with a baptismal date is pregnant (shes due next week!) I've only been able to meet her once, and probably wont for quite a while after she gives birth. Also I've still never met 2 of our other friends we teach. So things were looking pretty rough at first, but then things really started to pick up after Wednesday.
I decided to do a fast on Wednesday. Recently I read about someones 40 day fast experience, except its not from food, its from little bad habits. The objective is to stop doing little things that are ineffective, don’t invite the spirit, take away from my missionary purpose, or just negative in general. Not huge things, but little everyday things. There’s a lot of things about myself that I want to work on and refine. I decided to start my 40 day fast with a normal fast from food, thinking about what things I need to focus and work on for the next 40 days. The idea is to fast from these bad habits in order to change not just my behavior, but eventually my nature and in return invite the spirit to dwell more abundantly. I also wanted to fast in general for this new transfer here in Fujieda.
Wednesday night we weren't sure what to do because we just didn't have much to work with, so we decided to go visit a promising looking person on our map. The person was home! It was amazing, we think that she really is prepared. She is already Christian, she loves Jesus Christ, and told us "I think you are messengers sent from God, and I think this is a message I need to hear." We read part of 3 Nephi 17, and she could feel the power of the Book of Mormon. It was amazing and we are going to start teaching her now!
Thursday was so much fun. I forgot to mention that every other week we do service at a home for people with disabilities. All we really do is dance Zumba with them, but its so much fun! They are SO excited everytime we come, their faces just light up, its so precious! Honestly, I feel like going there helps me more than it helps them :,)
We had our free English class later that night and 2 new people came! We became friends with them and are going to ask if we can share our messgae with them next week. Aslo, a man named Horiさん(堀井, same first kanji as me!) HE GAVE US 2 REFERRALS!? They are his friends who want to do our 30/30 program we offer! Sweeeet.
Saturday was the best, once again we don't have much going on over here so we had 5 hours of nothing. We decided to venture far out to promising looking places on the map that are usually a bit harder to go on busier days (like a straight hour of biking in the middle of nowhere kind of thing) We were going up this BIG overpass, I had the thought that we should turn around and find an easier way, but I decided to just push through and at the top of it was another person walking her bike. We talked to her and she is so prepared! She told us that she is looking for a new religion basically. She used to go to a church with her mom, but her mom recently passed away and she decided to stop going to that church her mom went to. The pins on the map we wanted to visit either moved or didn't answer :/ but I think all of that was meant to find the one that we found. We were super close to the ocean so we stopped by the beach to take a breather before we headed back for our lesson with our 2 NEW REFERRALS.
Our lesson with our referrals was amazing! They mostly wanted to do the 30/30 program for the English, but when we shared the Church message they could feel the spirit, and really enjoyed it! They are these two, sweet, cute, older ladies who told us they don't have anything else to do haha. Our friend from the Eikaiwa class who referred them was also there. One of them owns this cute little bento box shop by the train station, so she gave us free food and made us shabushabu! So technically we now have 3 new people we are teaching. They told us that they could feel the purity of our hearts and were really astonished by our sincerity. They also told us that they believe in God, and agreed to continue to pray!
Sunday was even better. Remember that friend I told you about in my last email, the young man who is looking for happiness in life? Well we invited him to church and he actually showed up! He wasn't able to stay for the second hour but I think he really enjoyed it. The talks given during sacrament meeting were perfect. Afterwards we met with him and asked how it went, he had some questions, and we discovered that he studied some other christian religions before. HE READ 200 PAGES OF THE BOOK OF MORMON WE GAVE HIM LAST WEEK. He's so prepared.
I also forgot to mention that every Sunday we go to a less active ward members house for dinner. Hes this sweet, older man from Peru! He doesn't speak too much Japanese, so its kind of hard to communicate, but he lives all alone and LOVES the missionaries. He makes and gives you a TON of food. The new Elder here is from Brazil and knows some spanish, so it was really nice when he shared a spiritual message with him. It really touched his heart. Then he gave the Elders 2 referrals!
Afterwards we had a lesson with our new friend that we met on the bridge yesterday. It was amazing. I don't think I've ever been apart of such a spirit lead/ PMG perfect lesson. We could all feel the power of the spirit. She realized that she thinks we were meant to run into her. She was shopping and realized she forgot something and had to go back over that huge overpass, and it happened to be at the same time as us. She already recognizes that it was God! We asked if she could pray for us and her prayer was so cute, all she said was "今日ありがとございます" (thank you for today), and ended in the name of Jesus Christ. It was so sweet and simple.
Also JUST TODAY, as I was writing his email that woman who loves Jesus that we found came here to the church! We invited her to our special stake conference that we are having this Sunday, Elder Soares will speaking at our Stake conference!!!!!! She said that shes willing to cancel her own Sunday worship to come to ours!?
Wow this week was just so amazing and lead by the spirit. I don’t have much more time to write anything else other than we are going to have a special visit from and Apostle of the Lord, Elder Soares! We've all been preparing to meet him, and are excited to hear the words of the Lord. Also my companion Sister Barnes is amazing!
I love you all so much and hope you have an amazing week
愛してます
