Moving at the Speed of Light

I was really bummed that Alex didn't send any photos this week. He said that the week went by too quickly. So I used two of his photos from his pre-mission photo shoot.

In the letter to me he said that he didn't feel the bigger earthquake that was in Japan, but he felt a couple of smaller ones and the were "relaxing". Glad he thinks so. Here is his letter to everyone.

People often say that time is fixed. I'm here to tell you that it's not. I have experienced such an increase of time since coming on my mission. Weeks fly by, and yet each moment lasts a lifetime. This is probably one of the "how"s of missionary maturity growth rates. God is the source of all good, but it sure seems like He changes time for His missionaries.

This week's Kanji of the Week is: 求道者。 Kyudosha (cue-dough-sha). The literally translation of this word, is truth seeker. What it means in Church terms is "investigator."

And now for the weekly report:

Monday: Monday was nice as usual. We got to go back to the local Daiso, where I got a travel sized "go" board, and Elder O. got a watch, among a few other things. We then had a lesson with Mr. Hasebe. He is moving this week, so it was one of our last visits with him. We wanted to talk about faith, and really focus him even more on Christ; so that we did. It was a good lesson, and I hope it helped him come closer to Christ. 

My brain is a little fuzzy on that day right now, but after we got back from working at night, we discovered that Elder O. and Elder P. both got the same watch from Daiso. It was pretty funny to see their reactions when the found out.

Tuesday: We had another lesson with Mr. Hasebe, and in that lesson we focused on modern day prophets and watched one of the most recent talks by President Thomas S. Monson with him. We had a good time with him, and he seemed to like President Monson. After that we went back to the apartment and finished up the rest of the studies we had left because of the morning's DCS meeting. We then took a bus to the train station, and went up to a neighboring city to visit a less active. While on the way to her work, we got a text from her saying she was going to be at the station soon, but we ended up not being able to meet. We then had to go back down to Yonezawa, and it was late, so we returned to the apartment.

Wednesday: We went to English Lunch at YIRA (Yonezawa International Relations Association), where we met Brother Gessell who works there. After the lunch we were talking with the people there, and they randomly started asking us about the word of wisdom; specifically what we could and couldn't drink. It was odd, but really cool. We then went to the a place where we could get a language study in. The closest place to our appointment after that was in a mall, so we sat down in the cafeteria. There were these high school boys who came after awhile, and Elder O. tried to get them to teach us some Japanese by talking to them in English. One of the boys freaked out and went and found someone who could speak english. We had to explain to the man that came that we were fine, and I felt bad for the boy. They didn't end up teaching us Japanese though. We then had a quick lesson with Mr. Kato. He is an alcoholic, and was drinking when we got there. We asked him if he had any desire to stop, but he said no. We aren't sure if we can continue to teach him much longer.

We then had a cool English class, and a new student came. His name is Ryosuke. He's a really nice guy. In the class, we had the students make puppets for the play they have in the chinese new year party we're having soon.

Thursday: A lot of things kept swapping on us this day, but it all worked out for the good. We ended up spending a lot of our day planning for the upcoming week that day, so we didn't get to do much else.

Friday: We ended up going to a member's friends work, and talked with them both there for a while. We then walked up to the north part of town to a different member's house, where we talked a lot about patience and what it is and isn't. We then went back to the station to try and meet the less active we couldn't the other day, but the train ended up being so late that we couldn't. We posted some of the stake pamphlets we have and then went back to the apartment.

Saturday: We had "companion exchanges" that day, but quite a few of our activities were in the same spot at around the same time. All four of us went to lunch at YIRA to celebrate the Chinese New Year with them, and we had some really good chinese food, and an awesome presentation from a chinese woman. It really instilled in me a desire to go to China, but I am glad as it is that I have been given the opportunity to be in Japan.

 

We (Elder P. and I) then went to a lesson with Mr. Hasebe at the church. We cleared some confusion he had about 1 Nephi Chapter 21, and invited him to church. He said he had no problems at the moment and probably would. (Spoiler alert: he came!)

 

Following that we went to an activity center with the other two and played basket ball with some boys that we met two weeks ago, and also got to play with Ryosuke, because we invited him to come.

We then hurried home, changed back into normal attire (normal for us), and went and had a lesson with one of the other two's investigators. Elder P. hadn't met him yet (Mr. Saimaru), so we got to know him a bit more, and heard his life story. It was really interesting, and the spirit was really strong as Elder P. shared his testimony and story about his mother's conversion story.

Sunday: Church was normal, except that Mr. Hasebe came. It was a really unusually spiritual meeting, and it was amazing. I even think I saw a tear in Mr. Hasebe's eye. 

Following that, we headed back to the apartment for some more studies and a quick role play with the other two missionaries before heading out into the world. While in the world we visited two families. The first was a part member less active family, and the second was a man we met through housing a while ago. We got some good conversations out of them, and we were even invited into Mr. Takahashi's (the man we met a while ago) house to see a baby. The baby ended up being a co-workers who was there, and it was a bit odd, but it was a cute baby, and we got to talk for a while. The place we went was a bit far away from our apartment, so we walked back to the apartment for the night.

I really hope you enjoy reading these, and I hope that the spirit is there when you do so. Thank you all for all your love and support.

Love,

Elder_____