A Teaching Pool...Finally!

My Fellow Americans!

Lets see, quite the week! Holy cow, where to start. I don:t know. Probably get the random stuff out of the way. Atreyu is such a big little guy now! And so much hair!!!!! And Walking!? I:m going to recognize him! Although everyone I show his picture to says they think it is me as a baby.

Next random thing. So we always talked about how everyone is going to be humble because of the earthquake and this subject came up this week at FHE. Its actually been the opposite. Of course as its expected there are the few that blame God for doing it and that isn:t a surprise. But the members were destroyed. Its quite sad. You look at records before and after the earthquake and half branches went LA (less active) and have been contacted after the earthquake and just don:t want to come back. A lot of hearts have been hardened. Especially Sendai it seems. From what I hear a lot of the missionary work there is trying to make sure the branch doesn:t crumble under its own weight and trying to get everyone to come back and go to normal. Only the super strong survive. I feel bad. A lot of our work has been trying to get LAs to come back and we have had a little successish but super hard. Anyway, thats my rant.

So onto to this week. These letters are probably going to get more mission like now that I have a teaching pool. This week was quite awesome with lessons. Maybe because I had never really taught lessons before this. First Satosan. Hes an older man that lives alone in this apartment we found our first week here. We finally got time we could meet with him this week. He didn:t want us to come into his house but we taught maybe 30 minutes at his door which was interesting and I was super confused the whole time of course because the Japanese of course and every time I say something Shinno choro has to soften it because basically MTC japanese is blunt. Ha. Anyway, he was good. He committed himself to come to church and read our pamphlet but he wouldn:t take a Book of Mormon. Still not bad. Then Yoshimisan. She is the kinda airhead that we got passed from Cannonchorotachi. We taught her the plan of salvation this week and she is a usual Japanese person so she doesn:t really make her feelings known, always says she is ok and understands, but never really does. Anyway so Saturday night after District meeting (oh yeah we had District (as in multiple branch meetings this weekend(it bugs me that there are mission district and church district and they are different area and people))) we wanted to invite her to the general district meeting the next day which is in Koriyama. Super long shot because its hard enough to get someone to come to church when its in Aizu let alone get in a random members car for a hour and a half drive. Ha. So we call her and she says yes? What? Ok so we expect her to spoke (not show up) anyway we follow up on our commitment to read Alma 40 and pray and what? She did it? (You must understand this is the first commitment in like 4 months of being taught she has actually done). So we are kinda jubilant. It was also nice to rub in Cannon Choro:s face because he was sure she wouldn:t do it. Then we go to pick her up the next day and she was there! Cannon choro:s jaw about hit the floor. Ha. I think she was a little weirded out by church but she had some school friends there so that was a cool surprise. Also after we had a meeting with President Rasmussen for new converts and investigators. That probably scared her a little but might of helped her to hear these recent converts testimonies and conversion stories. So strangely she is doing really good. Baptism date will be set this week hopefully. Oh yeah and as we drove back from Koriyama we taught her in the back of the car about the Gospel of Christ and had Nugent Kyodai do his awesome testimony while he drove (a little scary I will admit but we are alive). And at the end we asked her if she knew this was true if she would get baptized and she said yes. Now she just needs to put in the work to know its true.

Random comment. My image of a mission was teaching in comfy living rooms not in the front of doors or in the back of cramped cars. Interesting

Ok rewind. Friday night we only had like 2 hours that we could end up proselyte for a number of reasons so we head out of the apartment and I hear this thunk and look down and the pedal of my bike broke in half. Really! I was a little angry so we walk back to the apartment because we don:t know what to do. So since we can:t visit people we open up the old investigator section of the area book and start calling. Of course a lot of people gave us the same excuse as was written for the reason they stopped taking the lessons. Then we get to this one that kept hanging up on the missionaries 3 years ago. Long shot. So we call him. He seems happy to hear from us. We ask if we can meet next week, he says sure, then he said something more beautiful, *I:m free now actually if that works* the sentence wasn:t even finished and we were already running out the door. Ha. So we met him at the church and hes a pretty sweet guy. Super tall especially for a Nihonjin and super open. The question that we just ask because we feel the need to that we always get a no to or something else bad is do you believe in God. Surprised us by saying of course he did. Seemed super open. Another lesson this week. Excited for him. Although he came to the first part of FHE and when I was sharing my *Good thing* from the week it was him of course that we had met him so I get done with this spill and then Shinno choro adds, *Well his name is Endo san not Enjisan....* I called the wrong name the whole time. Doh!

Ok last story. So we made an appointment with this guy last week that wanted to talk religion with us, not the perfect investigator because that meas he is set in his ways and possibly wants to argue and all that but he seemed decent and we just want appointments with anyone so we said we would come back. Anyway, we didn:t want to use my bike last night because it kinda is a bit broken (today I didn:t care and probably will just ride it in its broken state from now on because it is just too useful) so we walked the 4 or so miles up this mountain to meet him and the whole time I:m thinking he is going to spoke but he doesn:t and we sit down. Chat for awhile. Then his daughter or something sits down (we aren:t sure of her relationship but she could be his daughter). Anyway, as expected he is stuck in his ways but she tells us that she read our pamphlet a bunch of times, and she is, *Just searching for truth* I swear there are not better words a missionary can hear then that. So we are hopeful for her, not so much for him but he is our vehicle to her so we shall use him.


Anyway, gone way to long, its fun, its hard, etc. Love you all. Peace out.

Elder Carter