Monday, November 21, 2011

Progress in teaching

Another email! Yay. I always look forward to these. Lets see, I guess I will just give a random assortment of stuff.

Y. She is doing good. We have taught her all the commandments but fasting and the 10 commandments but those should be easy. She is keeping all the other ones. Came to church and FHE again this week. I really do think she enjoys it greatly. We pushed her baptism back a week because we were a little scared and that will be fine. She still will have her interview this Friday when I have splits with the zone leaders (our district leader can:t interview her because he has taught her before) so hopefully all goes well there. I really hope he:s easy on her, she really is like a 8 year old. We used to joke around that she was just too *pure* (they say pure in japanese, there are a lot of words that people say that are english here) but the more I meet with her the more I actually think it is true. She just kinda has a slow mind when it comes to these things but she seems to really desire to do the right thing. Recently I haven:t even been sure she has realize that she really does have a baptism date and it really will happen until yesterday when she text us saying she was worried about getting baptized. Of course our hearts sink at this point. So we call her up and start having this serious talk about how she can tell us whats wrong and we just want to help so finally she is tells us. She is worried about her make up running when she is immerssed in water. Good old Shinno choro did his best to hold back his laughter as I rolled on the ground laughing in the other room. Her biggest issue is makeup.....I can deal with this. Ha. She:s a frustrating lady but we love her so. Sometimes I have to remind myself that she is actually older than me. Anyway, moving on.

Next S san the person in the eating pictures on the other table is Cannon choro and Fukata choros investigator (I don:t really count him as Kano choros because he came in after basically everything had been taught). Anyway he got baptized yesterday and is basically a stud. He will be a good member but anyway. After he got confirmed we had sacrament meeting and then there was a pretty good earthquake (we aren:t sure if it was actually a really bad one somewhere else) and I didn:t think of it at the time but Fukata choro talks about it as Hell shaking at Shiraikyodai (brother Shirai):s baptism. I:m good with this explanation.

So you may remember right at the beginning of Aizu we had a Vietnamese investigator by the name of T. Well he came to church yesterday and it was super fun. He knows english so I could communicate a lot better with him. Anyway so after we taught him the first time we had the Homebu (mission office) send us all the vietnamese stuff they had and it was so fun to give them too him because he was so excited to get a Book of Mormon in Vietnamese and then it got even more fun when we had a lesson after and we talked to him in English and Japanese and he read the scriptures in Vietnamese. Oh dear. He is super busy so we will see where it goes but good stuff.

Also you may remember our blind appointment T. We met with her this week. A whole new experience teaching her. She is pretty vocal so its hard to teach her but also a good person.

U and H we met with a gain. Taught the first half of the Plan of Salvation. They had read the Book of the Mormon but hadn:t prayed. That was too bad and also we found out they are 11 years apart in age and just live together. Sigh. That makes it a lot more weird. He is such a big obstacle for her. Anyway we will keep meeting with them.

We had a few other lessons but once they become more I will add to them to the emails.

Random shoutout to anyone that reads this. If anyone has ideas for how to Run and English Class, what kind of words to teach, games, themes etc let me know. Like Christmas ideas would be cool.

Something that bothers me about missions is the temporal side. It just feels so unnecessary but is so annoying. Clothes, food, money, health, bikes, etc. Such annoying stuff that really doesn:t matter to these people:s salvation but really is annoying and bugs me. Anyway. Just thought I would quickly vent that.

There is actually a lot of Christmas preparations here but I think this will be the limit of it but it was nice to go to the stores today and hear English Christmas songs. Sigh. Long time no see (that makes more sense in Japanese).

Anyway. Too long. I know there was another thing I wanted to talk about but oh well. Love you all. Talk to you next week.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Japan Pictures

Elder Carter in Japan


Service Lunch

Tsunami

Sweet Potato Vendor

Service Day