24 Oct 2011

こんにちは！

Ok, so this time I am e-mailing from the Office of a member in our ward (a little weird because it's in the middle of an apartment complex and they just rent one of the apartments as their office) which makes this the 4th place we've e-mailed from here.  Who would have thought that finding a place to e-mail would be so frustrating?  Our ward building (well, I say building but it's really just the second floor of some office complex) doesn't have internet, so we've been trying to find places where we can e-mail and not be surrounded by the smell of smoke, the sounds of video games/movies and just un-missionary-like stuff everywhere.  So if any of you know of anywhere in Hiroshima city, Asaminami ward, or even Asakita ward (ward here just means part of the city) let me know.  :)

Let's start with Monday.  Ok, so because we went to the Temple we didn't have P-Day on Monday, so that was spent doing "normal" dendo.  We still had to go shopping (I rather like to eat during the week) and there were some other items that we needed to buy because this Wednesday we have a cleaning check.  They do those periodically here because as trusted as Missionaries are, they are still a bunch of 19-25 year olds living on their own in apartments and their cleanliness has a bit of work to do.  Luckily both my companion and I are really good (as far as missionaries go) about cleaning up and making sure the Apartment always looks nice, so we didn't have a whole bunch to do extra for this check.  (If I may toot our own horn, the apartment looks fantastic if I do say so myself!)  We ended up staying at a member’s house for dinner that day and met with her non-member Husband and son.  Their son is 16 (we have 4 part member families with priesthood age sons but they are all non-members and the ward has no young men) and we got to talk to him and invite him to our sports activity on the 5th (Holy man, I'll be 20 then!) where we'll do some archery and Basketball!  If we can get all of the young men there, that would be awesome!  We also have most all of our young Women coming, it should be a blast!

Tuesday we had district meeting and talked a lot about prayer!  It was very good, and really it was a sweet discussion with a bunch of missionaries about how they use/teach/understand prayer and the role it has in our lives.  Prayer is cool stuff man.  We read Luke 18:1-8 together and learned that no matter who you are, what you've done, where you are, or what you're doing, you can pray, and if you follow the right steps, you will be blessed beyond what you can imagine.  Important steps in Prayer 1: give thanks, 2: be humble, 3: acknowledge the Lord in all things, 4: ask for what you need, 5: give thanks again.  I call it a “thanks sandwich” (oh man I almost spelled that like a Japanese person sandowichi)  and with that power, we will find that we can do just about anything.  Prayer gives us strength and is really how we communicate with our Father in Heaven.  If we can just remember that important fact, the conversations we have, the prayers we give, will guide our lives and will be more than a spasmodic plea for help in a time of distress, but will give us power in all things and will prepare us for whatever comes our way.

Usually after District meeting everyone gets together and goes out to a restaurant before they all head back to their respective area, but we just got a message that those meetings are now being stopped so that everyone returns home faster and gets back to the work of dendo, hopefully, faster than before.  Our problem is that we still had to eat, so when we got back, by the time we found somewhere to eat and started again we were back to the same time that we usually start again.  Really it's a little sad that we don't have that time with the other missionaries on Tuesdays, but I totally see where they are coming from (I even set an alarm on my watch so that we wouldn't spend too much time in those post-meeting lunches).  Oh well, no more all-you-can-eat Indian curry for now. :(

Wednesday we met with a less active (who Beckstrand thought was a former investigator) and had a way nice lesson with her.  We had Fudetani come and help (he's 25 years old and just came back from his mission; he was only ours for half a year so we're trying to involve him as much as we can so that he doesn't feel excluded by anybody)  and he was a great help in the lesson.  Ito san (the less active member) came to church on Sunday!  She took the sacrament for the first time in a very long time and was visibly moved by the blessing and the talks by the speakers.  Other than that, the day was mainly doing paper work are organizing our area's hundreds of forms and papers.  It's mostly all organized now and soon we'll have marked on the map where everyone lives so that future missionaries won't have to criss-cross the area. (saying criss-cross totally reminded me of the old Hot Wheels Criss-Cross Crash that I used to have. Oh man, I just had to have it for Christmas, but I think I played with it like 5 times, then never again......)

Recently it's been mostly paper work and meetings planning for activities and going out with the branch president to visit people all over our area.  It's been actually way good recently and with our Branch President’s vision it feels like Yasufuruichi is on the verge of something big.  With Transfers only 2 weeks away I hope I'm still here for when it happens.  Will I finally break the 1 transfer cycle this time, or will it continue?  (My secret goal is to hit 16 areas on my mission and I'm well on my way.... )

Alright, last bit of cool stuff.  Today we went and did Archery for like an hour.  Oh man, it was so good! The people behind us were doing Kyuudo (the Japanese archery style) and we had some fun spats with each other.  I definitely decided that archery is easier without a big ol' hole in my palm.  (I've reopened that thing like 3 times now......)

We'll we've got to head out now (I feel like I've taken too much time here again... oops)

Good luck to everyone wherever you may be. 

愛している！！ (I love you!)

エベレット長老

Elder Everett