IT'S MAY! Oh wow, how does time keep going
so fast? I can answer now, the question, "what
were you doing one year ago" and honestly know exactly what I was
doing.... I'm pretty sure this mission thing is just one big time capsule
that sticks in the mind. And I see no problem with that (If only it'll
stop going so fast).
Ok, so where do I start with this week!?
Essentially I'll just call it a week of miracles and all around good
stuff. So Monday we had what's called an 'Undoukai' or a sports meet
(usually for elementary and middle schools) as a ward. We split up into
the Red and White teams and had a series of competitions to decide the winner,
anywhere from Relay races, obstacle courses, hula hoops, finding gob stoppers
in a bowl of flour, and everywhere in between. I'll just say that WHITE
TEAM RULES! Red Team's got nothing on us. Granted, it really did
come down to the very last event, a race around the church, and the anchor for
both teams ended up being Me and my Companion (for the other team). I
think it suffices to say that WHITE TEAM WON.... I'm sorry Elder Gandy and the
other Red team members, but I will not lose :D
Tuesday was super good. We had our normal
District meeting in the morning, Elder Gandy's first, which was way good.
We learned all about what it takes for us to have an easiness and a desire to
learn, and how to give that desire to our investigators. Granted, it's
still a work in progress, but it’s coming. But after that we still had a
whole day left over. We had a couple of potential investigators we wanted
to visit that didn't live too far away, so we decided to just walk the way over
there and try to talk to as many people as we could along the way.
We ended up walking along one on of the strip
malls around our area and trying to talk to people around there. After a
good hour or so of trying to find anyone that would listen we finally found
this one couple to talk to. We talked about their job, their plans for
Golden week, and we managed to talk about temples, and the Book of
Mormon. The sad thing is, he was moving to Tokyo the next day. BUT,
we gave him the number for the mission home in Tokyo and the Church's
website. I don't know if that will go anywhere but he's in my prayers
now, at least for the next week, that he will meet the missionaries sometime
soon.
Then later that day we were making our way to
one of our members that we felt that we should meet and were talking to anybody
on the streets we could meet. But by that time we weren't by the main
shopping area so there really was nobody on the streets. But we did see
this one man walking down the street. I encouraged Elder Gandy to go and
greet him (Bless his heart, he tried to get a good Japanese greeting, but it
just didn't come out). Somehow the man actually stopped and talked to
us. We ended up talking to him for a little bit, explained what we're
doing in Japan and he was like "I really like when I see young people
working hard for a good cause, here, let me by you a drink"
So this man that we had met 4 minutes before
took us to a nearby restaurant (ironically called Joyfull) and bought us 2 cups
of Hot Cocoa. We ended up sitting in that restaurant for the next several
minutes and talked to him some more. He saw that Elder Gandy was
struggling a little bit with the language and encouraged him to practice
teaching in Japanese on him. He held patiently while Elder Gandy got
across the first half of the first lesson in what Japanese he could, then
offered advice and encouragement. He talked to us a little bit more after that,
then left 2000 円 on
the table (about $20) and just left. We ended up with 2 meals and 2
drinks and an experience that won't be easily forgotten.
Thursday we ended up making it up to APU (where
Naoya is) for half of the day. We met with Naoya and had dinner with
him. I'm a sucker for good food, and a cafeteria full of delicious
Japanese food was just too good, I ended up paying so much for dinner.... I just
couldn't say no to Potato salad, fried chicken curry, Japanese soup and a fish
fillet. Too good! Naoya is also doing way good. We walked
around campus with him for a little bit and I'm pretty sure he knows at least
half of all the students on campus. I suppose it helps being an RA but,
yeah, Naoya knows everybody! We'll see if we can keep meeting with him on
Thursdays, and hopefully one of these days we'll get him to church (it's hard
living a hour and a half away......)
That Friday we also made our way to the Temple
with our ward. This was very cool because we joined with the Shimizu ward
in the Stake, which was way cool because, if you'll remember, that was my first
Area! So I ended up going to the temple with members from 2 areas I've
been in! It was really cool to meet up with members that I haven't seen
in 9 months, and even better, some of them actually remembered me! It was
really a special experience to be surrounded by people I know at the temple,
and it's always a great experience to be in the Temple. We ended up doing
2 sessions at the temple (which meant we
had to leave at 5 AM in order to accomplish) and even had time to visit the
mission president and the other missionaries in the Mission Home. We
actually got to meet with Elder Clements, my trainer, whose working as an AP
right now. So if Elder Gandy is my son, and I am elder Clements’ son,
then it follows that Elder Gandy is Elder Clements Grandson. It was a
good meeting with 3 'generations' of missionaries :D.
Ok, so it's been a while since I've really
talked about food here (granted I did do so a little bit at the beginning of
this post) but we had some good meals this transfer. So, we were getting
tired of having stir fry every night so we looked for some other options.
What the search ended up being was a chicken pot pie with a pancake
crust! I love finding random cans of food left by previous missionaries
that we can use to make delicious meals! I felt so healthy while
making the pot-pie. The fry pan was all vegetables for the longest time!
Definitely not the normal Elder Everett meal!
OH! Big news for our investigators: This
past Sunday we got to meet with our investigator that is getting baptized on
the 27, and she told us that she has to be at work on that day, and she can't
get out of it. So after talking to her for a while and having good lessons
on the temple and the real meaning of baptism, we rescheduled for the
20th! So now we have 2 more weeks until a baptism! Granted we're
having one this Tuesday as well, but that's Teruko, and he just turned 8 :)
Well, that's what I have from this side of the
world!
Have a good week!
Elder Everett
エベレット長老
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