HELLO From the land of the rising hot, hot,
muggy sun.
Well, it's official now, it's July! This week has been, well, just a normal week … whatever a normal week may be. Oita is doing really good. We've had some really good meetings recently with some less active members in our ward and it's been a great success for the ward! One of the funnest things I think I've been able to do as a missionary is to go visit the less active members of the church, some of whom haven't seen anybody from the church in years! For many of the members we meet, they still believe in the church, they know, somewhere in their heart, that it is true and we get to enable and empower them and see in them the joy of the Gospel. Here in Oita it has been one of the greatest responses I think I have ever seen from just about every less active member that we visit. We keep hearing as missionaries that there are people who are hungering and thirsting for the Gospel, that people are searching for where they can find that pure happiness, and through the daily grind, sometimes it can be hard to find that person. But something that I have come to realize, is that sometimes those people aren't investigators or non-members at all. There are many times when the people who are the hungriest, the thirstiest, the people most receptive to the message of a loving Savior and Father in Heaven are the people who have merely forgotten what they once knew. The Less actives of the church know in their hearts the power of this Gospel. How great a blessing it has been to me to see that joy come back into their lives. It's a pattern that we can all follow, if we just extend a hand of fellowship and go the extra mile to show them, again, the joy of the Gospel!
This week as we've been trying to find people to go and visit we've seen some really sweet miracles! Our general pattern for dendo, as learned from President Margetts, is to go visit either a member or an investigator, and then go and visit all of their neighbors, and stay and go house to house around that neighborhood for the rest of that day, and usually every other time we go and visit that person. So we've been following that pattern this week as well. Now the usual response we get from people is like, "No, I'm good" or "I'm Buddhist", or "Get out," or you know, some other things that wouldn't be the best to write in a missionary e-mail. So how cool it was this past Friday when we were going through this pattern and somebody showed a positive response! I'm not sure what it is about when Japanese people yell through their door to talk to us, but somehow they always sound angry. So this guy yells at us from his house and Elder Gandy and I look at each other and we're preparing ourselves for whatever response is about to happen. You can imagine how surprised we were when the door opened to this huge smile. We talked for a while and learned that he had just happened to have come back early that day and that we were really lucky to have been able to meet him that day. He agreed to read one of our pamphlets about the restoration and is even willing to have us come back. Lately it's been kind of rough for us to even have a conversation with people, and thinking back on it, it really was just a normal kind of contact, but there's something about being greeted with a smile and a warm atmosphere that just seems to make a whole day better.
Well, this week was just one of those normal weeks of the mission, which is good because this coming week is going to be really wild! We're only going to be in Oita for 4 days, we meet the new mission president, Junkai over in Kumamoto, are throwing a B-day party for a Less Active, setting up appointments, getting ready for the last full week of the transfer, teaching Eikaiwa in another area (but where will it be?) and just staying busy all around. I think it was nice to have a normal week, we needed a break!
Well, I hope you can all do good things this week. Remember to greet people with a smile, be a friend to a less active member, and have a sweet week!
Elder Everett
エベレット長老
Well, it's official now, it's July! This week has been, well, just a normal week … whatever a normal week may be. Oita is doing really good. We've had some really good meetings recently with some less active members in our ward and it's been a great success for the ward! One of the funnest things I think I've been able to do as a missionary is to go visit the less active members of the church, some of whom haven't seen anybody from the church in years! For many of the members we meet, they still believe in the church, they know, somewhere in their heart, that it is true and we get to enable and empower them and see in them the joy of the Gospel. Here in Oita it has been one of the greatest responses I think I have ever seen from just about every less active member that we visit. We keep hearing as missionaries that there are people who are hungering and thirsting for the Gospel, that people are searching for where they can find that pure happiness, and through the daily grind, sometimes it can be hard to find that person. But something that I have come to realize, is that sometimes those people aren't investigators or non-members at all. There are many times when the people who are the hungriest, the thirstiest, the people most receptive to the message of a loving Savior and Father in Heaven are the people who have merely forgotten what they once knew. The Less actives of the church know in their hearts the power of this Gospel. How great a blessing it has been to me to see that joy come back into their lives. It's a pattern that we can all follow, if we just extend a hand of fellowship and go the extra mile to show them, again, the joy of the Gospel!
This week as we've been trying to find people to go and visit we've seen some really sweet miracles! Our general pattern for dendo, as learned from President Margetts, is to go visit either a member or an investigator, and then go and visit all of their neighbors, and stay and go house to house around that neighborhood for the rest of that day, and usually every other time we go and visit that person. So we've been following that pattern this week as well. Now the usual response we get from people is like, "No, I'm good" or "I'm Buddhist", or "Get out," or you know, some other things that wouldn't be the best to write in a missionary e-mail. So how cool it was this past Friday when we were going through this pattern and somebody showed a positive response! I'm not sure what it is about when Japanese people yell through their door to talk to us, but somehow they always sound angry. So this guy yells at us from his house and Elder Gandy and I look at each other and we're preparing ourselves for whatever response is about to happen. You can imagine how surprised we were when the door opened to this huge smile. We talked for a while and learned that he had just happened to have come back early that day and that we were really lucky to have been able to meet him that day. He agreed to read one of our pamphlets about the restoration and is even willing to have us come back. Lately it's been kind of rough for us to even have a conversation with people, and thinking back on it, it really was just a normal kind of contact, but there's something about being greeted with a smile and a warm atmosphere that just seems to make a whole day better.
Well, this week was just one of those normal weeks of the mission, which is good because this coming week is going to be really wild! We're only going to be in Oita for 4 days, we meet the new mission president, Junkai over in Kumamoto, are throwing a B-day party for a Less Active, setting up appointments, getting ready for the last full week of the transfer, teaching Eikaiwa in another area (but where will it be?) and just staying busy all around. I think it was nice to have a normal week, we needed a break!
Well, I hope you can all do good things this week. Remember to greet people with a smile, be a friend to a less active member, and have a sweet week!
Elder Everett
エベレット長老
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