Greetings from the cold outreaches of Mihara!
This has been an interesting week... So I've been a little bit sick for the past week or so which has brought our Dendo down a little bit, but luckily it hasn't derailed it yet. One of the good things that's happened from it is that we've found more time to keep contact with the people we've started to teach with anything from a phone call, a text message, or making them cookies!
Recently we've undertaken a task to go and visit every less active member in Mihara. We've got about 100 people that we have to visit/find with information that hasn't been updated in years! It's been a little sad to see just how far some of them have been separated from the church, and just how out of touch many of them are with any members. I'm really excited to see how many people we can visit and to help Mihara keep it's records updated for all who come after me. It's been an adventure with our bikes going to search out these wandering souls, but I figure its got to be good for our health, or at least I know the Lord will see our efforts and I am a firm believer that the Lord loves to help a hard worker. And I will be that worker that he can use to accomplish his purposes.
We also met with a family that's been investigating the church for the past 8 years or so! The mother really likes the missionaries and wants to help us out in all that we do, but it more than a little reluctant to come to church. There have just been too many unfortunate events that have happened in her live whenever she's made the effort to come that it's going to be hard to help her overcome her anxieties. But they are a great family with 2 kids, a 12 year old boy and a 11 year old girl both of whom I'm super excited to work with!
So here in Mihara 三原 we cover a couple of other cities as well. We have the main place where we work in Mihara, but we also have members and investigators in the neighboring cities as well. Onomichi 尾道, where the church used to be several years ago, that's a good 1.5 hour bike ride away. The good thing is that it’s all along the coast so we have a really pretty ride down there. Another city we have is called Takehara 竹原, which we have to either take a train to get to, or take our bikes up and over a mountain! Mihara also has a series of smaller islands that we go to visit as well. Here in Mihara (the meaning is 3 fields) we have mountains villages, isolated islands, and cities in the valley! I don't know if my body is ever going to get acclimated to any one sea level!
One thing I'm really excited about here in Mihara is our refocused efforts on going out and serving in the community. We signed up with the local volunteer organization and our first activity is a board game conference later this month! Hah, I knew there would be something good about knowing a thing or two about Japanese board games. There’s going to be quite a few people there that are going to be more than a little bit taken aback at a foreigner coming in to play their country’s games! We're told to build relationships of trust with people that we come to teach, and I figure this is got to be an interesting way to do it. We're told to use our talents as we go and find … Let’s see how it goes!
We all have something that we can do, a talent that we have that we can use to serve those around us. Hopefully this week we'll all find something we can do to go and serve those we love with something that we love to do!
Have a great week!
Elder Everett
エベレット長老
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