Greetings from the newly
snow-blanketed Mihara! Well, it’s a little bit later in the day now, so most of
it has already been melted, but it's all good, it’s always nice to wake up
to a white world!
It's been an interesting week, not
to mention the fact that it was the half-way mark in the transfer!
I'm absolutely positive that 6 weeks is not nearly as long as I once thought it
was. Next transfer, because of all of the new missionaries coming in, is
only going to be 4 weeks; I can't even imagine how fast that is just going to
fly by, which would take me to my last transfer in the mission! All
right, that's the end of that talk.....
But this week was a ton of
fun. We visited this family in one of the bordering cities around here in
Mihara. She's been visiting with the missionaries for nearly 9 years now,
which is amazing to think because she has a 12 and 11 year old son and
daughter, they've grown up with the missionaries and were excited to "see how
this new one is." In the 9 years she's experienced a lot of things
and learned that there are many different types of people, not only in
missionary work, but also in the church as well. Sadly there have been
some rather unfortunate experiences with members in the past, and they are
proving to be a very large obstruction in her growth. But I'm thoroughly
convinced that this family is waiting for the Gospel in their lives, and I can
see how it will bless their lives immeasurably. The goal now - help them
catch the vision.
As we've been working on unity in
the Branch we've seen great success in bringing people back to church.
This past Sunday was Stake Conference, and one of our members, a Brother from
Hawaii here teaching English, provided all of the priesthood holders Hawaiian
Neck-ties to wear to the conference. We went and gave them to all of the
priesthood holders, the active and the inactive, and saw the bond of
brotherhood strengthened in large ways.
Elder Tashiro, of the 70, was there
at stake conference and noticed our ties. Now I've met Elder Tashiro
at a couple of different places now, so he already knew me a little and he called
me out in the middle of the meeting to ask why our neckties were the
same. After a brief explanation he took a pause in the meeting and asked
everyone to discuss how can they, in their own wards and branches, invite the
unity and brotherhood that the Mihara branch is developing. I know that
the work we do here is the Lord's work. I have seen miracles here in Mihara
and it’s only been 3 short weeks. I'm very excited to see what the
next 3 weeks has in store.
As we've been visiting other members
we've met a man who knew Jimmy Carter, and sang Karaoke with him (twice), found
two families with non-member sons start to show interest toward knowing
something more, and may have even helped in kick-starting the home teaching in
the ward. (With the neck-ties we came up with a priesthood theme for the
branch. BBS: Brotherly Love, Brotherly Kindness, Share the Load, yes we
do say it in English; it's not quite as good in Japanese 兄弟愛・親切・重荷を負い会え)
Well, I hope you all have a great
week, and I've got to go clean (we were instructed that today would be an
all-day cleaning day, and we're not allowed to go out until it's all clean) so
let's get to it!
Love you lots and wish you the best!
Elder Everett
エベレット長老
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