Hey, sorry this week's e-mail came a little bit late, we had exchanges this past Monday so Wednesday became our p-day. Which means that we had to go to an Internet Cafe in order to use a computer.
Ok, so this week we had another special meeting. Something about February just says special, I vote it's because it's a leap year and we had to do something to recognize it (by the way, Happy February 29th) We actually ended up having a 2 day zone conference discussion the 8 fundamental principles of missionary work. It's part of a new program that they are having all of the new missionaries do as they enter the mission field now. It was way cool to see everybody again and to learn a ton of cool stuff.
So, because it was 2 days, missionaries that had to come up to Hiroshima from Yamaguchi prefecture had to stay over for the night in various different apartments. We ended up with the elders from Shimonoseki, Elder Lyon and his bean (new missionary) Elder Thomas. I ended up going with Elder Thomas, which was way fun, especially becuase it was Tuesday which is our sign language circle night!
We get to the place where we always go for sign language and learn that they aren't having one of their regular classes but rather a discussion on the differences between the langague of a deaf person, and of a regular speaker. All in Japanese Sign Language. Elder Thomas and I just kind of sat there trying to figure out what in the world was going on. I can understand a bit of what was going on, but at this point, I only comprehend it in Japanese, and it's way hard to comprehend it in English, so I was using all of my brainpower I could to try and translate as best I could for Elder Thomas.... That's a day that'll be hard to forget. It was definitely one of those "How did I get my self in this situation" kind of times!
As far a regular work (I'm starting to lose track of what is regular or what's not) goes, we've recently started adapting a new approach to teaching. The Church videos. I don't know if any of you have watched the church videos that have recently come out but, wow, they're pretty good! We've watched "Finding Faith in Christ" with 3 investigators now, and each time in a different language: Japanese, Chinese, English. It has a really good way of introducing the Savior, who he was, what he did, and how we can come closer to him. If you have the time I highly, highly recommend watching them.
On another note for things out of the ordinary. Saturday we had a "return missionary" meeting in which current missionaries and others with mission related callings were invited to attend as well. One of our members was in charge of the event so we ended up being asked to gather various opinions from other missionaries on how to improve Eikaiwa. We sent it up to the Zone Leaders, who sent it up to the Assistants to the President who sent it out to the entire mission, who then sent all of the responses to OUR cell phone! All Saturday morning our phone was going crazy. We ended up with responses from about half of the mission.
Okada and I then had to compile them all and make it into some sort of presentable format. We got responses both in Japanese and English so I ended up having to translate half of them while Okada長老 typed it up in Japanese. After we passed those out though we realized that half of the missionaries couldn't read it so I ended up having to translate it all into English as well! I'm full well positive it was the gift of tongues because somehow I managed to translate 4 pages of material in about 30 minutes. I am 100% positive that if I tried to do the same thing now that it would take an hour at the very least, with my handy-dandy electronic dictionary. Hopefully this work will help Eikaiwa throughout the mission. Eikaiwa has been the source of about 40% of the baptisms in this mission over the past several years, so anything to improve that is awesome!
Well, the mission is going awesome over on this end. We're having people to teach, finding new friends, new investigators, seeing miracles, and feasting on the love and words of Christ daily. At this point, there's not really a whole lot more that I can ask for. Good luck with all you do this week, and remember, you have people all over the globe (we at least on the other half of it) praying for your success.
Elder Everett
エベレット長老
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