So, I've decided that Oita is a crazy place to serve! We have an actual ward here that is so easy to invite investigators to, I feel like I'm in a completely different place!
Ok, let’s start from last Monday.
So, we have a baptism coming up soon (4/1) and had the baptismal interview this past Tuesday, so in order to do the interview we had to have our District leader come over here and conduct the interview. Oita is kind of in the middle of nowhere. The closest area is a 2 hour train ride away, so I was excited that I actually got to see other missionaries here in Oita! The interview went fantastically. The man getting baptized actually searched out the missionaries (he had remembered meeting them from high school 20 years before) and started the lessons just 2 and a half months ago! He's so good, I can't wait to see him develop as a member!
So the missionaries that had to come over for the interview, they came over from Nobeoka. One of them is a new missionary, who's older brother just ended his mission from Japan, and was the former companion of the older brother of my new companion. It's a small, small world.
Tuesday we had a talent fair and pot luck for the Relief Society foundation memorial day (I have no idea what it's called in English 扶助教会創立記念祭....). It was a really good way to meet the members and try to get to know them. (I want to show pictures but, I might just buckle down and buy a USB, SD card reader... You'd think being in Japan I could find more SD readers, but, nope, I still have yet to find a computer with an SD reader, so USB it is.)
So, coming to Wednesday, that means we had Eikaiwa! This Eikaiwa is pretty cool, all of the students are already pretty much fluent in English, so it pretty much just free talk for an hour and a half! The other thing we did on Wednesday, and really this past week, was focus on Less Active members. We just marked on our big ol' map where every member lives (less active or not) and are getting ready to make our rounds to as many as we can! So far it's been good things! We ended up meeting with 4 different families and hopefully we'll get to see some of them either at the baptism or at General Conference! There are just a ton of less active members that just got too busy and forgot about the church, simple things such as a reminder visit, or a simple "Hey, how ya doing?" can be the starting block for a member's journey back to the church. It's amazing how it can be so simple. But “the Lord doth work by small means to bring about His great and eternal purposes, to the confounding of the wise (or at least those who think they are) and the salvation of many souls.”
Another thing we've been focusing on recently is getting in contact with former investigators. We ended up meeting with this one college student who is a co-captain for his college's Ultimate Frisbee team! We were totally pumped to go play with them sometime but, they only have practice on Sunday.... Man, maybe they'll get Thursday practices back up, that'll be good :) Though, randomly calling people on your phone under the "investigator" list can be an interesting experience.... We ended up getting in contact with an excommunicated member who invited us out to dinner; turns out he loves the missionaries. We'll see where that goes...
Sadly we didn't get to teach Naoya this week. We were planning on meeting on Saturday, but, he just started a new job as a resident advisor at his college, and school starts in April in Japan, so right now is his busiest time.... it also doesn't help that he caught a killer cold on Thursday. But we've got phone calls and texts going, we'll keep him up! Hey, if you guys see him on Facebook, send him a message, he hasn't really heard a lot from anybody back in the states in a long time, that, and his English as gotten a lot better, so it should be no problem for him to respond back!
I think that's about all that’s goings on here in Oita. We've just been getting ready for the baptism this Sunday, and preparing another investigator for the 14th, and trying to keep the area up in general. We've got a lot of good things happening in Oita right now (a ton of Less Active members at Church, and investigators too) this'll be an exciting next couple of weeks!
Peace from the Far Eastエベレット長老
Ｅｌｄｅｒ Ｅｖｅｒｅｔｔ
Ok, let’s start from last Monday.
So, we have a baptism coming up soon (4/1) and had the baptismal interview this past Tuesday, so in order to do the interview we had to have our District leader come over here and conduct the interview. Oita is kind of in the middle of nowhere. The closest area is a 2 hour train ride away, so I was excited that I actually got to see other missionaries here in Oita! The interview went fantastically. The man getting baptized actually searched out the missionaries (he had remembered meeting them from high school 20 years before) and started the lessons just 2 and a half months ago! He's so good, I can't wait to see him develop as a member!
So the missionaries that had to come over for the interview, they came over from Nobeoka. One of them is a new missionary, who's older brother just ended his mission from Japan, and was the former companion of the older brother of my new companion. It's a small, small world.
Tuesday we had a talent fair and pot luck for the Relief Society foundation memorial day (I have no idea what it's called in English 扶助教会創立記念祭....). It was a really good way to meet the members and try to get to know them. (I want to show pictures but, I might just buckle down and buy a USB, SD card reader... You'd think being in Japan I could find more SD readers, but, nope, I still have yet to find a computer with an SD reader, so USB it is.)
So, coming to Wednesday, that means we had Eikaiwa! This Eikaiwa is pretty cool, all of the students are already pretty much fluent in English, so it pretty much just free talk for an hour and a half! The other thing we did on Wednesday, and really this past week, was focus on Less Active members. We just marked on our big ol' map where every member lives (less active or not) and are getting ready to make our rounds to as many as we can! So far it's been good things! We ended up meeting with 4 different families and hopefully we'll get to see some of them either at the baptism or at General Conference! There are just a ton of less active members that just got too busy and forgot about the church, simple things such as a reminder visit, or a simple "Hey, how ya doing?" can be the starting block for a member's journey back to the church. It's amazing how it can be so simple. But “the Lord doth work by small means to bring about His great and eternal purposes, to the confounding of the wise (or at least those who think they are) and the salvation of many souls.”
Another thing we've been focusing on recently is getting in contact with former investigators. We ended up meeting with this one college student who is a co-captain for his college's Ultimate Frisbee team! We were totally pumped to go play with them sometime but, they only have practice on Sunday.... Man, maybe they'll get Thursday practices back up, that'll be good :) Though, randomly calling people on your phone under the "investigator" list can be an interesting experience.... We ended up getting in contact with an excommunicated member who invited us out to dinner; turns out he loves the missionaries. We'll see where that goes...
Sadly we didn't get to teach Naoya this week. We were planning on meeting on Saturday, but, he just started a new job as a resident advisor at his college, and school starts in April in Japan, so right now is his busiest time.... it also doesn't help that he caught a killer cold on Thursday. But we've got phone calls and texts going, we'll keep him up! Hey, if you guys see him on Facebook, send him a message, he hasn't really heard a lot from anybody back in the states in a long time, that, and his English as gotten a lot better, so it should be no problem for him to respond back!
I think that's about all that’s goings on here in Oita. We've just been getting ready for the baptism this Sunday, and preparing another investigator for the 14th, and trying to keep the area up in general. We've got a lot of good things happening in Oita right now (a ton of Less Active members at Church, and investigators too) this'll be an exciting next couple of weeks!
Peace from the Far Eastエベレット長老
Ｅｌｄｅｒ Ｅｖｅｒｅｔｔ
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