April Showers

You have just enough time to get a final letter to Ben, if you want:

Elder Benjamin C Everett

Japan Fukuoka Mission

9-16 Hirao-josuimachi

Chuo-ku

Fukuoka-shi, Fukuoka

810-0029

JAPAN

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April is a beautiful time in Japan.  The saying goes 'April showers bring May Flowers' but here in Japan all of the prettiest flowers are in early April.  The purple plum blossoms and pink cherry blossoms are everywhere!  The mountains are really round here in Mihara and look almost furry with all of the trees on them.  Come cherry blossom season the wild trees on the mountains look like white spots on a giant green furry ball.  Or the not-so-wild ones meticulously planted along a mountain path create amazing views dotted all over Japan!  

This past week we had a plan to have a 花見 hanami, flower-viewing BBQ at a local park, but the day before we received news of a heavy storm coming through that day, and it turned into a board-game conference and sandwich party.  Our original plan of 40 or so people quickly fell and we wound up with around 15 or so people at the event.  But of those 15 people, 7 of them were not members, and had a pretty good time playing Uno, Shogi, Othello, and several other games.  (Playing Shogi and Uno at the same time is quite a bit more of a mental work out than you might think!) Our Branch president had bought 10 lbs of meat for the BBQ which almost all went unused at the game conference.  Steak, sausage, and pork belly, all to go back into the freezer from whence they came....

But fear not, the next day took care of the problem!  The next day was Fast Sunday at church and everybody, still wanting to go see the flowers, made a plan to go Sunday and see some cherry blossoms at a local Shinto Shrine after Church.  But the bad weather came back again and we all ended up going to the Branch President’s house and had an impromptu BBQ/family home evening with almost the whole branch!  We ended up with as many people at the impromptu FHE as we did at the planned conference the day before.... (Japanese yakiniku is so good!)

Sunday was awesome here in Mihara!  Fast Sunday is usually a really awkward time in a small branch because everybody looks around to see who's going to go up and bear their testimony.  You can almost feel the tension in the room half of the time.  This Sunday was following much of the same pattern, until suddenly from the back of the room we had 3 of our investigators come in!  A mother and her daughter (who have been absolutely giddy about reading the Book of Mormon picture book, "I finally understand what it was saying") and one of our other investigators who finally got a day off of work and came to church.  We hadn't met him in several weeks because he was so busy with work, but in his first day off in nearly 2 months he decided to use that time to come to church!  We finally got his phone number and he's looking to be really good from here on.  We've been having a bit of a rough time being able to meet with our investigators recently, but they are now coming to us!  The three of them coming to Sacrament meeting seemed to boost the branch members and there was almost an unending stream of testimonies until the time ended.  I was certain that every single testimony was exactly what the investigators needed to hear.  Fast Sundays are the best!

 As I was reminded in this week’s call-in reports that I have 17 days left as a missionary in Japan.... Here's to making it something to be remembered!

Have a wonderful week!

Elder Everett

エベレット長老