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| Here’s my most recent picture (February 9, 2018) |
Eli desu!
How’s everybody doing? I’m doing pretty good. We went on
three exchanges this past week and had some other cool things happen. Let’s
start with last Sunday.
Well, a few weeks ago we were invited over to a member’s
house to have lunch and he invited over his Chinese friend Gabriel to tag
along. We talked with him and it turns out he is Christian so we invited him to
church. He couldn’t make it the first time but we kept in touch with him and he
came to church last week. He sat through the first two hours and the third hour
we went into a separate room and had a lesson with him. We talked about Joseph
Smith and the restoration with a focus on modern prophets and the Book of
Mormon. We had Chinese materials and he speaks great English, so it was
awesome. We then brought up baptism and told him “hey, we know you were
baptized in your church but you need to be baptized like Jesus was by someone
with the priesthood and he said I want to do that. So, we committed him to be
baptized February 18th (my last Sunday in Meito). He said yes. Now we just need
to teach him all of the lessons. He is so prepared.
On Tuesday I went out with a young missionary (he has been
out for almost three months) and it was fun to be able to work with him. He
didn’t understand “We are going to go visit a member” in Japanese so I spoke
English for a full day for the first time in 40 days. He is a cool kid from
Oklahoma who likes motorcycles and cars so it was fun to talk with him about
that. We also met one of the coolest guys ever on the street who kept asking us
a bunch of questions and in no way like he was attacking us. So cool. He wanted
to know why we knew the Book of Mormon was true, our favorite parts, how long
it took to know it was true, why we came to Japan and so many other things. At
night we went to visit less actives with a super funny old grandpa (Shinobu)
who is actually super good at ping pong. (He’s going to a tournament this
week). We couldn’t find anybody because the Japanese address system is crazy,
but we had a good time and bonded with Shinobu.
On Wednesday we finished our office work and went to visit
one of our investigators named Takagi. He kept trying to give us things like,
money and food because he couldn’t figure out why we would be volunteering to
teach about Christ without some hidden motive. He lives a little one room
apartment by himself. He likes to steal and has some pretty rough addictions,
but nothing that Jesus can’t help. We shared the Jesus “because of him” video
and he just made goofy comments the whole time. I think it’s because he felt
the spirit which he hasn’t felt before and he didn’t know how to react to it.
On Thursday I think, I took part in the most lessons in a
single day than I have on any other one day in my mission. We had six planned
and four actually took place. We taught about good and evil and Satan, the
restoration and the Book of Mormon, a review of the plan of salvation and the
Godhead focusing on the spirit and prayer. It was nice to be able to testify so
much in a reverent environment.
Something fun from their day that wasn’t spiritual was talking to a guy
on a $4000 bike who worked at a bike shop and was riding a brand new special
mountain bike around. It had big fat tires, an assisting motor and other cool
gadgets. He then let us ride it down the street a couple of times. Pretty fun.
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| One of my first photos from my mission in Japan with Elder Porter |
Happy Valentine’s Day next week! And it’s almost Dad’s
birthday! When I meet people as old as you guys I say “my parents are the same
age as you” and then they are super surprised.
Love you both,
Love,
Eli
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