Another Crazy Round of Transfers

Allo,

How are you? It was another crazy round of transfers. Elder Schade is going home! I can't believe it! That will be me in six months. Craaaaaaap! Elder Shimbashi is coming to our apartment to be Elder Dowe's new comp. He is from Canada, eh. Wonder if he can hit. Elder Ludlow and I will be together for one more transfer and I think we will see a lot of miracles. Our Zone changed a lot and there are more missionaries and new areas, so that brings our total to 40 missionaries in the zone. They also created a new district, so we have one more companion exchange this transfer. Things are gonna be so busy.

Well our week went well and I was able to notice the Lord's hand in our work a lot this week. We were able to find four new investigators! Three of them were found through OYM and another through housing. They all have great potential. One man in particular from China named Weijing Xuan doesn't know anything about God, so he has a lot of questions and interest in the Gospel. He came to English Class and asked us if we were going to talk about the church afterward. We said that English Class doesn't include the Gospel stuff but then he said he wanted to hear the message. Gladly we talked to him and his friend about the Gospel. We prayed with him and he said he felt powerful and peaceful afterward.

We had two investigators come to church. David came with Barbie again which is really good because they were on vacation for Obon and missed two Sundays of church. We got an appointment with David and Barbie this week as well and we hope to set a goal for going to the temple in the future and set a goal for David being baptized. The other investigator who came to church was also a new investigator this week. Her name is Fukuda and she is catholic (Christianity is pretty rare in Japan). We first met her a couple weeks ago and talked to her about the relationship between the Bible and the Book of Mormon. We gave her a copy and she read some of it. She is a very deep thinker, but I think she will find that the Gospel makes sense to her. She also said that she feels calm and peaceful in the chapel.

We had some good successes with an inactive woman named Adachi Shimai. She has started reading the Book of Mormon again and praying everyday. Our visits these past few weeks have seemed to reignite the fire in her. We are also getting a lot of good fellow-shippers from the ward. This last week we went and visited her with the Bishop and the Relief Society President and I could tell she felt the Spirit. It might take a little more time, but I think she will get back to church in the near future.

One new investigator we found this week, Masatoshi, was really prepared to meet us. I talked to him on the corner while waiting to cross the street and he said he met missionaries a few years ago. It seemed like he wasn't interested then, but I talked to him about English Class and said maybe he had heard from the prior missionaries about it. He said he only talked about God with them. I invited him to English Class and asked if we could exchange contact info to get in touch later. I suggested that we could talk about the church and he said sure. I called him up later and set up a church tour for Tuesday night.

We met a missionary for a Calvinist sect a little while ago from Australia. His name is Dylan. We asked him if he knew anything about Mormons and he talked about Joseph Smith. Then he asked us about the Book of Mormon. We ended up giving him a copy and he asked for our phone number so we could talk later. We got in touch again and now he is an investigator. He hasn't directly said it, but it seems like he has the mentality that if his church doesn't have the whole truth then he wants to find the whole truth. He is also reading the Book of Mormon quite thoroughly as well.

We have seen some really good progress with Megumi Shimai recently. This week she committed to start to pray that her boss will let her have Sundays off. She told us that if she joins the church then she wants to be active and committed, but her work is standing in the way of that. We told her that if she talks to her boss and gets work of every Sunday starting in October then she can be baptized. She's still a little hesitant to put a date on it, but she is praying. Things are moving forward with her.

We had a Bye Bye Party for Elder Schade on Saturday and it was a hit. One English Class student named Masa came and despite him only talking to one other person for 50% of the time (when we weren't playing ping pong or other games) he had a blast. He goes to London this week, but we will see him again and he might have interest in the Church.

We visited the Bishop's family last night and had a lot of fun with them. I love visiting members because you can just shoot the breeze with them. We were making a bunch of jokes with overly polite Japanese and playing tricks on Elder Dowe because he can't understand Japanese very well yet. Sister Keikyu, the bishop's wife, asked Elder Schade if it was scary to think about going home and he said yes. Then the little daughter asked, "What's scary? Guns?" We all started laughing because Japanese people have a stereotype that all Americans own a gun. Guns are illegal in Japan, so Japanese people think they are scary, too. We had a fun FHE with the family and then we had to boogie home to do call in reports.

Well, that's the week. Love you all. Be Honest.

Love,

Elder Sanderson