Monday, December 3, 2012

日本の冒険!Week 20: The Strength of the Lord 主の力


Merry Christmas!  It is so fun to see Christmas decorations up everywhere and to hear Christmas hymns everywhere I go. The houses don`t decorate a lot, but the rows of shops decorate a ton!

OK. It is officially cold. Yesterday was tough. haha. I forgot my gloves at the apartment. It was raining. We went to a place we felt we needed to go..... an hour and a half away on bike. haha. Fun! ^^ We uh, were rejected by absolutely everyone over there. haha. Well, as always it was a good learning experience. The ways of the Lord are mysterious, and his reasons may not always be apparent when we want them to be.

It was a great week! To save some time, I`ll do the whole paste the mission president letter thing again. Sorry for not being original. I promise my next letter will be way more entertaining. Just kidding. But you`ll probably read it anyway. ^^

[
It was a good week here in Fukuyama. I can already see the many ways that I can progress as a missionary here, as well as move the work along.

The investigators in this area are great! There aren't a ton of investigators yet though. We had a lot of time to find this week. Hunt 長老 and I have really figured out how to work together. We have had a little trouble finding people...... we have yet to find a potential investigator together, but we are learning how to deal with the rejection while keeping faith and hope high. I think the Lord may be testing our ability and Faith before trusting us with his elect. I also feel he is about finished with that and we will begin finding the elect soon. We have both been seeking revelation everyday for where to go, what to say, and what to do, and we feel we have followed that revelation, despite our lack of visible success. We have been noticing strange things.... For example, every time we go knocking doors, like literally every time, someone approaches the door we are knocking on.... from behind us. Sometimes up to 5 times in a couple hours. Not sure what it means yet, because the people don`t ever have any interest in our message, but we`ll figure it out soon hopefully. haha.

As far as teaching goes, Hunt 長老 and I have noticed an increase in the power of our teaching recently. We have been using TTS`s, teaching in a balanced way, and our investigators are accepting the message readily. We started teaching some of the commandments to one of our 約束者`s, and he accepted and committed to live all the ones we taught so far. I can feel the Lord`s hand in our lessons.

Well, looking forward to a week of Miracles.
オーライリ長老
]

TTS= lesson summary (topic teaching summary)
約束者= investigator with a baptismal date.

Other than that, we went home teaching, and had お好み焼き! Hiroshimi style! It was delicious! Honestly the first thing I thought of when I came to Hiroshima was お好み焼き, since Hiroshima is famous for it, and I was not disappointed! It was incredible! and the family we had it at set up the next home teaching appointment for Christmas day, so we will be eating a nice meal with a member on Christmas.

Well, have a nice week. If you were to ask if there was anything you can do for me, I would only ask for your prayers so that I can have the capacity to fulfill the responsibility I have been called to do. Thanks ^^ I`ll send some prayers your way too. ^^

Merry Christmas!
オーライリ長老

Just a little more... a couple excerpts from an email to his parents...


I am so grateful for your contribution and everyone`s contribution to my mission. Thank you so much for all you`ve done for me. The opportunity to serve a mission is incredible, and worth more than any worldly possession or wealth.

Yeah, generally speaking I can keep up with people. Sometimes I have to ask for a repeat. haha. I still lack a lot of basic vocab words that missionaries don`t use because of our focus on spiritual topics, like medical terms, sports terms, etc. Reading is my strong point. If I know all the kanji in a given paragraph, I can read it at a comfortable speed for a native speaker. Unless it is the  BoM, that is a little harder, it uses weird grammar and such, haha. But yeah, doing well. The Lord gives his servants the abilities they need to serve.



Yeah! Christmas!

Fukuyama is Pretty.

Kind of blurry, but you get the picture.
 Lots of cool bridges and rivers in Japan.

Home teaching! It was way fun.
 The 2 girls actually are from a non-member family,
 so it was a pretty cool teaching opportunity. But they are both under 8.

hmmmm..... maybe they aren`t home??
 Well, let's ring them all really fast and see if anyone answers.......
(notice mail hanging out of all the doors)

Companion`s study area. Right by mine. He wasn`t expecting this one. haha.

1 comment:

  1. Great post, Elder O! I am sure you will be blessed with investigators soon. We can feel your strong giving spirit through your words. Keep the Faith! Love you!

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