Yes it's true; today is the start of my last transfer (Transfer 15) in
the Japan Nagoya Mission. We finished transfer calls this morning and
I realized that I have reached the point where I never thought I'd get
to. It's already planned out to be a busy transfer so there will never
be a dull moment and I'm looking excited for that.
This last week was a blast and a lot of good things happened. Our last
two lessons with our investigator 椿(Tsubaki) were really good. We're
getting a lot of support from the members and they are joining our
lessons and are helping to explain things to her and are
fellowshipping her a lot. She's progressing really well and I love
teaching her. She accepts the gospel and our commitments well and has
the desire to be baptized. Last week we taught the Gospel of Jesus
Christ and this week we taught about how that ties in with the Plan of
Salvation. We emphasized how families are eternal and that through
having faith, repenting, and by being baptized you can start to create
an eternal family. We are so lucky to get to teach 椿 and we are
praying for her.
On Sunday last week Jones and I were heading out to go house a 団地
(danchi-massive apartment complexes) and we were stopped by a white
guy before we could even stop him and that is when we met David St.
John. David had just arrived in Nagoya after biking two months from 神戸
(Kobe). He came to Nagoya to be a 杖術 (Jojutsu- a form of martial arts
where you fight with a staff) master and teacher in the nearby city of
瀬戸 (Seto). He's been in Japan for about 20 years and is way good at
the language and knows a ton of cool Japanese history (which of course
I thought was sick). He actually studied Japanese History and Language
at USC and then came to Japan and has done a variety of jobs out here.
He was super fun to talk to and he took us to his home to show us
where he lived and said we could visit anytime we wanted. We talked to
him for about two hours out on the street and became pretty good
friends. We asked if there was anyway we could help him and then gave
him our number so he could call us. He told us that he'd met
missionaries in all the other places in Japan and says of all the
Christian religions he respects ours the most (he never calls us
Mormons only Latter-Day Saints) and would love to meet again.
Later in the week I received a call from David and he told us that he
met 阿部, 狩谷, and 中塚 (Abe, Kariya, and Nakatsuka) on the street and he
was wondering if he could recruit our help cleaning and weeding his
yard. He said that in exchange he would love to listen to our message
and said he received a pamphlet from 中塚 in Japanese but said he'd like
an English Book of Mormon if we could supply him with one. I told him
that of course we could help and yesterday we helped out cleaning his
yard and then we had a lesson with him which was a way good
experience. First off you have to understand that David is a very well
educated person and his background is history and through a lot of his
comments since we met him he doesn't seem to like organized churches
very much. Anyways in the beginning of the lesson David told us to
teach him like we had know idea about how much he knew about our
religion. We asked more for his religious background and he just gave
us a torrent of his struggle with his one previous Protestant religion
because he felt that the churches he went to were not practicing what
they were preaching. Therefore he hasn't called himself Christian in a
long time. So we taught him the very basics from who God is and taught
about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon. He was very attentive
and asked a lot of good questions and I was able to us my knowledge of
history to understand and answer some of those questions and Jones was
doing so good and testifying of the truthfulness of our message. In
the end he said he would begin reading the Book of Mormon and would
love to continue to discuss the church with us. It was my first time
teaching an American on my mission and it was a very good experience
that I will never forget.
This week's been busy with two exchanges. We went to 四日市 (Yokkaichi)
on Tuesday and I got to work with Tommy for the last time on the
mission. They had zone interviews to start everything off and after
that is when we started our exchange. It was a lot of fun and we were
busy teaching at a lot of less active member appointments. The people
in 四日市 speak this weird, mumbling, accented Japanese which is really
hard to understand and in fact we both didn't understand a lot of what
was said to us. We tried our best and is was still fun. Thursday we
headed out to 静岡 (Shizuoka) and were supposed to do an exchange but
石井会長 (President Ishii) was interviewing their zone that day and it
went really late so we did a four man lesson with one of their
investigators who was way cool. He is a retired Japanese Self-Defense
Force Navy helicopter pilot who has 7000 hours and is currently
learning and getting his license to fly Cessna Citation Vs. He was
really fun to talk to and it was good to talk about flying with
someone.
It's been a great week and it's been a ton of fun. I love being able
to work with so many people and have all of these awesome experiences.
I hope you all have a great week! Take luck!
スピードと天使
堅城長老
Pictures
Pic 1- My posterity. My bean, his bean, and his bean's bean. I'm a
great Grandpa!
Pic 2- Getting real in the 'hood. Found this outside a less actives house.
Pic 3- Us and 沼津 (Numazu) our chopper pilot friend.
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