weekly email

This week in Tsu>: 

For the first time in my mission we received a call from temple square! A lady requested a BOM in our area! Wait, wait.. it’s the lady we found two weeks ago on an exchange, and followed up in a brief drop-by last week. We always called her Wonder Woman, but I wondered what her actual name was (she wouldn’t tell us); turns out to be Maegawa! 

We had a return appointment that same Wednesday, so we took our best copies of the BOM in each of our bags and brought along the sister missionaries, because we planned on handing off this investigator to them. The door opened and the transaction went smoothly. The sisters were invited inside and we were off on a train to work somewhere else. 

...and then two hours later we got a text, one of those mandatory information texts sent to everyone important when something happens. (I’m District Leader down in this area) The Sisters had made this Wonder Woman a baptismal candidate, with a committed date! Wha? Did we happen to hand-off the next baptism in Tsu? Whoa! Let's go Sisters, miracle workers. 

In other news, Monday night we were down in Matsusaka for a Family Home Evening (FHE) with members. Having an hour or so before it started, and having set a goal for a certain amount of people talked to each day, we wondered around the station in our first actual time working in this part of our area. 

There’s practically nobody around, but Elder Reis stopped a lonesome high schooler caught on his way inside the station. The high schooler actually stopped to listen for a bit, and by then I was back to jump into the conversation; he had his book out for some light reading, but a glance revealed that like all typical high schoolers in Japan the Book wasn’t for amusement but rather for cramming in subject specific information—this one happened to be English. 

And the conversation took off! We set a next appointment where we could help with his English homework, and then get a couple minutes in to talk about God afterwards. It was great! 

Shuuya. The appointment was kinda sketchy because we had no way to contact the guy, but on Sunday night we faithfully went all the way down to that area again to meet him. 

And he showed up! Right on time. It was awesome. We sat down at a local park and had a great time, and we laughed over his insanely difficult English practice essays.  

At the end, we talked about the idea of God and what kind of person Shuuya thought God would be. We encouraged him to think about prayer, and the intimate relationship he can have with our Heavenly Father. It was smooth and didn’t seem to stumble anywhere. 

So we’re blessed down here. We’ll meet again with the people we found last week, and find more people to meet more next week. Japan has a bright future in its youth. 

愛しています！

カードん長老より

Elder Cardon 

Paper houses in a paper town. Right? 

Reis' traditional clothes