Monday, September 16, 2013

Hey everyone!

   Well, today promises to be an interesting day. There's a typhoon that's been rolling in since yesterday, and it's finally hitting our area right about.... now-ish. It's still pretty mild, but they're predicting the main typhoon won't actually hit for about another hour or so, and they're predicting about a half a meter of rain or so. Sounds exciting. So now it's a typhoon-p-day. A T-day! Yay!

   It's been a relatively quiet week so far. There were several conferences and meetings that we went to, but other than that it was a pretty routine week. I'm actually really struggling to think of something interesting to share today... We'll see what I can come up with.

   So, all of a sudden everybody is getting engaged. It's been over a year since I've left, and I can only think of one friend who's gotten engaged or married since then (that I've heard about at least), and that was way back in winter. Now, in just this last week, I've heard about several people all at once that are engaged. Is there something in the air over there? Haha! I was starting to wonder if anyone was actually going to get married while I was gone. So that's been pretty exiting. It makes me wonder how many more engagements I'll hear about this week.

   So, as I'm typing this, I keep looking out the window and watching the wind and the rain. There's a tree that is getting pushed around quite a bit not too far from our back porch. It's really making me think about how sturdy trees really are. I mean, you think about how much force it takes to uproot a tree, and it's pretty impressive. These trees get blown around, and they just go right back to how they were before. And to think that these trees all start from little seeds that you can hold in your hand without any effort. It reminds me of a place in the Book of Mormon where a man named Alma teaches about faith. He talks about how the word of God is like a seed. First we have to give a place in our hearts for it to be planted, and then nurture it for it to grow. As it grows, our faith increases, until eventually the seed reaches maturity and becomes a large tree that can weather the storms and adversities of life.  All of our testimonies start small, but given time they can grow into something that can weather a fierce storm like this one today.

   Anyways, back to last week. Saturday night there was a stake priesthood meeting. Fuchu ward is the only ward I've served in here in the Musashino Stake, but I still knew maybe about a third of the people who came to the meeting. Way to represent! Fuchu ward is the best. There was one really interesting talk that I liked. One of the stake presidency shared an experience he had about a woman he worked with. She pretty much had just a really rough life. He would find small quiet ways to help her out, and sometimes some larger opportunities came up too. One of those times she had mentioned that that was the first time anybody had shown her kindness. Later, while she was at his home, she asked why he and his wife were so kind? His answer: because we are Christian. We follow the example of Christ and love and serve those around us. Really the most effective way we can share the gospel is to live it, like this brother did.

   Well, sorry this week is a little short. Next week should have more interesting things to share. Talk to you all next week!

 

Elder Blake

PS 100 days until Christmas

Monday, September 9, 2013

Hey Everyone!

   How have you all been this week? I hope everyone is doing great. Things are going great over here! The weather is still pretty hot, but it's starting to cool off. It's not so hot that I feel like I'm in a sauna when I go outside anymore. That's always good, right?

   This last week hasn't had any really big things happen, but there have been lots of cool little things. Lots of small instances where the hand of the Lord has really been guiding us in our work. One of those was when we went to a lesson with an investigator that we had set up over the phone the day before. We rode all the way out to his house, and he wasn't home. We thought that he might be on his way back from someplace and was running late, so we decided to wait outside his front door for about 15 minutes or so. He ended up not coming home in those 15 minutes, so we went back to our apartment to finish study. On the way back to our apartment, we pass the pre-school that one of our other investigators sends her son to. As we rode past, she just happened to be walking out the front gate with her kids. We were able to say hi and talk for a minute. It didn't seem like that big of a deal, but then I thought about it. I had been disappointed that our lesson fell through, but if our lesson had held we wouldn't have seen this other investigator. Also, if we had decided to wait only 10 minutes, or not wait at all, the timing would have been all off and we would have missed her still anyways. What it all came down to is there was only a maybe 10 second window in the entire day that we both could have been at the front gate to the preschool at the same time, and we both happened to be there in that same 10 second window. Mind=blown.

Some funny Engrish. I laugh every
time I see this sign

   So, another pretty cool story from this week has to do with the weather. On Wednesday, we woke up, and it was pouring buckets. I wasn't too worried about it. When it rains early in the morning like that, it usually clears up around lunch time. It's rare for it to stick around all day. Well, when it was time to go out for the day, it wasn't raining, but it was still pretty cloudy and looking like it could rain again any second. Before we left, Elder Otsuka and I said a prayer together as usual. When it looks like rain, what do we usually pray for? That it won't rain, right? I was going to do the same, but just as I was about to say it, it came out instead as asking for it to not rain while we're outside. I wasn't really sure why I had phrased it that way last second, but rolled with it. We got on our bikes, and hadn't even gotten 200 yards from the apartment when we got a message on the phone. We needed to take care of it right away, so we turned around and went back to the apartment so we could email from the computer which is far faster than typing on a phone. We hadn't even been inside again for 5 minutes when it began to just pour. That was good timing. The rain stopped again just as we were getting ready to set out again. We went and dropped some stuff off at the church, delivered a thank you card to some members, then handed out fliers at the train station. Every time we went inside it started to rain, but would stop when we were about to go outside. At the train station it started to rain too, but just as we were going under the awning that covers the walkway. Even after that when we were knocking doors, it would rain while we were at an apartment building with a covering, but when we were going from house to house with no covering it was clear. Long story short, it rained a lot that day, but even without umbrellas or rain coats we stayed dry. Crazy, right?

   So, funny story. Yesterday there was a missionary who returned home from his mission during the week, so he gave his homecoming talk in sacrament meeting. He was sitting up on the stand, and as they were announcing that he had returned home and asked him to stand, he got a nose bleed. So he's standing up on the stand where everyone can see with his head tilted back, plugging his nose. Poor guy. It was pretty funny though. He didn't seem too phased by it though, so that's good.

That's about it for now! Until next week!

Elder Blake

Monday, September 2, 2013

Hey Everyone!

   How's it going? Is it finally starting to cool off a bit over there in AZ? It's still pretty hot over here, but I've been hearing rumors that the temperature should start dropping in a couple weeks. We'll see. It's strange to think that I"m already almost done with my second summer in Japan.

   So on Tuesday we had transfer calls. I was actually a little surprised to find out that Elder Fernelius was transferring out already. I thought he would stay for at least one more transfer. And my streak of one transfer per companion continues. We'll see how long that continues. It's been going since January when I became companions with Elder Christensen again. Anyway, I'm still here in Fuchu. My new companion is Elder Otsuka, from Sapporo, up in northern Japan. He's a pretty interesting guy. Boxes, likes cooking, knows some missionaries I went to the MTC with... yeah. Cool stuff. I'm pretty sure that we'll be companions for at least two transfers, but we'll have to wait and see. If that is the case, that would mean that I had Japanese companions for both of my birthdays on my mission. That would be kinda cool, right?

   There isn't really all that much to write about this week... Tuesday we had transfer calls, Wednesday Elder Fernelius packed and we had English class, then Thursday was transfer day. Saturday there was a summer Matsuri over in the Kichijoji ward, and one of our investigators decided to go to that, so we went too. We showed up, and to my surprise, we saw the Brother and Sister Harrison there! They're the senior couple I worked with in Yamato, and then they ended up working in the mission office. I never got a chance to say goodbye or take a picture with them before the mission split, so this was a perfect chance! It was great to catch up with them a little and say hi.

   Yesterday ended up being the best day of the week by far. Church was great, and afterward we had our typical meetings followed up with Shuwa (Japanese sign language) class with Sister Matsunaga, a deaf lady in the ward. That's always fun. When that was all finished up, we went over to the Shinomoto's house, and we had a lesson and they fed us dinner. They are very open to the gospel, and love having us come over. I love working with the Shinomoto family! They are so cool, and their kids are just hilarious! The Bishop is really excited about this family too. I'm excited to see how the gospel will change this family's life. Later that same evening, we went to have a lesson with Edna and Hendrix. They're the ones from New Zealand, and Hendrix is a pro rugby player. We rang the door bell, and Hendrix came to the door. He had the most surprised and bewildered look on his face I have ever seen. Apparently Edna forgot to tell him we were coming over. oops. Haha! It ended up being good though. We had just wanted to drop in and share a quick message, and this gave us extra incentive to be quick about it.

   Well, that's about it for now. This upcoming week should be a good one, so next week I should have some good stuff to share. Hopefully... Take care everyone! Write you more next week!

Elder Blake