Monday, September 23, 2013

Hey everyone!

How are you all doing this week? I hope everyone is having a great time!

I saw what I thought was an apartment complex and thought
it would be good to go knock on some doors over there.
 We get around to the front side, and see this. For those of you
who can't read Japanese, it says "Denmark Inn Fuchu".
 They're so punny! As far as we could tell,
 it was actually a nursing home of some sort.

   So there have been some pretty cool happenings this week. We set a new record for attendance at the children's English class that we have here in Fuchu. That was pretty cool. That evening, when we had the regular English class, there was a church member who came late. After the class, he was telling us about some Korean lady he had met downstairs in the foyer when he walked into the church. They talked a little bit, and she had a pretty cool story. Her son is pretty sick and often in the hospital. They've gone around to a lot of different Christian churches, but they always felt something was off. One example she brought up was that a lot of the ministers would tell them that her son's sickness was her fault, that she brought it on him because of her sins or something like that. Anyways, she and her son prayed that they would be able to find a better church to go to. A day or two later, while she's on her walk, she stumbles across our church. She just so happens to come by when we're having English class, which means somebody was inside and the doors were open. Pretty good timing, huh?

Lunch at a special training at the mission home.
Sister wada took this. I can't help but laugh when I look at it,
 because everybody is doing something so different.
Elder Nuttal is blankly gazing off into nothing, Elder Fernelius
 is acting all awkard, Elder Flack is posing all epic-like,
and I'm just doing... I don't know what I'm doing.

   Lately in the mission we've been focusing on becoming more Ammon-like missionaries, and finding more opportunities to serve people. Thursday I went on splits to Kunitachi, and we had quite the interesting opportunity while I was there. It was early in the afternoon, and we were handing out fliers on a busy street corner. I see this white guy go past, and I was going to call out to him, but he went inside a small store before I could. I decided I would talk with him when he came out. I could see him inside trying to talk with the cashier about something, then he goes to leave. He looked pretty frustrated and flustered. He walked out the door, and went the opposite direction from where I was standing straight to where Elder Orton was. Elder Orton tries talking with him, and he blows him off. The light is red, so he can't go anywhere, and Elder Orton tries again. Long story short, they guy was really grumpy, but quickly apologized for being so impolite. He said he was having a rough day, and shouldn't have been taking it out on Elder Orton. Turns out that he's from England, and had only been in Japan for a few days. He's here for 3 months to do some study for his PHD, but he has no support system of any kind. The college got him here, and then just dropped him off. He got to his apartment, and the electricity was off. He tried talking with the landlord about it, and he gave him some runaround about how the electric company needs a phone number so he can verify that the apartment isn't vacant. This guy then goes and is doing his best to find somewhere he can buy a phone, but is failing miserably. We ended up spending pretty much the whole afternoon with him, helping him get a phone, showing him some useful shops, helped him get a new futon (the one they provided him with was a children's size), and then arranged to have a member drive us all back to his apartment with him to wait for the electric guy. Needless to say, he was very grateful and very surprised that we would be so willing to help him out. He now trusts us more than he trusts his college or even the Japanese as a whole. That's good I guess, right?

   That's about it for this week! There were some other pretty cool stories, but I'm about out of time. Maybe I'll just keep them in reserve just in case next week I can't think of anything to write about. Haha!

Take care everyone!

Elder Blake