Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Hey Everyone! It was great to hear from you all yesterday. It sounds
like everyone had a pretty good week. This week is Temple P-day, which
is why I'm emailing today instead of yesterday.  Anyway, last week was
a pretty busy week. It was really fun.

Last Monday was a pretty cool p-day. We went over to Yokohama Landmark
Tower with the other Yamate Elders, the sisters, and the other
missionaries from Kamiooka. We went to eat at La Salsa, a pretty
decent Mexican restaurant (for Japan at least). Afterwards while Elder
Call and I were out talking with people, we saw a small group of
college kids playing soccer in the park. We were able to talk with
them, and apparently left a pretty good impression on them. When we
were getting ready to head back to the apartment, Elder Young gave us
a call and asked us if we had talked with a group of college kids
playing soccer in the park. Elder Young and Elder Moua talked with
them too, and ended up getting all of their phone numbers. We're gonna
be meeting up with them to play soccer in the upcoming week.

Wednesday morning we went to Kichijoji for follow up interpreter
training. I was invited to help with the training, but I ended up just
sitting there observing instead. It was pretty fun still though.
Getting trained by a professional interpreter isn't an every day
occurrence after all. After that was over, we went back to Yamate, and
had a lesson with the Harada's. They're a family with a single mom and
two young boys. The mom is a less active member, and her two boys were
just baptized last year. They're a really nice family. Laura, the mom,
who is Italian, actually came to church twice in a row since we've
gone to see them the first time. I hope she's able to keep it up.

All day Thursday was Mission Leadership Counsel, and we were told that
the use of Facebook has now been approved in our mission. However,
since we are missionaries, that means the primary purpose of using
Facebook is to more easily communicate with members and people we're
working with here in Japan. The rules for communicating with family
and friends are still the same. That means emails on p-day.

Friday we had District meeting in Yamate and in Yokosuka. Both
District Meetings ended up doing training 

Here's a picture of mount Fuji we took
from our apartment porch today. It was clear
enough you could actually see it this morning.

on the Questions of the soul. That was quite the coincidence. Saturday was District Meeting in Kamiooka. Wouldn't you know it, in the Kamiooka District they did a training on using the questions of the soul as well. After we got back to the apartment for the night, we asked Elder Young if he had received instruction from anyone to train on questions of the soul. He said he hadn't. That means all three District Leaders in the zone
ended up training on the same thing without any coordination.
Interesting...

On Sunday church ended up being great. We had several non-members in attendance, and a few investigators as well. Sister Jenny's husband ended up coming because Elder Young invited him, two of Elder Call's old investigators came since he spake in sacrament meeting, and Yokou came as well. Another nice surprise was that a deaf woman came in attendance today too. After sacrament meeting I got to talk with her a little bit. She's really nice. Turns out she's been in the ward for about a year, but isn't coming every week (which only makes sense since I've been here for a few weeks already and hadn't met her yet). Anyways, I hope she ends up coming to church more often. That would be nice.

After church Elder Call and I were able to visit Akie and Kazehiro,
two of Elder Call's old investigators. In the past, Elder Call would
go to teach them English, but they were never really able to get
gospel lessons in. This time Elder Call was committed to letting them
know up front what our main purpose was as missionaries and sharing
his testimony with them. Things ended up proceeding as normal (from
what I've been told... it was my first time there after all), but then
they brought up the free English class we teach on Wednesday night. We
told them that since 3 weeks ago we added a new class to the English
class: Bible class. A class where we study English out of the Bible.
Then we told them that thanks to our nifty new iPads we were able to
show a video to our Bible Class, and then showed them the video we
shared with the class. After that we were in. A nice, smooth
transition into a gospel centered discussion. We'll have to wait and
see if we can get it to progress further next time.

That's about it for this week. Looking forward to hearing from you
again next week, More later!

Elder Blake