"This week was an excellent one.
Being in a tri-panionship was very natsunashi. (I was trained by Ohori Choro with Willey Choro.) It was a good time. It's a little bit more inconvenient, but we still got a decent amount of work done.
We visited with Ron for a while. He's a very excellent man who truly cares about us... and because of that he's trying to convert us. He believes almost exactly what we believe about nearly everything save the Book of Mormon (except that we're all going to hell if we don't join his church, and that the fall was a mistake, and that.. You know, the typical Christian things).
Yep, so we talked about salvation for a little bit, then he criticized the church for a bit, and without so much as allowing us to make a defense or say a word, he said the closing prayer.
He got up to go, when I couldn't contain myself anymore. I asked "Do you mind if I tell you what I believe for a second?"
He sat down smiled nicely and said "I would love you hear what you believe."
I told him that I know the truth of this gospel. I know that this is all true. I have gained a personal testimony of it. My testimony hasn't burst upon me in an instant, but rather it has slowly dawned upon me as a sunrise.
He cut me off and told me thought it was an excellent experience, it was a lie (though he said it nicely). He said that there's no way the Book of Mormon could be true.
I asked "Have you read it?"
He almost yelled back, "I don't need to read it!"
I think our time with teaching him is probably going to come to an end very soon. I'm not sure how Fox Choro will feel about that, because he really seems to want to teach Ron, but... we can only offer the truth, not shove it down someone else's throat.
I love Ron. I believe he would make an excellent edition to our church.
We also taught Kunio-san. We have to use examples in order to teach him properly. (I love it how the Spirit reveals to us a different pattern or way of teaching to use on each of our individual investigators.)
I love missionary work. "
We went to a Halloween party in misawa this week. There was a bunch of gaijin Americans there. It was pretty weird.
I've forgotten how to associate with Americans.
We went with the sisters and as were were all driving back with one of our old investigators (shogo-san) we were all talking about it, and all of us agreed that we felt a ton more comfortable talking to the Japanese People at the party.
There were three high-school girls there that looked way confused, so one of the members had me translate for them. One of the girls looked at me and asked:
"What are you?"
me: "What do you mean?"
"What type of person are you?"
"Ummm... I don't understand."
"Were you born in Japan?"
"No, I'm American."
"Did you grow up in Japan?" She said just staring at me.
"No."
"How do you speak words?"
Apparently she got pretty confused that an American was speaking in Japanese. It just didn't make sense to her.
It was super weird. There was a chili-cook off, and it was so strange. The food tasted so American. In crock-pots and everything.
I had a sword battle with some of the American kids. I tried to teach them Japanese.
"Ohio` means good morning. Ohio. Just like the state."
One girl asked challenged when I told her that thank you was arigatogozaimasu, that I didn't know-
"I thought it was DOMO!"
If it blew her mind that there were two different ways to say thank you, I wonder how she would feel about the five different ways to say 'if'.
Wo. Mitch (he's not actually american, we just gave him an american name) a student from our English
class just walked in, gave us all candy. stood and stared at us for a little bit... then walked out. We tried to talk with him, but... yep. He's pretty awesome.
We also volunteered to dress up in costumes and take pictures with kids for a Halloween festival the city was putting on. It was weird.
But we got to invite a ton of people to come to our English class. (which is were we gospelize them.)
This Sunday, apparently the branch told Jones choro, but he transferred, - we (all 8 of the missionaries) were supposed to do a PMG lesson for ALL of the members in the branch....
Jones Choro transferred...
SO- the Branch President Onegai-ed (asked) us to do our lesson we prepared for young men"s in front of everyone....
Yep.
None of us knew what to do. But, I prayed and whipped out a 45 minute lesson on making goals. My companions didn't know where I was going so... they offered the accompanying testimonies at the end.... oh my Japanese.... so terrible.
