The first of the week was crazy and I went on splits with Hill Choro twice while the other two (Elder Earl and Elder Fox) went around visiting people.
Hill Choro's a good guy. Apparently in one of the transfer schedules last transfer, I was supposed to be Elder Hill's companion instead of Elder Fox's.
But then one missionary from America didn't show up and it kinda mixed up the whole mission.
My new companion came!
He showed up on Wednesday night right after English class.
Let me tell you a little about him:
He's a tiny bit taller than me-
French and Tahitian are his native languages.
(Which is crazy, because when he got into the MTC he was required to learn Japanese from English- two languages that he didn't know. All of the texts and missionary vocab lists and grammar books are all in english- he told me he gave up trying to learn ether language from books, and learned from listening to other people speak. He would hear what people would say, he'd repeat it, and if they gave him weird looks then he knew that he was doing it wrong. Now he's almost fluent in both English and Japanese.)
We've been in Japan exactly the same time, we go home exactly the same time as well.
He's probably the nicest person on the entire planet.
He always is laughing and is so sincere in everything that he does with everyone. He's humble, oh so humble.
He shared some candy that his family sent him from Tahiti. It was so weird.
He was dryed mango covered in salt and spices. I guess it's chinese. But it was good.
When he was in Japan last winter, it was the first time he'd seen snow. He says in Tahiti the lowest it gets in 26 C and the hottest is 36 C.
He says he's not sure why, but they don't have screens on their windows, and everyone sleeps under mosquito nets.
He told me the haka dance is a war dance that sacred, and means that you are going to eat someone.
There are places on the island that are taboo where no one can go, where they used to sacrifice and kill people. (He says that the islanders a long time ago were cannables (people eaters))
He told me this morning that no one in his entire ward plays piano. They sing accapella. (their hymbook is in French and Taihiti(go) and the conductor just tells everyone what language he wants them to sing. He says lessons are too expensive, and only rich kids can play.
I'm teaching him to play. He can play guitar and piano better than I can by ear, but he can't read music.
I probably didn't tell you but here's a shout out to people that think playing the piano is useless:
I played piano in church in the:
MTC
Tsuruoka (every other week)
In Iwaki
At the priesthood session of district conference in
Koriyama
Aomori
I teach piano every week here to an investigator's daughter.
I've played in church for missionary musical numbers,
And now I'm slowly teaching my companion to play so he can play in his ward in Tahiti.
The Lord will use your talents.
Speaking of talents my companion is amazing at drawing. He's teaching me little by little.
One tip he gives me is to hold the paper up to the light and see how it looks with the image reversed, then you can see what's wrong.
So up to this point in my whole mission, I'd always joked around and talked about how I'd never even seen a baptism up to this point on my mission.
Well, up in Misawa a little old Japanese woman (who was Mo Choro's (mycomp)'s investigator that he found when he worked in Misawa.
The Misawa District Leader called me up and said he could find anyone that could play the piano--- (Learn piano everyone- I'm not even good, and they use me all the time) So we took a train up there.
I love train dendo. I talked to this high school girl, and her friends almost died. For some reason they thought it was the funniest thing in the world.
But it's rude to laugh at people, (they always cover their mouths when they laugh for some reason) but this time they were cracking up so bad that all four or five of them just slammed their faces onto the windows of the train at each other. I commented, "They're going to die" and it made it all the worse.
(when you say American expressions in Japanese it just cracks them up. Like yesterday I said "I've eaten so much I'm going to explode" in Japanese and they(the members) thought that was the funnest thing.)
So yep. She got baptized. Put under water and all that... And it was special, but it finally instilled a thought in my mind that had been brewing for such a long time.
Here it is:
BAPTISMS DON'T MEAN ANYTHING.
Now, let me explain why it's not true-
obviously baptism is a very important step in coming unto Christ. It is an amazing and sacred commitment that people make with God. The more people that get baptized the better, so long as they are willing and ready to make that commitment with God.
However,
often times people that don't understand the importance of every other step , or the real purpose of a mission.
Our purpose is to invite others to come unto Christ- though faith in Christ and His atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end of it all.
Baptism's one of five.
Don't get me wrong, and important one of five.
But if anyone asks the question: How many baptisms did you get?
They don't understand the purpose of a mission.
It is to INVITE!!!!!
How many people did you INVITE to come unto Christ?
Laugh. So basically what I'm getting at is that it wasn't as intense as I was expecting it to be. I've felt the Spirit so much inviting so many people to come unto Christ, trying as hard as I can to help them build faith in Christ- and that's what missionary work is. Of course we are to get as many as we can, and never give up- but even if you never see someone get into the water, doesn't mean you lose....
Baptism is just another step along the road to back to God.
It's just as marvelous to tell someone about who Christ was on a train.
They're just different steps along a path.
It was still good though.
We missed our train home by one minute- and then met people that Mo Choro had taught in Eikaiwa, They were so excited to see him.
So--- then that night we had our second English class- and at the very end a new 25 year old student came.
His name is Fukagawa-san.
Mo Choro talked with him and gave him a pamphlet about our English class, and he read in it that we had church on Sundays, so we were getting ready to report to the PEC and then he showed up in the hall.
He stayed for all of church (we taught gospel principals and I had everyone act out a play to explain the gathering of the tribes of Israel. It was pretty funny. Cox Choro got to scatter them.... by himself)
and we taught him about prayer and God.
He prayed at the end of the lesson.
At one point he got super quiet, maybe for like two or three minutes (which felt like a straight Ammon long hour.) and he asked us if he had to convert.
I was tempted to say yes, but then Mo Choro answered and said, "We do desire all people to come unto Christ and be part of the church because we know it is a good thing. But we respect everyone's agency. All we will do is teach, and you can decide what you want to do with it."
He sighed really big.
After church the members invited him to go and eat dinner with everyone at Nakajima-shimai's house.
(She's the grandma of the branch and sometimes just throws dinner parties. She's kunio san's wife. )
So we all headed down there, had a party. All the members loved him so much. Etc. It was great. He'll probably come back to church next week. He want's so keep meeting with us.
(We had the party for a missionary named Money Shimai, who is going home. Her parents came to Japan to pick her up, and she's visiting all of the branches that she went to before. So, Saito Kyodai wanted to talk to Brother Money- so I got to do some good old translation. And it was pretty great. I took what they said, made it sound fancy in the other language, and bam! It was an awesome conversation.
I could've changed everything if I wanted to... but I'm nice.
ppppfff......
It has been busy. We're going to teach twenty lessons this week by the way.
well that's all folks... it wasn't pretty English, but it resembled it... blaa.
Elder Wheelwright- out....
PS I finally got a name tag that just has Light written on it in Japanese... Now people actually remember my name. Yoshi.
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