Some sort of deeper purpose

THIS WEEK WAS AWESOME!!!!! 

So we had eikaiwa, and after class I was asked by a 28 year old student named Kumiko (san) if I'd seen Frozen or something- 

I felt a choice had to be made- I'd been working on tying every conversation into the restoration- so there I went. 

I told her that we as missionaries can't watch movies now- to focus on our 'Mission'. Which eventually lead to me testifying about Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon, and how anyone can ask God if it's true. 

She said she believes in God. 

She said she hasn't for most of her life, but then one day a few years ago she started to think to herself: "Which way would be easier for me? Which way would make me happier? Believing in a God or not?" She had heard about God from some of her friends who went to other countries and she liked everything she heard about that. She said there were too many things in her life that seemed to be connected and have a purpose. "For example" she said "I'd be thinking of one of my old high school friends, and then look up and see he walking down a stair case next to me and stuff." So she decided that maybe she'd entertain the thought of there being a God and a purpose to life. And she liked it. 

I gave her a Book of Mormon which she gladly accepted, but said "I want you to sign it for me." So right after Eikaiwa, I signed a Book of Mormon, and gave it to her. (I hope that's not blasphemous.) 

We set up an appointment for the next Saturday (three days after) before English Class. 

She came and we taught her. 

(I prepared so hard for that lesson. And we... or rather, the Spirit  nailed it. It was solid. Every principal we laid down fix perfectly on top of the other, building the perfect foundation for the rest of the lessons. And all of it connected back to her perfect need: having a desire to be close to God. 

That's why we do the How to Begin Teaching, all of you missionaries out there. We're searching for their needs and once we find it, we staple it to the gospel. If we don't build that connection to what they need or desire, our message will have less relevance to them than a random show on TV. The gospel is beautiful. It can connect with everyone's needs. It is the thing that will save the world; it is in fact what everyone needs. You've gotta follow the Spirit, ask inspired questions, and then though the Spirit connect it to the gospel. It's a delicate process, much like a surgery. We lack the knowledge of their needs, and often times we're not quite sure how to connect it (though we should study our hardest to be able to do so), because of that, if we don't have the guidance of the Spirit, we're going to do nothing for them. The surgery will fail. It won't help them. If we don't listen to them and connect the gospel to their needs we're like a doctor just chucking out random drugs at a patient that has only said "I'm sick.". We're shooting in the dark. 

So the Spirit helped us out. We talked with her. Figured out her needs, and connected it all in- now all that we will do will be some more than words. It'll be the truth she needs, the medicine that will cure her soul. 

We taught about prayer after God, and she told us

That at night when she felt like no one was listening to her, she'd just lay on her bed and draw her thoughts out to God (not knowing how to pray). She said "When I felt like no one was listening, I'd talk to God those nights. I feel like maybe He understands." 

And I had the chance to tell her: "He does understand. He does. He knows everything about you, and He loves you."

She started coming to Eikaiwa (English class) here a week after I came here, and she says she believed that maybe there's some sort of deeper purpose or reason that she came when she did. She said that she felt in her heart that she was going to talk about something important here, but she wasn't sure when it'd be, but that she felt it would happen soon. And then the next week we invited her to hear the lessons. 

Yosh. (It's like, 'yay' or 'yaaaa!' or 'I did it' 'that just happened')

So ya. We have a mission rule that makes it so that we have to pass her to the sisters pretty soon. But, we're going to wait until the end of this week when we find our about transfers. (A lot of sisters are going home now, so they're getting pulled out of all of the smaller areas, so the sisters might get taken from here.) 

I love the mission. 

We had ZTM and during the business the Zone Leaders would just look at me before moving on because I just kept asking questions. Laugh. Just as always. (sasuga me!) 

Yep. 

I chatted it up on the train with this girl, and shared the message of the restoration. But it just got way awkward. 

Some times you win some, sometimes you lose some. 

I mean, how do you share the restoration in a way that doesn't make you sound totally crazy. Especially to people who don't know prayer, Christ, God, prophets, or any other basic Christian, or religious concept? 

Just image if a Buddhist priest came up to you in the grocery store with a heavy Asian accent and started telling you how Buddha reached nirvana and one day if you're good you can get reincarnated enough to reach it too. (except for that wouldn't even be weird enough, because you all have some sort of concept or belief in a deity or a higher power.) 

I guess we just have to try and connect them to the gospel, and then whip it back to the restoration, but that's a little rough for a five minute conversation, or even the twenty minute one that I had with the lady on the train. 

Practice, practice, practice, and study. 

THE SNOW IS MELTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YES! We've been riding out bikes. It's so wonderful. So so wonderful. 

Well, that was a long one folks. thanks for 我慢するing for me. 

As always, 

Love ya'll, 

Elder Tyson Clark Wheelwright

SWEET

So I've been focusing on trying to get our English Class bigger. I thought that the previous missionaries had hung up a lot of posters because I kept seeing them everywhere, but then when I looked in the map book I realized that they'd only put them up in the area near the apartment. 

I think it's funny to read Brandon's emails where he talks about how his area is only two miles square. At the shortest point across mine's more than 20 miles- probably 30 in some. 

So we hung up a lot of posters which I haven't done since I was a young one. The interesting thing is now I can understand what people are saying. 

I felt like a grandpa for a minute when I told my companion refused to take the next poster to ask- I said "When I was your age I was..." 

But eventually he got the hang of it. One super funny one was he walked in the store, walked straight up to the lady and said "This poster... English. I want you to hang up." 

He used plain form too, which you don't use on anyone but children and close friends. 

The lady graciously took the poster, and just as me, was trying not to laugh. We met eyes and bust up for a second. She said she'd hang it up and then we walked out. 

My comp was all like "What, what did I say?!" 

Good times. 

Most of the stores we went to would hang it up for us, but some were just way grumpy. 

We even went to this public hall where you can advertise anything you want there, so long as it's volunteer and the lady there frowned at us and said: "Oh, you're the Christians. We refuse to hang up anything to do with religion." Which ironically, they had shinto festival posters and pictures everywhere. 

Well, unlike you had in America, Dad, we don't need to take any time to convince people that Heavenly Father and Jesus are different people, or that we're even Christian. Most of the challenge here is to convince people that there might be a life after death, what a sin is, who Jesus Christ was, and ultimately that there is a God. 

The older generation (and very few of the younger) believes in praying to their rocks and ancestors. Most of the people here don't believe in any notion of God at all. If you die that's it. And every religious holiday is not just a party. 

Ah. :) The biggest barrier is the way the people view religion: religion is one of two things: A scam, or terrorism. 

But despite all of that, there are some people that probably don't even have the veil over them they're so prepared. 

The people are the nicest and most courteous  that I've ever met in the world. Everyone is helping everyone out. 

The members here are so strong. In Utah where it's a rarer thing to see someone even smoke, here they're the only member in their entire school, work, neighborhood. Out of 64,000 people 8 or so are active members. That's like what, a tenth of a percent? You could meet 8,000 people and only one of them would be an active member. 

But hey, what's exciting is that I'm part of that work to bring them back. I love these people, and they would all make such good members of the church. We've just somehow have got to change the way they all view this church or religion in general. 

I'll just be famous here, and then tell everyone about religion.. or something. 

Well, we're trying to get younger people, so we went and played basketball. I was pretty awful. They'd apparently seen missionaries before so they were willing to play half court. Apparently I made two? (is what my companion tells me) I don't remember. 

We've got to make the natural approach, invite them to ramen, and then they'll start asking us questions and BAM! they're an investigator. 

We're trying to avoid doing housing (though I think I like it more than basketball, which probably sounds pretty odd). 

We're planting seeds, and soon we'll be reaping. 

We taught our 12 year old investigator, Myuto-kun. We did a super punch lesson again. (Super short). He focused. Mostly. 

His grandma joints with us and she always pesters him about focusing, which actually has the reverse effect. He focuses less. 

But instead of teaching him next time I felt like (inspiration from God) instead of us teaching him, why don't we have him teach us? 

So he chose to teach us a lesson on how to find good friends. 

Church was crazy good yesterday. I'm getting so much more edified now that I understand most of what everyone's saying. (There's just some really specific tango (vocab) that they whip out randomly that makes it kind of rough. 

Also, I was suddenly asked to conduct the fast and testimony meeting. But hey, if I mess up at least there's only 17 people there to see it. (I say 17 because we had some visitors this week. The 2nd councilor in the district president came up with his daughter and stuff. He's a member from my previous area, Hachinohe. It was good to see him.)

After church we did a role play lesson with a member and she did not go easy. Even we made the slightest pronunciation mistake she's be like "What?" until we got it right. Laugh. I was trying to explain everything the best I could, and she just kept hammering us and I was loving it. "We never use that word. We wouldn't say God as a body of flesh and bones. We'd say He has a touchable body.  Flesh and bones is a written word, not a spoken one." 

I was like "Sweet! thank you!"  because normally they're too embarrassed or scared to correct us. 

Hanson Choro got frustrated, because she told him he was just whipping out words without making a connection to the previous principal. 

But I feel for him. Just like when I was his age- he asked me after we got home "Does your head hurt?" "Not really, why?" "Really... There was so much Japanese." 

Yep. I'm pretty sure working out your brain that much hurts your head just like working out your arms. 

I've made a new language study plan. I don't know so many words, even still. 

I love the PMG. Read that stuff. It's so golden. You all do realize how brilliant it is, just like I didn't. If you see the application of it, like so many missionaries are now, you'll understand a little bit more. I think it'd be cool to be a mission prep teacher. I'd blow everyone's minds with the PMG. So good. It's so good.

Anywho. That's about it for this week. 

Love ya'll.