Dear family & friends,
This week was a short but effective week.
This week was new years which is about a thousand times more
popular here in Japan than Christmas... When it was Christmas, I would
say Merry Christmas and get glares from people so I didn't say that too
much to people... Hahaha. I found out too that everyone works on
Christmas, super lame. But I found that saying Happy New years to people
is a good way to talk to people.
Anyways Because New years is so popular here in Japan, we aren't allowed to dendo (Proselyte)
during that day so instead we clean our apartments all day. And it
really did need all day to do it. So I was in charge of the Shower and
Sink Area. In Japan if you say bathroom they think you are
talking about toilets. They are seperate here in Japan. Anways, I hadn't
seen any bugs really here in Japan since those huge spiders in Aomori
and the occasional poisonous caterpillar. As I was cleaning our very
moldy shower, yes moldy because of the humidity, I saw my first
cockroach crawl out of the bathtub.... Lovely... He unfortunately
drowned....
Just in case you were wondering what I was doing on New Years.
The following day, we had a couple of appointments with members. Our misison leader who just returned from the Nagoya
mission said that most of his baptims came from a member refferal. So we
had a lunch and a dinner appointment and we were able to build a
stronger relationship with some of the members and begin teaching them
to share the Gospel with their friends.
The next day we had the opportunity to go into Koriyama with our
investigators and basically spent awhile that day with them doing a lot
of activities and were able to build a really good relationship with
them and talk about the church with them.
The day after we had planned to contact a referral that we
received from a less active member. The referral wasn't home so we had a
prompting to go and visit the member who gave us the referral. She was very sick and said that she was suffering. I asked her if
she would like a priesthood blessing and she said yes, so we were able
to give her a priesthood blessing. It made me realize what a
wonderful privilege it is to exercise my priesthood and help this
women in anyway I can, she is still struggling with coming to church but
we are still working closely with her.
The following day after that we had another opportunity to meet with our
investigators for a lesson. During this lesson we were able to talk
about Christ and his Atonement and that how through Baptism they can
recieve the affects of the Atonement in their life. Our investigator
basically expressed to us the steps of repentance wich was super
awesome, and they said that before they commit to anything they want to
see a baptism to see what is like. Luckily we have a baptism in
Koriyama that we are going to try and get them to come to. I felt like
they are really making progress and even though they are struggling with
coming to church I know that Heavenly Father can and will provide a way
for them.
On Sunday
we had an awesome experience. After Church my companion and I went
back to our apartment to do personal study, because we can't do them in
the mornings. We both just kind of felt like we needed to go and
visit this less active member who we have never met and hasn't come to
church in over 20 years. So we put our coats and gloves back on and went
out. We first stopped at the potential investigators house first because
it was on the way and found out that they didn't live there anywmore but
talked to the man who was there and were able to share our message with
him and give him a Book of Mormon. Then we continued on our way to
the less active members' house. We arrived and knocked on the door and no one
was home.... I was kind of bummed like why was I told to come here and
have him not be here, So I decided to knock on the doors around him to
see if there was a different purpose of me going there. I got
rejected by everyone. So me and my companion thought that we would just
head back then. As I was putting on my helmet I saw a man looking at
us and it just happened to be the less active we wanted to talk to. He
was hesitant at first but then he said "Its cold get in my house." So we
went in and were able to share a quick message with him and have an
appointment to meet with him again next Sunday.
Anyways that was my week for you. Hope you all have a great one!
Elder Nebeker
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