Well, the snow has come as the banner carriers of winter ❄️. My beloved Arizonian companion is now starting to freeze. We’ll keep going on, doing our best to push the work forward.
Wednesday we had to stay home in the morning since someone came to our apartment to fix the washer. After he left we went to some place to offer some service, but it started to rain, so they asked us to go home since we did not have rain gear. We went to the church for more studies before going home. Then we went out somewhere to find for the evening before coming home.
Thursday was splits with the District Leader and his companion. I was with Parkinson Choro (Elder) and Anderson Choro was with Otani Choro. We had a good time but several times we got a little too caught up talking with each other. We also went to a restaurant for lunch which had some good ramen and an all you can eat karage (breaded chicken, kind of) and rice. We did some more streeting (talking to people on the street) then Parkinson Choro’s stomach started hurting so we started heading back to the apartment.
Friday was ZTM (Zone Team Meeting). Let me explain a little. Zone Conference always includes the Mission President and a Zone Training Meeting is led by the Zone Leaders. This was the second ZTM I have had in my whole mission. After my first transfer we have not had one since then, only Zone Conferences. Fun fact - we as the Morioka district were supposed to sing a special musical number at this meeting, but we had only practiced a few minutes before ZTM. Conveniently, everyone else took so much time that we were skipped. So somehow it worked out. After ZTM we came home to do weekly planning and the rest of our evening was booked.
Saturday we came to the church for GoEigo (English classes) and to do some FaceBook dendou (looking for investigators), to contact some investigators who we haven’t been able to contact or get back with. Anyway, we had a great class and afterwards came home for lunch before going out again for the rest of the evening. Sadly again no one had time that evening to talk.
Sunday was fun. During Priesthood meeting the teacher asked Pratt Choro to read from the Teachings of the President book. He said it would be okay to read in English, but Pratt Choro just read it all in Japanese, kanji and everything. Then he asked Anderson Choro to read and he also read in Japanese. Thankfully he stopped there. If he came to me I would have had to disappoint everyone and read in English. Before the end of church, the Branch President came to me and asked me to take his laminated emergency evacuation plan for the church and redraw the whole thing on a separate piece of blank paper. I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it was so they could have a second copy? It took me a while but I did it. In the evening we came back to the church to try to contact our Investigators again. Then we received a call from the Zone Leaders that they would be coming over that very evening for splits the next day. So, we went back home to prepare for their imminent arrival.
Monday I was with Miyagi Choro and we worked really hard on talking to as many people as we could. We talked to over a hundred people that day. I spoke in Japanese almost the whole time. So that was really fun.
Tuesday I woke up early to make some pancakes for me and my companion. When I looked outside, it had snowed. And it looked beautiful. (Check out the pictures for this week on the website.)
Well, that was the week and the spiritual thing I would like to highlight this week would be the mercy of God. God wants us to give our best and even while that might seem to us as not nearly enough, God lovingly excepts that and then uses that effort for our own growth and to bless the lives of others. He accepts it. We do not need to feel so useless and down about ourselves just because we think our actions are not good enough. As long as we try and keep trying. Is that not what it means to endure to the end? As we do this and continually make course corrections through repentance, then our actions, no matter how small to us, will matter and be favored by the Lord. And through small things have great things come to pass and many greater things that will yet come to pass. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.