皆さんこんにちは！
It was a tough week. My companion and I have been trying to improve our streeting skills so we did a lot of that. We also did some crazy housing Sunday night. We found a community of apartments; there are about 50 apartment complexes in that area! We got 4 buildings done. We knocked on at least 70 doors last night and unfortunately no one was interested. Both streeting and the housing this week was very slow. It can be discouraging but I have to my best to keep moving forward and accept the fact that those people weren't ready to hear the gospel.
We had interviews with Warnick 会長 on Wednesday, new district leader training meeting on Thursday, and zone meeting on Friday. We used the train quite a bit this week...bye bye money :(
Oh and we visited a member family, the Minamizaki's, on Saturday. They live kind of far from us so we decided to take a bus. When we got to 溝の口駅, the bus we needed was on the other side; we didn't make it in time and we missed it. We waited for a couple minutes to see if another bus would come and take us to the same place but no luck. We took a train to 武蔵新城駅 (which was the next station down) and tried to catch another bus but we missed it. We went to Family Mart to get wifi and search another route. While we were there, a lady noticed us and asked if we were lost. She tried to help us, but since it was Saturday, buses were terrible. It turns out that the lady had a Mormon friend and used to go to 英会話！We thanked her for her help and invited her to 英会話. After finding another route, we went back to 武蔵新城駅. We asked a guy to confirm it was right; he said he would help us. We got on the bus and talked to him for a bit. We parted ways when we got to our stop. Next, we had to take another bus to get to the final stop. We waited for about 15 minutes and the bus never showed. We walked to another stop and waited for another 10 minutes. The bus showed up and we got to the area. We walked another 10 minutes to their house. Basically, it took us about two hours to get to their house. On top of that, we showed up an hour late. I hate taking buses; the routes and times are way confusing here. But we had a great lesson about the Asia North area plan and sharing the gospel to others!
So we lost one of our progressing investigators, Okamoto 姉妹. She has been taught all the lessons; we were just waiting for the bishop's permission to baptize her. Flashback to last last Friday(Feb 10). We had a lesson about the importance of coming to church. She didn't come to church that Sunday. The last contact we had with her was a text from early Sunday around 3AM. We tried contacting her before church started but no response. Last Tuesday, the 14th, we tried calling but it disconnected right away. She's been in contact with the preacher from her old church and he's been saying things against the church; we figured that he told her to block our number on the phone :( To add to that, her mental health was not helping. The only way to contact her is if we go visit her. We'll give her some time before we do anything else. Hopefully everything will be okay.
On Sunday, we watched a special conference. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland came to Japan and gave a talk! It was at the Matsudo stake center, in the Tokyo North mission. It was broadcast to several other wards in the Tokyo area. Elder Yamashita and a few others gave a talk and bore their testimony. Elder Holland spoke about the importance of always having Christ in our lives. It was awesome! Elder Holland never disappoints!
The hardest thing is not giving up. Everyday, we give our best efforts and people still don't want to hear our message. I also can't say I've felt the Spirit. I still haven't found out how the Spirit works in me but I hope I do soon. I want to have those awesome spiritual experiences that everyone talks about here. I realize the only way to do that is to keep on going and have faith. There is no point in being lazy and moping around. From now on, I'm going to do my best to focus on others rather than my personal problems. As Elder Bednar once said, "Forget yourself and go to work. It's not about you". I think that can apply to all of us. If we focus on others rather than ourselves, we will experience many more miracles. 頑張りましょう！
Thank you for the love and support! Please pray for Okamoto姉妹! Have a great week!
-Elder Chab
チャブ長老 or 茶武長老
愛しています^_^
Giant gyoza!
Eating giant gyoza with the mission office elders in Kichijōji after the training meeting!
Yokohama North zone!