Monday, November 26, 2012

Hello my wonderful family :)

 

Thank you for sending me all of those emails, haha.  It really made my day and made it a little bit brighter over here.  It's kinda cloudy and rainy today.  But today and especially this past week was amazing.  I love Japan!  I love being a missionary in Japan, especially in Yachiyo.  The Lord truly loves the members in Japan and he blesses the members who are striving to follow their commitments and to share the gospel soooooo much.  I saw sooooo many miracles this past week and it is because of the amazing members that we have in the area. 

For example, we have started a caroling part that sings at busy parts of town once or twice a week.  It consists of us, the sister missionaries that are here with us (Sister Swainston and Sister Champenois (she is from Denmark)) and a handful of members and investigators that like to sing.  It was cold and rainy and no one stopped to listen while we sang.  But after we were done caroling, we started to hand out fliers and stop people. We were able to talk to a lot of prepared people who were very excited about hearing our message and coming to church and we found a few new investigators.  I know that because the members got involved in the missionary effort, the Lord was pleased and he blessed us with prepared people that we easily found in our path. 

We had 5 investigators come to church on Sunday and we were able to teach most of them periodically throughout the day.  A few of them seem to have genuine interest in getting baptized and we set up a lot of times to meet with them this week.  One of them is called Joy.  He is about 26 and he is from India.  He is Islamic, but he doesn't really follow or believe his religion and he is very open to studying and learning more about what we teach. 

We are teaching this one girl named Ninoska and she is 20 and from Peru.  Her mother is less active and her father is not a member.  Her mother doesn't want to meet with us cause she kinda has a lot of guilt and doesn't want us to try to re-convert her, but she very much wants Ninoska to learn and get baptized.  She is very close to baptism and we are just going through the commandments with her at this point.  In fact, we are planning on teaching her the Word of Wisdom tonight.  She speaks very little Japanese or English so we do it all in Spanish.  Wish us luck and pray for us!

We are also teaching another guy named Manaka who really wants to get baptized, but at this point we are making sure it is for the right reason.  We are not sure if he will keep the commandments after baptism, like not drink coffee, and so we are really trying to help him see that he has to be truly converted to the doctrine and to Christ,

We are working with two families, the Tanaka's and Watanabes, and they are using our family English class program.  We go over to their houses once a week and teach English to their way cute kids.  They have a little interest in the gospel and we will keep working with them until they gain interest.  I have faith that they will. 

And we have a lot of other people that little by little they are coming closer to Jesus Christ.  I don't have a lot of writing time today cause we have sporadic lessons through out the day, but this is the story of my life now a days, haha.  Which I am very grateful for.

But we haven't done anything too crazy other than teach a lot of lessons every day.  We don't travel very far and like you can literally see the church from our back door.  It's 3 houses and 1 graveyard down from us :)  I love it here and I especially love my companion so much.  He is a beast of a missionary and a very humble and loving man.  I feel so much love for him and I love how bold yet kind he is in everything that he does.  

I had a dream three nights ago that there was a big earth quake and that I was in a strange house and didn't know where I was so when the earth quake came i didn't really know what to do.  I woke up and told Elder Shibuta that I had a dream about an earthquake.  I told him that if there is an earthquake today, that I prophesied it!  I kid you not, at 5:45 that afternoon, while we were teaching the Tanaka's English, there was about a magnitude 4 earth quake that hit us.  It shook the house pretty good but didn't do any damage.  I called it, straight up.  Elder Shibuta as my witness.  That was the first earthquake dream and the first earthquake I've experienced in Japan :)

Please pray for the people that I mentioned.  I know that God hears every one of our prayers individually and blesses us according to how well we unify our desires together with His.  

Happy Thanksgiving (which I didn't have at all, haha) but, shoganai (it is what it is). 

Thank you for sending me the picture of Ben :) it really brightened my day.  I think about him a lot and the relationship we had.  I think dad can kinda relate to me considering the James was less active growing up.  I missed a lot of chances to share the gospel, but he sure has an awesome foundation from which to build his faith.  He will join the church to yogen shimasu.  

I love you and good luck with the wedding!  I love you all and tell everyone back home that I love them sooooo much.

Elder Crandall