Monday, January 28, 201

こんにちは！

皆様は元気でしょうか？？

今日突然雪を降りました！一回は楽しい。二回はほんとに大変だね。今日の計画はすごくばらばらになたね。

Google translate just isn't good at doing Japanese to English.  Like everything here is correct Japanese, the grammar, the kanji, but google translate just cant do it!  Oh well....

(note from Elder Crandall's family: We tried google translate and it worked for us!  Copy and paste the kanji above to google translate and it's pretty accurate, but not always!)

Hey how's it going? :)

Today has been an interesting day thus far.  It started snowing last night out of nowhere, the weather men here are terrible, no one predicted it, haha.  And my companion is feeling pretty sick.  He was feeling it coming on yesterday so we took it a little bit easier, but today he is way under the weather. It's a good thing that it is p-day, I guess.  The Sisters are going to do our weekly shopping today :) YAY for Sisters!

Well, we had a pretty good week last week.  We found a few new people and Teppei, (Asada san) our golden investigator, is way close to getting baptized!  We taught him all of the commandments on Sunday, All of them, in one lesson and he pretty much accepted all of them and was like, "Okay, I'll repent and change to follow the commandments".  He seemed pretty overwhelmed after the lesson, but we committed him to pray and ponder on the commandments and to consider the blessings that come from them.  He doesn't have any big issues or anything, but we reassured him that we will baptize him when he is ready and so if he isn't ready by this weekend, the next weekend is great too.  He is such a great guy and he is way humble about everything.  That may be the biggest difference I have seen in the people who get baptized verses those who don't or are eternal investigators.  Thomas (French guy - first baptism) was a very smart man, but he understood that he doesn't know everything and that God does, so he was very humble and submissive towards the will of God.  Fernando was very poor and had lived a hard life. He was a lot like the poor Zoramites who had been cast out and been forced to be humble.  However, Fernando continually maintains his humbleness and doesn't let pride resurface, therefore, at this point his meekness is proactive and doesn't need to be forcibly humbled anymore.  Seiji lived a sad childhood and was an orphan at the age of 12.  Both his parents and sibling died of cancer when he was young.  His wife divorced him after a few years of marriage and he virtually has no family and very few close friends.  He loved the family atmosphere at church and wanted to be part of a loving group.  Teppei has very little jishin (self confidence?) and is very quiet and gets embarrassed easily.  It seems as though he has very few friends and he wants to overcome his weaknesses and be more confident in life. 

And especially me, as I learned very early on, like the first day in Japan, that Japanese is way flippin hard and that I can't learn this language on my own, I was really humbled and needed to rely on help from God in order to learn it.  Now, when people say to me, "日本語うまいですね! ” (your Japanese is great!) I say, "ややや神様はたくさん助けを下さいました.” (God has given me lots of Help!) Then I ask them if they think God exists (cause if I ask them if they believe in God, they will say no, so I just jump to the next question) and half of them will say yes, the other half will say that they are not sure.  The people that say yes, I then ask them why they think so; the people that say no I ask them if they have ever been to church before (90%will say no--to them I get them to commit to a church tour because we usually dendo [missionary work] around our church building and then teach them the restoration during the tour; the people that say yes I jump into knowing which religion is correct and transition into the Joseph Smith story). Back to the people who say yes to been to church before, I ask them what their personal image of what Church is like, then I teach them our image of our church (It's a big family where we can learn and grow) and I teach them how the teachings of this church will improve the quality of their life and then I get them to come check it out on Sunday. 

BOOM, you all just experienced what streeting in Japan is like! It can be very easy, relaxed and comfortable if we make it so.  Lots of missionaries like to walk down the street and throw Jesus and Religion at everyone and it's not terribly effective.  Like maybe 1/150 people that we tell them right off the bat that we teach about Christ and that they need to get baptized will listen long enough to give their number and meet again.  But what about the other 149 people? The majority of the Japanese people do not have a good image of Christianity or religion in general.  They don't like it.  Their first instinct is to run the other way, it's taboo to talk about any religion.  Therefore, it is essential that we build trust and relations with them and soften their hearts to the point where they will not freak out when we start talking about religion.  I like just having good conversations with people and then slowly transitioning into gospel topics.  That's what I did with Teppei and he turned out to be golden. 

Elder Nelson is coming to the mission in the beginning of March!  We are way excited for that and I have been reading his talks on lds.org during my study time.  We are also preparing for the bazillion sister missionaries that are coming into the mission within the next few months! 

I attached some pictures! The Asian guy is Brother Chiba! He is now chillin at the MTC as a Missionary.  This was our bye bye party for him at the stake president's house.  The other picture is the dinner we had two nights ago with our Peruvian members, and the Sisters.  It was a legit beef and potato and carrot stew.  And the last picture is of this morning.  Snow once more!

Well, I hope you are all safe and sound at home! I sent Kelsie an email last week.  Maybe she'll write back..... kamoshirenai! ;)

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Crandall  

Sending Chiba off to the MTC in Provo