Tuesday, September 24, 21013

Dear family,

 

I am glad to hear that Brother Richardson was able to get ahold of you!!!!!!  He is such an awesome guy and he really helped out our dendo when he came to Kawasaki!  Too bad it was only a message, but nonetheless, a message from a general authority is pretty cool. :)  (Note from Mom & Dad: We got a phone call from Brother Richardson in the Sunday School General Presidency last week. He met Christopher while he was visiting in Japan and had wonderful things to say about our awesome missionary!  It was a really cool phone call.)

 

This last week was an interesting one.  I got a cold Wednesday morning and was kinda out of it for a few days.  I am back up to like 90% better, but I still blow my nose a lot and stuff.  However, I got a blessing from my companion and I have been able to work well ever since.  I went on splits back up to Kawasaki this week and that was fun.  I got to do another lesson with Adachi san and he is still just as golden as ever.  He says that he doesn't want to get baptized until his wife gets back from China so they can get baptized together.  He keeps reading his scriptures like a boss and has gained a very strong testimony of the restored gospel. 

 

Elder Hill and I have been having quite a bit of success with our dendo recently including getting Sasaki san closer to baptism.  We taught him about the 10 Commandments and he is 100% going to follow all of them.  We can still only teach him like once a week which is kinda frustrating, but probably by the end of October he will be ready for baptism.  Also, Mukaiyama san, another older gentleman that we meet with a few times every week, is starting to really progress and understand the gospel.  We are going to meet up with him right after this and destroy him with the spirit of God!

 

We went to the temple this morning with our zone and then went to a place called La Salsa.  It's an all you can eat taco place for 10 bucks.  On our way there I talked to this guy on the train and convinced him to come eat tacos with us and he did, haha.  There was like 12 loud Americans hanging out with this quite dignified Japanese guy at this taco joint, a little odd, but I think he liked it.  I got his contact info and hopefully he will meet up again.  But if nothing else, he got some way good missionary exposer, hopefully we left a good impression. 

 

Elder Hill and I have been working hard to improve the quality of the dendo in the zone and especially this last week we focused on finding and better finding techniques.  It's weird being one of the oldest missionaries in the zone and especially being the leader now.  I get to set the example for everything.  There are a lot of young missionaries with little to no finding skills or experience and because of that I feel a heavy responsibility for training them and helping them learn how to dendo.  The thing is that I don't consider myself to be an experienced missionary at all.  I still feel like I am transfer 3 and just barely learning how to dendo.  Elder Hill is the man though, he is teaching me a lot, even if he doesn't think he is, haha.  He is too humble.  We as a mission started pushing for 10 solid contacts everyday, 10 solid conversations with people where we invite them to do things.  It's hard in Japan to talk to people, quite frankly a lot of people ignore us and don't want to talk.  But on the other hand there are scores of people that really want to talk to us but are too shy and so we have to make the first contact.  It's my job to inspire the new missionaries to talk to people wherever we go and to be bold with our commitments.  

Things are looking good in Kanagawa!!!  We keep on doing our thing and things are good.  

I love you guys all soooo much.  I was really sad to hear about Brother Crandall.  I remember that he came to my farewell party and we talked there for a while.  He is a good man and I am sure he is in a good place.  

Keep praying for Yaguchi!  He is doing good and still getting ready for the 19th of October!!!!!!!

I have a bunch of pictures I want to send, but they aren't attaching right now so I'll send them later :) 

Have a great week everybody!!!  I love you! 

愛

クランダル長老