Monday, October 14th, 2013

Dearest Family,

I wasn't really expecting an inheritance anyway, but I'm glad to hear that it went towards a good cause. ;)  However, don't think that you were the only ones having fun this last week. 

Yesterday we went to an October Concert Festival that was sponsored by President Wada at the mission office.  We found some guy on the street a few days ago named Masaya and we met up with him and went to the concert.  This church youth group named Little Witnesses sang, as well as some hula dancers from Hawaii.  But the best part was the last two acts.  There is this really famous J-Pop group named Bless 4 and they are members of the church.  They came and performed their famous songs and Masaya was really impressed.  And then the last act was this Black guy named Jet who is from Tennessee.  He has a nondenominational Christian band and they came and sang a bunch of gospel songs.  He is investigating the church and is really close to baptism.  There were like 500 missionaries, investigators, friends, members, and less actives that came to the concert and it was a huge opportunity for Masaya to get some exposer to the gospel and the way it blesses our lives, as well as just seeing what kind of people we are.  On the way home from the concert I shared the BOM with Masaya and read Moroni 7:45-47 and Ether 12:27 with him as well as the introduction of the BOM.  Masaya doesn't really have much of a religious background but he was saying that he has always been a little bit in Christianity and he thinks there is a God.  He told me that he wants to believe in God.  I taught him how he can know if there is a God through the BOM and told him how I came to know that God lives. 

We are exciting to be working with Masaya, especially since he has had a great defining moment in his life with the concert and everything.  If he didn't get a good impression of the church from this concert, I don't know what will. 

I was able to watch conference this last weekend!!! It was an amazing conference for sure.  We had one of our investigators, James, come.  He is from Kenya and has met missionaries before.  He has a lot of interesting ideas about Christianity, but he said he believed everything the prophets were saying. I especially liked President Uchtdorf's talk during the priesthood session on fulfilling our responsibilities/ having compassion for others.  I thought that it applied directly to the members here in Japan that struggle to put forth the effort that is being asked of them.  I thought it was amazing how much missionary work was talked about at conference.  Like half of all the talks were on missionary work.  Elder Ballard's talk was very good as well.  He basically committed everyone to give a referral before Christmas.  WILL YOU FOLLOW THE PROPHETS CHALLENGE, FAMILY??  As a zone leader we work a lot with statistics and the statistics show that 1 in every 4 member referrals will get baptized. If all 15 million members gave a referral before Christmas, then there will be over 4 million more baptisms in the church!  Can you imagine!!!!  Whereas now there are too many missionaries, if that happened then there wouldn't be enough missionaries to handle all the teaching opportunities. 

The stake president's son here, Kazune, brought three friends with him to our English class this last week and I was able to start teaching one of them and gave him a BOM.  It was a small thing, bringing friends to church activities, but hopefully that will become a defining moment in that young man's life as he now starts to learn about the church and read the BOM. 

Enjoy these pictures of us and Bless 4 as well as a party pic on the train going through Shibuya at rush hour.  It was crazy packed on the train. 

It was great to hear about all of your adventures at Disney World!  I wish I could have gone, but it's okay.  I am too busy over here to worry about that :)

I love you all so much and pray that the Lord's blessings will be upon you as you follow the Prophet's council and start inviting more people unto Christ :) がんばろモルモン！！！

愛

クランダル長老