September 5, 2011 -- email

FAM-

WOW! (Don't I start all letters that way?) Time flies! This week has gone pretty fast. Thanks to I'm sure many prayers, and probably a nudge from our mission President, my companion has really kicked things up a notch this week. She is fantastic, and we are really learning to work well together. It's amazing how different missionaries can each be incredibly effective, but in so many different ways. I've also done a little repenting on my end and realized how much improving I could do as well. The Lord sure likes to keep His servants humble : )

Actually, I've thought more about that this week - humility. I probably wrote about this before, but in the MTC I remember a speaker saying that as missionaries, we will be promising people a lot of blessings in encouraging them to change their lives and follow Christ. Then he read Ether 12:27 and pointed out that that scripture actually promises when we come unto Christ we will become more aware of our weaknesses, which is a somewhat painful promise. So if you're having a bad day, and you realize there's not a whole lot you can do right... take it as a sign that you are on the path that's leading to Christ...

Mom, thanks for reminding me that I never have really explained about the laptops. We use them to e-mail investigators. Here in Tokyo, most working people go to work long before we are out of the apartment, and aren't back until pretty late at night. (For the men it's not at all unusual for them to be at work until past 10pm.) So, most people we meet on the street are either students or unemployed. There is a big group of people that we never have the chance to meet. That is especially a problem for the Elders. So the laptops are to help us maintain contact with investigators who are extremely busy.

So far, I personally have just used it to keep in contact with people through e-mail. After we teach a lesson we always want to follow up and see how the investigator is doing. E-mail really helps us contact people who are too busy to receive any other form of communication. Also, we are starting to do all our area books online. (The area book is where we keep people's contact info and the record of what they have been taught.) The bishop of our ward also has access to the area book, as well as the ward mission leader, so they can both look at it throughout the week and see what the latest news is on our investigators. Also, we have Skype, so if investigators are too busy to meet in person we can do a lesson on Skype. So far, that's not something I have used, but a lot of others have seen success with that. Our mission also has created a homepage with a whole bunch of resources and it always has updates from the mission office. Communication is a lot faster to them now. Another thing is that people who aren't willing to give you a phone number on the street are still willing to give an e-mail address, so it is easier to get contacts. That all sounds pretty nice, which it is, but we still have a lot to figure out about how to use the computers effectively.

This week we had our first lesson with Sano Chieko. Saki Shimai and I met her on the street a few weeks ago and that weekend she came to church. At church she blew us away... she would just walk up to people and introduce herself. She's a self-fellowshipping investigator. She also expressed interest in the stake choir flier that she was hanging on the bulletin board.
She has a heart problem and was a little weak for a while after that week so the first time we were able to meet her since then was this week at our FHE activity, and then the first chance we had to teach her was this Friday. We only taught her the first half of lesson one because we didn't have time to finish, but we still asked her to pray about the message we had shared with her and if she felt it was true to be baptized. She said yes, so I asked her if she would be baptized on the 25th of September. She paused for a minute and then turned to her bag and pulled out her planner to see if she was free that day! I was blown away again. Then, she opened it up and my heart sunk a little because I saw that there was already something written on the 25th... and then I realized what it was: Stake Choir practice. Who does that? Who says they can't come to their own baptismal service because they are already too busy with Stake Choir?

Anyway, we still have a lot to teach her and I don't want to count hens before the eggs hatch, but we are really hoping to see her baptism this month.

Other than that, not a whole lot has happened with our other investigators unfortunately. A lot of them haven't responded for a while so we're going to have to move on soon.

Tell everyone hello for me: Auntie Annie, Austin, Josiah... and tell Aunt Georgia and Uncle Ethan congrats.

I have one more thing to say and then I need to go: I knew that I would meet a lot of interesting people on my mission, but I thought most of them would be on the street... in actuality, visiting the members is always an odd experience. This week we visited an older lady and she had 2 ferrets running around her apartment. She told us a story about how her ankle had been broken for 25 years. We ate a surprise dinner that she had prepared for us in her bedroom (apartments are teeny here). Her walls were plastered with pictures of this Korean actor that she's crazy about. She probably never would have stopped talking about him except thankfully her ferret climbed in my backpack and provided a distraction from the conversation. Another member we visited this week dressed us up in Kimonos. Another old lady we visited did a puppet show for us. (Evidence of all 3 occurrences is included.)

I love you much.
-Waite Shimai

PS- The last picture is of us at a memorial of the first people who came to Japan and opened it up for missionary work. This week was the 110th anniversary of the prayer they said to bless Japan, and there was a little anniversary meeting held at the church closest to where the prayer was said. We look tired because the meeting started at 6:30 am so that people who had work could still come.