皆様！久しぶりだよ！
Hello everybody!!
This week was kind of slow.
:-) That's okay. Wednesday was a day of amazing miracles that I have
to share. So this weeks email is just going to be about Wednesday
since the rest of the week was pretty boring. :P
Wednesday morning we had study which
really set the mood for an awesome day. We left the apartment and headed
to visit one of our Potential Investigators named Chizuko. Chizuko works
at a Flower Shop close to the bishops house. Her husband recently died
and all her kids live pretty far away now so she's kind of lonely. We try
to visit her at least once a week, but usually she's not home. Sure
enough, she wasn't home again, but we left her a gift (a grapefruit from
America. xD) and a note.
Then we headed down to visit
Nishizawa. When we got to her apartment, my companion had a major anxiety
attack. She grabbed my backpack and her face was completely pale. She just said
"Hold on a minute." and went to a corner. She ended up not
being able to leave that corner for about 10 minutes. I was actually
pretty worried about her... Finally though she stood up looking much better and
said "Okay. Let's do this." So I went and rang the doorbell
and...
Nobody answered. :P
It turned out she wasn't home. We
wrote a quick note saying we missed her and hoped she was okay and then
realized that the plan was for meeting Nishizawa to take about 2 hours of the
day...... So we had a quick planning session and decided to head back to
the apartment. I was pretty disappointed... I really wanted to meet with
Nishizawa...
As we were walking back to the bikes
we heard a man yelling behind us and then footsteps. I looked back to see
what was going on and found Nishizawa's husband running toward us! Talk about a
miracle! If things hadn't timed exactly the way they did we would have
missed them entirely!
We talked with Nishizawa for about
an hour and a half and then said we needed to go. We talked with her about
the Plan of Salvation a little bit while we were there so before we left we
gave her a copy of the pamphlet. She promised to read it and actually
started skimming it before we even had left!
After we left, we got on our bikes
and started to ride off. Just as we were leaving, I saw this woman with a really
cute dog. I'll be honest, I have no idea why I stopped. I just
did and I started playing with the dog! I asked the woman how old it was and
it's name and stuff. The woman got SO excited. She said she LOVES
gaijin! We ended up talking to her for like 15 minutes and she told us
she wants to meet with us again! Right now, she's not particualarly
interested in the church or anything like that... but it's a start. :-)
As we were heading back to the church
to prep for Eikaiwa, I felt like we should stop at the Bishops house and say
hello to his wife. When we got there though, she wasn't home, BUT we did
get to see the kids we teach in Kodomo Eikaiwa which was SO fun.
Then we had Eikaiwa which was
intense...
There was a guy who came this week
for the first time who was in our class. What we do for the last 30 minutes or
so of Eikaiwa is split into groups of 2 and answer a bunch of questions about
that weeks topic. This week, I was partnered up with this new student to
evaluate how he was doing! When I sat down, our conversation went
something like this...
"Before we get started, I want
to get to know your background. Is that okay?
"Sure!"
"Okay... How and why did you
become a missionary?"
Needless to say, I was a bit taken
aback. :P That wasn't what I expected. I explained about the whole
process of becoming a missionary and why I chose to. He said
"Hmm. So what do you think of Japan? Is it different from what you
expected?" So I made a joke about how everyone said I was going to eat
Fish and Rice every day and he smiled. Then he asked his next question.
"This next question may be a
bit difficult to answer. You consider yourself a woman of faith right? Well, if
God exists... You know about the earthquake that happened here 2 years
ago. In that Earthquake many innocent people were killed including
innocent children. Haven't you ever questioned your faith? Haven't you
ever wondered, if God really exists and cares about us, why does He let that
happen?"
It was so nervewrackingly
awesome. I explained that I had questioned my faith which made me even more
sure that it was true. I bore my testimony and explained that this life is
meant to be a test and it's meant to be difficult. If it wasn't we couldn't
reach our full potential. He smiled and nodded the whole time and at the
end said "You really believe that, don't you."
I nodded and said "Yes I
do."
Then Eikaiwa was over.
Right before he left he came up to
me and said "I'm glad I got to talk to you. See you next week."
It was crazy. I loved every
second of it! And that was by far the most exciting day of this
week! The Elders in our District had an amazing miracle this week, but I
don't have time to go into that. Short version, there was a guy with cancer who
went to the hospital where the doctors discovered his cancer had completley
disappeared. :-D SOOO cool. :-)
I love this gospel. I know
that it's true. I'm so excited to be out here as a missionary! I
miss you all so much. Please write me! I have nobody to write to
this week! xD
I love you guys! Have a
fantastic week!
-
Christine
