Septembwr 18, 2011

Ohayou Gozaimasu!

Today is a really beautiful day here in Takasaki! Things are going great here. Its week six of the transfer, and the tension of transfer calls is starting to build up! Ha ha. We'll be getting the call on Friday night, saying whether or not someone is transferring, then Saturday morning we get the call of who is going where, and what is happening. This last week here has been way fun! On Thursday we went to Oyama and dendoed(missionary work) with the missionaries there. The two missionaries there is Elder Petersen, (my dendo son) who is training Elder Kinjo (My dendo son's dendo son, therefore, my dendo grandson). It was so much fun. Kinjo is a really really good missionary, and I learned a lot from him. Pretty humbling, him being a transfer 1, and me being 13. Ha ha. It was way good though. So he is my dendo grandson, which is really rare. Rarely do you see your son train in the mission field, so its pretty cool.

Yesterday we saw a really cool miracle! We got our 75 year old Investigator, Ishida, so say he would come to Church. Hes been having back problems, so we were a little worried. Its his first time, which is always the hardest. Anyways, he called before church, and said because of the medicine he was taking for his back, he was getting really itchy. He said coming to Church would be hard. I explained how Satan is doing everything to keep him from coming to Church, and that if he were to come to Church, the itch would go away. He said okay, and still came. So we were sitting there, he took the sacrament, and right after he took it, he turned to me and said that his itch was gone. Also that his back didn't ache. He said he knew it was God that helped him. After sacrament meeting we shared 1 Nephi 3:7 and said that God will always provide a way. We have a baptismal date set for him, and I promised him that Satan is going to try and keep him from getting baptized, but if he relies on the Lord, and trusts that he will prepare the path, then just like yesterday, the 'itch' will go away, and we'll be able to feel God's Peace and Love. It was a way cool testimony builder. He has way strong faith.

Things are going well though! Yesterday after Church we went housing, and saw the most success I've seen doing housing (Except for maybe this Chinese Apartment in Kiryu). By-the-way this is pretty good in Japan. We were invited in to someone's apartment, (I can count on one hand the number of times someone has invited me in to share a message), then talked with this 19 year old, who had interest, and said his family does to, so we got an appointment to come back on Thursday and meet his family, then we found a couple of PIs who might come to English Class. Then we were about to head home because it was getting late, but decided to do one more building. The last door we knocked on was a less active, who had been wanting to contact the church, but didn't really know how. That was a big miracle. It was way cool to see the Lord guide and direct us.

Thanks for everything you all do! I'm eternally grateful for you love and friendship.

Elder Stewart