We're still working hard on Kumagaya! As we began our p-day shopping and this girl comes up to us and we're talking to her about English, as always, and that leads into talking a little about the church. She seemed interested and we set up an appointment to meet. She's super cute, Chinese, 24, way stylin' etc. Kinjin.
On Tuesday we went to visit our good friend Roy who helped us track down our bikes that one day a few weeks ago. He had a student with him, and Roy started telling this student that we're Mormons and they always send out pretty girls to persuade people to join. So naturally we began telling this new student what we do as missionaries. I don't know if it was our beauty or the Holy Ghost, but he wants to see us again that's for sure. He seems like a really great guy, we'll have all our lessons at the church with a member present and everything should be great. He's kinjin too. :)
Also, Tuesday morning we did a roleplay with one of the members, she's a convert and it was so uplifting to hear her conversion story from Buddhism to Christianity. So we were all pumped and just going about our day, trying to find a bathroom actually, and as I was looking in one of the local shops to see if there was a toilet I totally SMACKED into a pole, head first. Luckily the pole was pretty hollow so it didn't hurt toooooo bad, but the sound was great. It could've been on America's funniest videos...except it happened in Japan...so I don't know if they take foreign films. But, after that things were crazy! This older woman, super skinny, wearing patent leather pants came up to me and Sister Davis and just started chatting us up. She was so funny, but kept leaning on me and whispering in my ear like we were best friends. This woman was so sassy, just confidence exploding out of her head. It was great, as she was about to leave she points to her cheek and says "chu" which is the English equivelant of "mwa". So I kissed this old lady's cheek right on the street after knowing her for 3 minutes, and then she left....and I haven't seen her since. But I'm not sure what got into me, kissing old ladies wearing leather leggings on the street. I blame it on the head injury.
Thursday was good too. We had our 2 zone conference which was a 2 hour train ride for pretty much everyone that went to the conference, which is ridiculously long for one of these things. It was fun though, we were all traveling together and the missionaries took over. Everywhere we looked missionaries were handing out the Book of Mormon and pamphlets. It was great to see. :) And it was in our area, so maybe it planted some seeds for us in the future. haha
So we have these white friends, the one from Michigan, well we went out to dendou and we really wanted to see them so we could exchange our information and teach and baptize them, but we had no idea how we'd find them. But we just had a feeling we would run into them. We handed out flyers for a little bit, with no luck and knew that we were going to watch conference in the morning so we really needed M&Ms for our special conference pancakes...during our quest for M&Ms, because all the sell in Japan is Japanese candy for some reason, we found our white friends! It was a miracle! We talked with them for as long as we could, and we're becoming their friends, we just need to transition better into the gospel. We'll keep trying to get them to church though. Dekiru to omou!
Yesterday we had a rough morning, we went to a new investigator's apartment, and she kept tempting us with all these things that any non-Mormon would find harmless I'm sure, and her Japanese and English both aren't perfect because she's from Indonesia, so communication was difficult. As we sat there in all of the worldlyness surrounding us we just felt so dark and uncomfortable...the spirit was gone. There was no way of teaching her in that environment. I didn't realize just how corrupt the world is becoming until I set myself apart from it for a while. It was the worst feeling I've ever experienced. We left her apartment both feeling awful, we sang hymns all the way home....I felt such a difference.
Lately I've been worried that I'm losing the feeling of the spirit's direction, that my spirituality was dulling. I've been praying recently for stronger spiritual witnesses, that I could feel God's presence a little more in my life. I didn't realize I've had it this whole time, it took losing it to understand the spirit again. I know God listens to us, He knows what we need to make us stronger. He loves us, and He is always with us, if we allow Him to be. It made us so sad after this realization that so many people have not ever felt this feeling of warmth and love, and it's hard to explain because everyone feels it differently. But if we set ourselves apart from the world, He will make Himself known to us. The world creates all of these temporary happinesses, but we know that the only way to truly feeling happy, and feeling happy for eternity, is through keeping the commandments of God. This is true. I want to share it with all of Kumagaya! I love this gospel, I loved listening to conference, I feel so uplifted!
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