Japan? More like Ja-TheBest-pan, am I right?
Translating went super well! I thought I would make a fool
of myself in front of the entire zone but it ended up going just fine. Japanese
to English wasn't too bad, but English to Japanese started to make me sweat.
So this week had quite a series of fortunate events and hilarious
moments. To begin, there's a thing we do out here called kubari, which is
basically going to train stations and passing out flyers about our Free English
Class. While doing so, I was approached by a very intoxicated woman who was
pretty much being carried by her boyfriend.
They were originally just walking past but she tore away from her
boyfriend and came running towards me. Instead of trying to stop her, HE JUST
WALKED AROUND THE CORNER. This lady continued to hit on me and kept trying to
offer her beer to me. Let's not forget the fact that she kept screaming,
"Sexy Boy" at me, and started drawing attention from passerby's.
Luckily her man came back after a solid 10 minutes of disappearing to pull her
away from the frightened white man. But Elder Poff got a good laugh out of it.
Luckily karma struck back on him because the very next day
while eating ice cream at a park down by the beach, this big ole eagle came
down and took his ice cream clean out of his hands. He's still upset about
that.
We were able to set a baptismal date with a guy who's been an
investigator in Fujisawa for a good year or so now. We've still got a good
amount of barriers for him to overcome with him before he’s ready, but we're so
excited to finally help him progress.
Finally I've got one last thought.
We've been working with a less active who is honestly the nicest man in the
world and loves missionaries. In
initially meeting with him, we found that he works Mon-Sat, but he said he uses
Sun. to catch up on rest. Being that we hear all sorts of excuses all day
everyday, we knew that wasn't the case. Turns out his real struggle with coming
to church was he was feeling too unworthy to be there. This makes absolutely no
sense. Nowhere in the thousands of pages
of doctrine that exists says that church is only for the sinless. If that were
the case churches would consist of empty hallways and moldy baseboards. My
Mother sent me an article where the writer spoke of a companion he had who's favorite
smell at church is tobacco and alcohol, because it's the smell of change.
Amongst the tons of verses that speak of God's anger towards
sinners, I think we tend to forget the many more verses that recognize him as a
God of Love. One who knows every detail about us, he knows how much we suck,
and still loves us anyway. I took away a lot from this past conference but the
two main points that hit were how much emphasis was put on love, and what
repentance really is. In John we read of a woman who was caught committing
adulatory in the TEMPLE. She is literally brought before Christ after being
caught red handed. Could you imagine
screwing up like that and then being put right in front of the very person that
determines the rest of eternity for you in the after life? You are asked if
you've been condemned, wondering if you're going to be thrust into fire and
brimstone right then and there. Christ is sitting right in front of you,
drawing on the ground, and says...
Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
Sin is not the end. When we screw up it doesn't disqualify
us from feeling loved. We are not condemned to sit in a continuous cycle of self-pity
after one bad pitch. It's simply an opportunity to change, to put away the
past, and continuously seek improvement. To be a little bit better than we were
yesterday.
頑張れ、
Elder Stitching at the end of your sleeve
Our main man Hashimoto 兄弟、He leaves for
his mission in Fukuoka on Tuesday. For the
guys in Fukuoka, you got a powerhouse
coming your way.
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