Hey! Thanks for the mail as always! Conference won't be until the weekend after next for me. What do you mean about Priesthood being live streamed? Is it not always like that? Mara looks pretty good! Starting to look like Lauren a lot I think :) Sounds like that date was pretty fun though! Glad Hunter is doing well in football again. Also I bet Granger is huge!
The district is Me and Morgan E and then 6 missionaries in Kushiro. Inoue E and Yoshikawa E (his bean on his 2nd transfer), Miyaki E and French E, then Sugihara S (half Japanese, but raised in America) and Baker S. They are all way awesome. It's crazy though that I'm the oldest (missionary wise) out of everybody. I have to be a big example and stuff. Not to mention prepare all the DTMs/go on splits with everyone, but it'll be way cool. Me and Morgan E get along great, but I think we are pretty different. I think partially he is still getting adjusted to Japan and stuff.
So for this week last P-day was a lot of fixing my bike and going shopping for stuff with Morgan E. Also we had FHE at the Ozawa's and it was way fun. They had Morgan E do the lesson and it was a bit tough for him so I helped him, but it went great. We played some fun games and had a great time. I had to call lots of missionaries on the phone, copy music, etc in order to get ready for the mini music fireside after the district conference on Sunday. Tuesday I had my first DTM and I feel like it went really well. Of course there are still lots of ways to improve, but I definitely was able to take up all the time with no problem. We met Hayasaka who is an investigator who has a hair salon and lived in Europe for a while. She is super nice and really interested in us, but not so much the gospel quite yet. Because of that we do our best to get the gospel into regular conversations with her. This time around we ended up teaching her half the plan of salvation so hopefully it sticks! We have committed her to pray as well so we'll keep doing our best w/her. We ran around to some appointments and ended up doing a bit of finding. I also introduced Morgan E to Tatsuya since we were nearby and he is doing great still. We taught a lesson to Abe and his wife (plan of salvation) and it went pretty good. Abe still has a lot of doubts especially about his own ability to believe, but we encouraged and praised him a lot and I think it is starting to make a change in him. We also swung by Van's company to give her juice that we bought to help her keep the word of wisdom.
Wednesday was pretty great too. Until it got all typhoon-y again. But before then we were able to have a really good morning study and meet with a guy named Tominaga. It was a little tricky to get into a lesson with him, but we were able to talk about a lot of our beliefs and remind him of the stuff he had heard from missionaries in the past particularly Joseph Smith. Then it got really rainy and we were trapped in the house... we still used time to get other important things done though! Thursday was a good/longish day in the apartment with DKK. It went pretty smooth and Morgan E is great at thinking of the needs of investigators and helping to plan for them. We stopped by Okuchi S to talk to her about working together to help Van get to baptism. She actually volunteered to help us out! She has been doing WAY good lately and her testimony is ridiculously strong. We also talked about other ways she can dendo and she is bringing her friends kids w/her to Eikaiwa! The sunset was crazy pretty that day. Morgan E got some nice pics I think. All the people we wanted to visit that night were either sick or busy so we streeted around the "mall" for a while and got some good contacts. Then we went by Van's to actually give her a bicycle... haha! A member had an extra bike and she had been talking about how she wanted one so we delivered it to her. She was way happy and forced us to let her buy us food at a convenience store. We stopped on the side of the road to follow up on her reading etc. and she has been reading consistently everyday. She basically bore her testimony about how her life has gotten so much better since she started reading and coming to church. She still has somethings she didn't understand about the priesthood and Joseph Smith, but we were able to address those concerns for the most part. She prayed in Japanese for the first time and it was really good.
Friday we tried finding in a different part of town and it went alright. We were able to teach some decent doorway lessons too. We got ready for and taught Eikaiwa which was awesome as usual. Did however find out that one of our really good students is moving to Tokyo which was sad, but he wants to keep going to Eikaiwa there as well! Also I found out the Pres. Andrus (who went to America because his dad died) fainted and got life flighted to the emergency room! He is at university hospital and apparently in way bad shape. I have been praying for him lots. Saturday morning we got a call from Hayasaka because she needed help building a chest of drawers. We helped her out and were actually able to get a better lesson in and pass her the Book of Mormon. She seemed pretty excited about trying it out. We also met this lady again named Minato who Andersen E and I found. She let us in and gave us this really good peach flavored water and we taught her a short lesson. Her family was there and all of a sudden a friend came over and it got all crazy so we had to end the lesson short, but we gave her a pamphlet and she said to come again anytime! We had some really good finding then as well. We followed up with a few other investigators Itou and Itakura and then went to teach Nakagawa. Nakazawa B teamed up and it went pretty well. He is kinda old and forgot parts of the first lesson, but we reviewed them and then taught L2 plan of salvation. He really wants to be purified by baptism and go to the celestial kingdom! When Nakazawa B was bearing his testimony about how baptism changed him he brought up the word of wisdom which we didn't plan on teaching right off. Nakagawa was a bit surprised, but we explained it to him pretty well. It seems like he won't have a problem with anything besides coffee. He seems to like it a lot. We'll have to work with him lots to help him overcome it! Otherwise he seems pretty resolute on doing his best. We had some decent phone dendo that night and when we ran out we decided to street around the house for a while.
Sunday was awesome. Woke up early to meet Van and go to the church to ride in the branch pres's car to Kushiro! In the car I was able to follow up a lot/teach her all the remaining commandments/lessons. It doesn't seem like anything will be a problem! She is starting to get more sure about wanting to be baptized and she has even talked to her parents/family about it and they are so happy about how much happier she:s become. She said they want me to go to Vietnam to meet them. District conference itself was WAY awesome! Almost everyone had been fasting or praying for Andrus Kaicho to get well. It was super great to see everybody again and also to hear all the awesome talks! Okuchi S gave a WAY awesome testimony and blew pretty much everyone away. The other talks were a youth speaker who had a big change of heart and decided to serve a mission+an awesome sister from Kushiro who is leaving to Sendai mission in 2 weeks! Then Pres. and Sister Evans spoke and Sister Evans had the coolest experience with her brother who had left the church coming back! He had gone off on a crazy path and had lots of money trouble, but her other brother decided to show him a talk about tithing. It changed his heart and he did everything he could to pay all the tithing he owed since he had gone astray. However in order to do so he had to get rebaptized. Anyways way awesome story and it focused on tithing a lot so it made it that much easier to help Van understand! Evans Kaicho's talk had a focus on tithing and also on becoming more Christlike. Afterwards we had a big picnic with everyone. A member from Obihiro (not even in the Kushiro district) who has a farm brought a TON of vegetables for everyone to take home! Literally probably a ton. We then started the music fireside and it went awesome. Van felt the spirit super strong. We headed back to Nemuro and tried to meet some investigators. One wasn't home, but her son was so we talked to him and he said he heard about us from his school teacher who is another one of our investigators! He even knew that I studied guitar and stuff...!? I feel like almost everyone in Nemuro knows me. Not only that, but another investigator invited us over to eat because there was a family she invited over that she wanted us to meet. I was all excited about getting a referral and then we arrive at her house. The family she wanted to introduce was also already an investigator!!! Hahaha way funny. It was a great opportunity to build a relationship with both of them though.
So many cool and fun/super spiritual things happen every week. I will probably be able to talk about/remember it for the rest of my life and still have stuff to talk about! It's the best though and I wish everyone could experience it.
I love you tons and hope that I can be a better son/brother/uncle for everyone.
Aishiteimasu
Hutchinson Choro
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