So Takayama is pretty crazy. My district leader in Numazu had served here before and told me a little bit about it and he said it was really inaka (small town) but it was really fun. So, I thought that would mean there would be no one on the streets to talk to or there would be snow up to my knees and we would have to phone dendo a lot but it has actually been the quite the opposite. There are basically two sides of the train station and Vaughn Choro said that one side is the touristy side and the other side is the Japanese side. We don`t stop and talk to a lot of tourists because, well, we can`t teach them and baptize them and strengthen the ward by talking to them but on the way back from visiting a less-active, we ran into an older Belgian tourist couple that was trying to communicate with some Japanese that didn`t speak English asking for to directions. We stopped to help but it seemed like they figured where the train station was but we still conversed in conversion. We asked them what they were doing here and told them about why we were here on a mission and smoothly transitioned to religion. It was weird because I was able to understand everything and jump in whenever I wanted. They first said they believe in this weird, higher power that controls the universe and we explained that we believed in God as our Father and they wanted to know more and asked us what our main doctrine is. I wanted to say the truth but instead we gave them it in the Plan of Salvation and we talked about the Restoration. In his thick Belgian accent e said after we explained, `That makes sense!` They were too busy sightseeing to come to church but we gave them a Mormon.org card and luckily I had a small English version of the Book of Mormon I gave them and we told them to learn more on the website and to look up the church and missionaries in Belgium so hopefully the good old Liberts do that. And if you are serving in Belgium and reading this, you are welcome. So hopefully something good will come of it and here a great conversion story over General Conference one day.
Besides talking to tourists, we ran into a high schooler Phillipino who tried speaking English to us and invited us to a festival his school was putting together the next day. So we went, ate some food, and said hi to him and were going to contact him later but then he called us and straight up us asked if we could be his friends. So, for that day, our stats were 1 lesson, 0 referrals, 2 Less Actives, and 1 Friend. We will be contacting Jake soon to try make him a friend in Christ by teaching him but overall there are a lot of people to talk to here in Takayama. We have only ran into two potential investigators again on the streets so it is a lot smaller than Numazu but plenty of work to be done.
The branch here is pretty cool too and I should be able to get really close to all the members since there are less than I am used to and I can speak a tad bit more Japanese than when I first came to Japan. There are about 30 active members but we only have 20 people at church minus the missionaries. It will be fun to get to know them.
And yes, it being cold was true, I had to pull out my coat once this week but, I can always have the warm feeling of the Spirit inside me to warm me up. Hope everyone has a good week and sorry for the lack of pictures but next week I will upload some of the new apartment, area, and elders here.
Love you all!
Elder Hall
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