Exotic Gaijin Bingo

So I have a competition with myself so far on my mission that I need to meet a person from every country.  Ever since I got to Japan, I have been shocked by the numbers of non-Japanese people there are that lived here.  Like, I still don`t know why they have a large minority of Brazilians here.  And it doesn`t stop there.  I have talked with people (most living permanently in Japan or married to a Japanese) from Canada, America, Peru, Columbia, France, Thailand, Germany, England, Guinea, India, New Zealand, Nepal, Malayasia, Singapore, Australia, China, Sri Lanka, Italy, Angola, Poland are the ones I can think of so far.  Last night though we were going to visit someone and on the way we were stopping to talk to people and there were two kids we stopped that had no clue what we were talking out.  They only knew enough Japanese and English to tell us they didn`t know Japanese or English.  They both had soccer shirts on that said Azerbaijan and they didn`t look Japanese so I think they were legit from Azerbaijan.  Don`t know why they were there but there is another one off of my Exotic Gaijin Bingo!

In other news, I went on a companion exchange to Fuji, which, if you know more about Japan than I did a year ago, you might know that it is the city that is home to the grand Mt. Fuji.  It was raining a lot and I was working with a younger elder who was trying to just use parables when he was talking to people on the street so he made an analogy to an umbrella being preparation for the rain as the gospel is preparation for meeting God.  So that was cool.  Other highlight was this kid was just being a punk to us and deflecting off everything we were telling him so I just straight out told (or tried to in Japanese without being offensive) to just pray once to see if God was there and to call us back that night.  No phone call but I am sure he will remember two crazy gaijin riding around on our bikes soaking wet at least.

My companion Elder Ottesen told all the members he plays college baseball (at none other than U of U) so they hooked him up to practice with a middle school to help coach the kids.  So we both went and me being a clown and not knowing the least about baseball I brought jeans.  I did participate in some running, a game of catch, and getting ground balls despite my outfit, poor knowledge of anything, and the diamond being muddy after the rain of the day before.  I still don`t know if the kids were making fun of me by saying good job and nice try after a terrible throw or a slip because of my lack of cleats or if they were being nice.  Good old language barrirers!  And angsty teenagers...  But it was nonetheless fun.

Today`s talk, miracles.  Many of us look at miracles as what Jesus did on Earth like feeding the five thousand and healing the sick and raising the dead.  Those definitely are important and truly spectacular since they help us build our faith in Christ but I think the thought of a miracle being just that is limiting us to see just what everyday miracles we see in our lives.  To be honest, I`ve been a bit disappointed with what you might call a lack of miracles on my mission.  I thought I would just every week write home telling about an investigator we helped overcome a concern to get baptized or a person we found as a minute before 9:00 or how we got a less active to come back after struggling with the Word of Wisdom.  That stuff has never really happened to me all that much though on the mission.  Not saying it can`t but it just hasn`t.  Someitmes to think of my mission like that, it gets discouraging to not really see much change or grand things.  But God told us that it is by small and simple things that great things are brought to pass.  So I think going along those lines a miracle is something of an everyday occurence.  It could be making a train on time, meeting with a former investigator and building a relationship with them or maybe somedays it is even that you stayed on your feet the whole time and survived the day.  So in that case I`ve seen a lot more miracles on my mission than I would have hoped and I am sure everyone sees a miracles everyday.  So keep your eyes open to see the small little miracles that you can`t quite explain or understand and you might be surprised by what you find. 

I love you all and have a great week!

My companion and I in the Ward Bulletin