Mission of the Rising Sun: He Comes, He Teaches, He Leaves (And A Special Exchange to Boot👞)

Wow, what a week! Just another busy, busy week over here in Fukutoku. I don't know if I can get busier with my life. Seriously though. We had a lot of stuff happen this week. I literally have only been able to do a legit personal study once this past week, and not because I am being disobedient! Tuesday was a normal day, Wednesday we had to go to the mission home for a meeting, Thursday we helped our wheelchair-bound Ugandan friend Baker to a government agency early in the morning, Friday was District Meeting, Saturday we had an appointment in the morning and Sunday we had church. Monday we had the assistant call us which took a lot of time as well. This week shouldn't be as crazy though.

I just gave you the rundown of the week but here are the highlights. After helping Baker out from 7:30 to 11:30 in the morning, we meant to finish it off with a short scripture about pondering the scriptures but then Baker revealed to us that he thought the Book of Mormon was our version of the Bible and that he forgot who Joseph Smith was. Maybe if you didn't go on thirty minutes rants on women then you would know! But yeah, he just opened up to not knowing anything about the Book of Mormon so he committed to read the introduction. This was the lesson right after we committed him to baptism for the first week of June (which he gracefully accepted). Other good stuff was a koukan (an exchange) with Elder Hastriter from the same MTC group as me which was WAY fun. We did what I hadn't done since transfer 3 and found an investigator through housing. We were going to visit a member but then I decided to not use the map and just wing it but it turns out that wasn't a good idea so we just went Y.O.L.O. and decided to go housing since we both hadn't in a long time. The second person we housed was a bro and we joked around with him for five or ten minutes before we set up a English/Gospel lesson for tonight. Way stoked for that. College kids are the best when they are living away from home alone.

Sunday was really busy as well. We had two of our people with baptismal dates come to church (Haruhito and Ikeda) and they both seemed to enjoy it. We also taught part of the primary lesson with all the crazy Fukutoku kids about prophets, complete with an object lesson about prophets. Afterwards, we had a lesson with Ikeda San and he is still struggling a little bit with the Word of Wisdom and stopping smoking but we are going to be helping him but texting him scriptures everyday and continuing to teach him other commandments as well. After THAT lesson, the director of all foreign languages at the MTC (Brother Mills) came to our mission and half-observed, half-participated in our lesson with an investigator, Ogawa San. He is really interested in the church but he is also really busy. He had a question about how we can imagine God because we always talk about Jesus Christ and show pictures of him but not God. Then Brother Mills used a personal story in beautiful Japanese and a great analogy to connect it all in. I have never seen a human being ever teach that well; it was CRAZY! Then we called a bunch of less actives and a couple said they would come to church and one said they had a hernia. So one semi-legit reason to not be at church for a month.

The thought today on my mind goes along with the Ponderizing Scripture this week. I have been thinking recently a lot how God answers our desires. If we want to be like his Son Jesus Christ and become perfect and be in service to others, he will help us do it through his Spirit and his servants the prophets. If we want to get by life not doing much, he will let us do it. God will give us what we want even if it is lower than what he wants for us. He loves us SO much to put our wants and desires first. That is why it is so important to be humble to match God's will and receive everything he wants to give us instead of just our lower expectations. It all starts with a desire. Once we have that, God will grant us that desire if we do what he says. That is why our everyday little actions are so important. Every decision we make, every time we choose to do the right thing or every time we choose the wrong thing, our wants and desires our affected. The future you is determined by today's you. That is why it is so important for us be temperant in all things, choose the right, and put our heart in the right place for God to grant us what He wants to give us.

So, have a great week and I love you all!

Enjoy March Madness and the nice Spring weather!

Elder Hall

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Ponderize Scripture

"Ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Amen."

-D&C 4:7

Monday Flashback

"I often relate missionary work to dating for some reason in my head but if you just like a girl a lot and you don`t invite her on a date, how will you ever get married? So invites are pretty important, for missionaries and returned missionaries alike!"

- "Discipleship in the Digital Age" 3/23/15