Finding 101 and Time Lapses

Just another great week.  I feel like I say it every week but I am a missionary so I can't lie at all so it must be true!  We had a lot of member lessons again and are inviting everyone to our English class party later in the month.  The ward is sick and helps us out a lot.  On top of that they are way fun to be around!  Hopefully everyone can bring a friend or three!  Also other unrelated news is our recent obsessions as a companionship and apartment of making time lapses of ourselves doing normal things really slow so it looks like normal speed.  I will attach a couple for you.  We also had a pizza party in the middle of the woods with an older member who invited a bunch of his nonmember friends.  It was way good and we got to talk to a couple people about what we do as missionaries, even though nothing concrete came out of it.

We also spent a lot of the week focusing on beefing up our finding which has been slugging off a bit.  And boy, did it deliver!  As a zone we have been studying one chapter each week from good 'ole Preach My Gospel and this week was the finding chapter.  We were trying to think of ways on how to diversify our finding approaches.  We have a couple of activities in the making but since they are more long term activities, we wanted to come up with something more short term we could do now.  In the midst of this thinking, we decide to go to a little island thingy called Nagashima (Long Island in Japanese) that is thirty minutes away by train to visit less active's that may or maybe not be presumed dead.  Not much logic behind that decision!  We are looking for one of the addresses in this place with a bunch of rice fields and a few houses when we stumble upon a guy during some yard work.  We stop to ask him where to go and it turns out he spoke fluent English and wanted us to teach his kids English.  All in the middle of basically nowhere!  Cha-Ching!  New investigator!  Just another experience proving that the Spirit is the only way to find.  We are visiting him tomorrow to teach their family and it should be really fun, even though it is a bit far away.

The finding streak continued later this week as we were walking to the train station yesterday.  A businessman was walking very briskly past us so we stopped him and talked.  I don't know if you know anything about Japanese businessmen but they are basically some of the hardest people to get a conversation going with.  Each time you try to stop them, they just look at their watch and run off with the excuse of no time or just keep moving on their way to catch a train.  We thought this guy would be the same but luckily, he chatted with us as we walked together to the station.  It turns out he has been studying a BUNCH of different religions because he is interested in such things as "What happened before this life?" and "What is next after this life?" which we luckily have the answers to.  The stoplight before the station we all three just stopped and plunged into an hour discussion about our purpose in life, why there are so many churches, and how he can know for sure what is true.  This guy really wanted to know the truth and asked SO many good heartfelt questions.  "If I ask a different God will I get an answer?"  "If I ask about something wrong will God lead me to the right answer?"  Way, way, cool, prepared guy.  His name is Nakazaki San and he sadly lives in a different city and wasn't willing to give us his contact information quite yet.  We gave him fifty different ways to contact missionaries (our phone number, Mormon.org, LDS.org, Book of Mormon, church address, pamphlet) and even if he doesn't he will for sure study us up and eventually get back in touch.  One of the most prepared people I have ever met in my mission though.  I am lucky enough to be along for the ride with the Spirit!

These two experiences and other small ones throughout the week have made me think a lot about the Spirit and its role.  Elder Hales gave a great conference talk last month entitled, well, what else but "The Holy Ghost"!  In it he says that "the Holy Ghost provides personal revelation to help us make major life decisions... In these matters, Heavenly Father expects us to use our agency, study the situation out in our minds according to gospel principles, and bring a decision to Him in prayer."  I think it is an interesting concept.  We can't just blindly ask God for the Spirit and get it doing by nothing.  Like most things, it takes work.  We first have to study it out in our minds, come up with our own plan, and then ask for confirmation.  If we prayed all the time at each intersection we come to which way we should go, I think we would lose sight of our personal role in receiving guidance.  Instead, as missionaries, we pray to have the Spirit throughout the day and do our best to live worthy of its guidance.  We pray before planning to have ideas come into our minds and feelings into our hearts and after we make the plan we pray to make sure it is right.  Then the next day we pray over it again just to double check and sometimes we pray when our backups go out the window and people cancel.  It is my testimony that God does guide us as we seek his help, even in the little things.  Tender mercies are out there and as we do our best God will bless us with them.

I love you all and I hope that you all have an amazing week!

Elder Hall in Japan

Elder Hall on a train in Japan

More of Japan