This week (or last week, I'm not %100 percent sure) marked my halfway point. Way weird. It seems like no time but also for forever. Like I just got here but also like I've always been a missionary. And I've made so many friends that I can't even imagine not knowing.
This week we had a TYPHOON. Which sounds scary, and might be scary in other parts of Japan, but here just meant that everyone freaked out and it rained nonstop for half a week.
So basically what I'm saying is that EVEN A TYPHOON will not stop missionaries from working. So ha weather.
This week I had a companion exchange! Me and H Shimai partied it up (visited people in a typhoon) and had a really good Koukan.
In case any of you are wondering - yes, I can get by in Japanese. I can hear it pretty well for most topics, but I have a really hard time speaking it still. All the grammar is easy to learn the rules for, but hard to memorize well enough to not make simple mistakes in daily speech. I can get my point across, but it sounds really weird. Not a problem though. :)
I had an idea a while back about Eikaiwa that I tried this week.
So basically, back in Izumo a problem we had with Eikaiwa was that we had a lot of new people come a surprising amount of the time - but only once and would never come back. It was way sad, because it takes a few times for a person to come to Eikaiwa before you can get them to notice and feel comfortable about the church part of it long enough to be able to talk to them a little more about the church part of missionary work and see if they have interest. We'd kind of try awkwardly to let the new people know if they had any questions about that sort of thing, we'd be happy to talk with them. But it wasn't really effective at all. So I figured, if we did a little 10 minute message 15 minutes after class ends about some small interesting subject that anyone who has interest in can listen to, we could see if new people (or even older people) have any interest in a way that doesn't seem overly directed towards them in a scary way. So last week, (4 new people came) we announced before class started that for anyone who has interest, we want to explain why we pray before Eikaiwa and what we beleive about prayer in a separate room after class. There wasn't really any reaction. After class, everyone kind of went barabara and I was trying to decide if I should announce it one more time to remind everyone just in case (I really wanted it to work) or just drop it and decide it was a bad idea, when, 3 of the girls talking to Saijo Shimai randomly asked her "hey, when's that prayer thing happening? We want to hear it."
Which made me the happiest camper in the world.
And then when the last girl saw the 3 girls coming in she decided to listen too, and we had a really nice little lesson about our relationship about Heavenly Father and why prayer is important. It wasn't a lesson (I wasn't sure if it was a good idea to push it as far as giving a commitment), but I think could really help in identifying those with potential. Just barely thought to ask the mission president about it, so hopefully we can continue. :)
Had a cool experience this week though. Me and my companion were going to go visit this less active, but her key would NOT fit in her bike - which means no riding. We tried everything we could think of - praying, petting the key, sudden burts of energy, but nothing worked. So we gave up and decided to do things close to the church. We were able to meet with an investigator on the street (and drop her... But sooner than later I guess) and run into a way nice lady who gave us her phone number and asked us to come over and look at her flowers sometime. Not sure how much interest she has but it was way cool. Then, on the way back,we tried one more time... And with a lot of effort... The key fit back in! And on the way back we ran into a pi and a kid who comes to Eikaiwa who is also a pi.
Nothing too dramatic, but probably where the lord wanted us to be. :)
Anyways, everyone, keep up the hard work!
Sister Williamson
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| Williamson Shimai & H Shimai |
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