Greetings from Shibuya! I wanted to show you some pictures before getting into my awesome story of the week.
(That's my companion and me. She's doing the peace sign, I'm holding the camera.)Japan celebrates Christmas season, that's for sure. We get to see a lot of "Holiday Light Displays."
Man, I have a lot of photos on here. What else do we have? This is my district right before transfers. The two elders in the middle (the one in the chair and the one standing behind him) got transferred, but everyone else stayed.
(Right before the picture I shouted, "That's my camera! Do something weird!" but I didn't give much notice, so this is what you get. The Elder in the chair smiling brightly IS doing his weird face, he normally doesn't smile like that.)Also? Just in case you didn't know, Japan is kinda strange.
That is a fish hat.In Shibuya we try to do some different types of missionary work. When I say missionary work, I am referring to our efforts towards finding new people to teach. The Elders decided on using sports pretty early in the game, so we go play basketball occasionally:
This is surprisingly effective. I also have about 100 action shots of them playing (some of them are rather good, surprisingly), but I don't want to sort through them all for the best ones.Members in Japan can be...interesting. These two fellows are AWESOME. (speaking of awesome...)
Also, we played football on our day off with some members to celebrate Thanksgiving. There is an American School in Japan (ASIJ) here so they let us use a real football field. I think I look terrible in this picture, but it's a good shot overall.
By the way, I wasn't kidding when I said Japan looks like fall weather right now. This was taken near the Emperor's Palace (across the street, in fact) two weeks ago (two days before December, I think):
I also have some really gross pictures of dead fish but since my sister Shana is uploading this blog and I think the pictures would make her cry (they make me want to cry, too) I will skip them. You can have these instead.
I suggest looking at my face closely. That Japanese sister isn't my companion, but she is one of the other two Shibuya Sisters and she rocks.Japan celebrates Christmas with some rather different traditions. Christmas Eve is the big celebration, first of all. Christmas is kinda the Valentines of Japan...kinda. Christmas Eve is for dates. The main traditions for families are Christmas cake, which is usually bought and brought home by the dad Christmas Eve, and KFC is successfully introducing a bucket of fried chicken as the Christmas dinner. The real family gathering is the New Year celebration. Christmas really isn't made for families. They don't even get the day off work (and neither do we!).
We went caroling at Shibuya station. It was ridiculous. We passed out something like 10 Book of Mormons (we usually get 2-3 per week), got many new investigators, and those crazy awesome Young Men and Women passed out somewhere in the realm of 600 fliers/pass along cards in the span of 45 minutes. We normally average 10 a day. That was so COOL.
I think that will suffice for now, don't you? Life is good.
Speaking of life being good, I have a story for you. No pictures, but I really like this.
Last week we called one of the members to ask about an appointment the next day and she excitedly exclaimed that there was a referral for us. A less-active member had been inactive for MANY years (about as long as I've been alive), but upon meeting an old friend (who is also a member) she indicated that her life was not so hot and she requested that the missionaries come teach her. This old friend's friend works for the member in our ward, so we were told about her. We got her information from this member, and discovered she lived about an hour away by train. We called this less-active woman and she sounded very excited to meet with us, and asked us to come as soon as possible. We were able to come on Saturday, her only day off.
Well, we prepared a lesson about Christ, with a few fallback plans depending on her needs (ironically we didn't use any of them, keep reading). We set off to her apartment, and found it relatively quickly. We rang the doorbell and heard her call for us to come up over a dog barking (yay, dogs!). From what we could gather, she lived alone, apparently with a dog.
Well, when we got to the apartment a man opened the door, much to our surprise. This man turned out to be her 21 year old son. When we made our way to the kitchen to greet this woman, she enthusiastically hugged us and ushered us into the living room. There sat her son and his two friends. She whipped out her phone and called her sister. "Sister! The missionaries are here. Grab your daughter and come over." She then told us that her sister would be here in 20 minutes. If we didn't mind, could we talk to everyone?
Yeah, sure. Of course! We smiled, and greeted everyone in the room. I guess when they mentioned the inactive they forgot to mention her whole family was inactive, or something. The woman dashed back into the kitchen to prepare snacks, so we chatted with her son and his friends. After a while we asked them how they felt church, and what they could remember about the last time they'd been to church.
"We go to church every week," the three youth responded, a little confused.
"Really?" we responded enthusiastically (albeit rather surprised), "That's wonderful! Doesn't church feel wonderful?"
"Yeah, I guess." The two boys and one girl were still looking at us a little funny.
"Do you read your scriptures and pray, too?"
"Yeah. We read and pray every night." One of the youth crossed himself while saying this. I grinned enthusiastically and was about to praise them when--
...Wait a second. He just crossed himself, didn't he?
The mother walked back in, "Everyone, I have an announcement! I'm not actually Catholic like you, I'm Mormon!"
EVERYONE in the room stared at her. Some mouths dropped. One of them was mine.
"These are the Mormon missionaries! They are going to teach you what I believe, and we are going to go to the Mormon church together from now on!"
My companion and I looked at each other. The three youth stared at this now-deemed-insane woman. They looked a little angry.
This inactive woman had raised her son and never told him she wasn't Catholic. They had been going to a Catholic church all their lives.
Everyone stared at us now. We looked at each other again. After our initial shock and shared look of 'we are about to get martyred by angry Christians' we determined what to do.
"Lesson 1?"
"Lesson 1."
So we taught them about our beliefs, and how/why the church was founded. At first we were given cold stares as we discussed the nature of God (Heavenly Father), how He speaks with us (Prophets), and Jesus Christ's Ministry on earth. We pointed out that our beliefs regarding this are generally the same as the Catholics, and they begrudgingly agreed. Then we discussed Jesus Christ's resurrection--
The doorbell rang. The dog barked. One of the three kids (I say kids, but they were our age) needed the bathroom. They all three dashed off. Eventually it got quiet again and they came back, to my initial surprise. I thought they'd be hidden away elsewhere, from how they were acting before. Huh.
We discussed the resurrection, and the Great Apostasy. We pointed out the need of an Apostasy and the predictions of the Great Apostasy, and how Christ's church would become slightly distorted and bara bara, or split into many different churches, and that's why there were so many today. Then we talked about Joseph Smith. We began the First Vision--
A cell phone rang. Not just a beep beep ring either, but the full nine yards dirty-dancing-rap song. It was...awkward, to say the least. I had never had this many interruptions before. The dog went crazy again several times, whenever we talked about living prophets or Christ. People kept coming and going through the house. The long-awaited sister arrived, noisily.
But what was amazing is after each interruption they all came right back. They were leaning forward over the table, like this was the most fascinating thing in the history of the world EVER. Which it is, y'know, but it's nice to have it appreciated. We were able to complete the First Vision, explain the Book of Mormon, and we read from it. The dog barked some more but was now ignored. We gave them a Book of Mormon and more information about what we had discussed. After the lesson they exclaimed that it was amazing, and started reading the Book of Mormon before we could even get up to leave. We arranged to meet them again, and left--much later than planned and much happier than ever expected.
That was, by FAR, the coolest lesson I have ever taught. I had heard that Satan does his best to interrupt our message, but I had never seen it in such shocking abundance. I also could never have imagined how unsuccessful he was.
And that's my story, in essence. The inactive woman who never told her family her religion, the coolest first discussion ever, and the curious phenomenon of getting interrupted when discussing spiritual things---particularly the First Vision. I think that fits rather neatly as a missionary story, wouldn't you say? It's not the first and definitely not the last, but I must admit, it's a favorite.
I still laugh whenever I think about how she made that announcement. "Guess what, I'm a Mormon!" Heh.
I better trundle off to do other things. I was planning on finally picking up that Birthday present today. I will treat myself to some much needed clothing, including a hoodie, a t-shirt, some socks, and a new skirt/blouse combo if I can get one. We found the Japanese equivalent of Wal-Mart (no, seriously, it's owned by Wal-Mart) and we're going to go give it a shot today. Go, Seiyu!
Love you, miss you, can't imagine anything else I'd rather be doing,
Me.
P.S. I cannot believe how many members in the Tokyo Foreigner Wards are CEOs/CIOs/CFOs of companies around here. It is INSANE. We just met the President of Nuskin. We know the CFO of Shell and the one of Seiyu. We have gotten Tupperware from the Tupperware president. We have met the former and current President of a very prominent Japanese bank. He gave us cookies. Who knew they were regular people? Who knew they were Members? I love Shibuya. I love our church, and I LOVE the gospel.
