Its been a really great week! Seems like the immense amount of blessings aren't cooling off which is amazing.
Thursday was the highlight of the week. And it was a day I had been looking forward to for 2 weeks. Why? Because thursday night was our Sports Taikai! Or sports night for mission work! Which means we got to play basketball! So the days before Thursday I was really working on getting my hematoma leg ready to work and play and by wednesday, it felt great and ready to go! So Thursday night rolled around after a great day of mission work and I found myself starting from airballing a lot of shots and moving half speed (excuses: havent played in nearly 2 months and the balls werent very good ;) ) to playing a fun and light 5 v 5 with the other missionaries and 3 japanese people we invited to play with us. It was SOO MUCH FUN. Loved it. We talked with those 3 we invited to play with us afterwards and played some ping pong with them and introduced our free english class we teach on wednesdays and they said they'd go! But ya being able to have a fun time with everyone in the gym was really a blessing, a highlight of the month.
On the way home, we were riding our bikes and found ourselves stopped at a stoplight next to this other foreigner! An american! They pop up every now and then but not often. Anyway, I asked him where hes from and he said California, I asked where, he said Sacramento! I told him I'm from Danville and he was like wow, I know exactly where that is. We both said, well, this is kinda weird. He then, seeing my Golden State Warriors sweatshirt and beanie, said Go Kings! as he rode the opposite way. Haha the odds of two Northern Californians running into each other at a stoplight at night time in a random city like Akita in a foreign country of Japan. Pretty funny.
Elder Hoskyns and I had an appointment cancelled on Friday night and had an appointment scheduled an hour later so we decided to do housing for that extra hour. After 3 buddhist houses, some nice to us and some not so nice, it was my turn to do the door approach. The house was pitch black inside and I was wondering why we were even ringing the doorbell, assuming no one was home and there was no point. But I rang anyway, a moment later a light turned on and a younger woman came to the door. I gave my pathetic and poor japanese door approach but much to my amazement and awe, the door stayed open. Hoskyns then took the reigns of the conversation once she started responding and all of a sudden, 5 minutes later, we had an appointment! We're meeting her tomorrow and we were both so excited to find a success. Door approaches are generally the least effective way to find new investigators, especially in a buddhist country like Japan, but God decided to keep pouring blessings. WE are truly blessed.
Our investigators are doing great. We had all three of them come to church (Sunday Morning General Conference broadcast) yesterday! I wrote in my journal describing the situation that it was like being a host for a house party- pretty overwhelmed with the number of people there that I had to try to please and on top of that, I had to please them in a foreign language! Luckily though, conference started soon enough and they were all seated and amused for the following 2 hours. Jerry SOAKED IT UP! He took some crazy mad notes and was really affected by it. He felt the Spirit. This morning, Hoskyns and I decided to push Kenjiros baptismal date back a few weeks for various reasons but plan on setting baptismal dates with the other two investgators- Jerry and Oshima - for the month of May.
A lot of other good happened this week and I learned and grew a lot from the messages from General Conference.
Commitment for the week: Say hi and smile to someone that looks a bit down. Its easy and it will change their life.
Ｉ ｌｏｖｅ ｙｏｕ！
愛しています！
Ｅｌｄｅｒ Ｒｏｂｉｎｓ
ロビンズ長老
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