January 19, 2014

I have found out quickly that Izuka is definitely harder than Amami was.  People here are not as kind and we have found many fewer people that will listen.  That being said, it has been proved to me once again this week that Heavenly Father does not forget when you are spending a lot of time in His service.  When you are diligent and use your time wisely, even when it seems a waste of time, He will bless you.  We found a man this week named kawabata san.  He had met with missionaries about ten years ago but for some reason stopped.  We haven"t figured out why yet, but he said he was even coming to church.  For some reason he didn't want to receive baptism though.  It seems like a faith problem.  He also is a big smoker and loves coffee (no surprise because he is Japanese).  But he said he wanted to grow his faith and when we brought up Alma chapter 32 (the faith is a seed chapter) he knew about it already (he's read the book of Mormon twice already).  We talked a little about miracles and he said he's seen three noticeable miracles in his life.  First, when he was interested in Christianity, the missionaries found him (like twenty years ago), second when he had interest again, new missionaries found him (twelve years ago).  Recently he got invited to a Christmas pageant by a friend and afterward decided he wanted to read the Book of Mormon again.  Then we showed up.  That is the third miracle.  I don't know what his problems are yet, but with Heavenly Father's help we can find them and help him gain that light he is looking for.  I am so happy my companion and I were dilligent enough to keep looking until we found him. 

 

Essentially Iizuka is a place where the only thing you can do is house.  We spend almost all of our time going door-to-door.  So even when we got bikes, we weren't that much more effective.  But we decided that we should get the members involved more, so we are going to go around to each member and do a roleplay with them.  I think a lot of members don't know how to react if they are asked about the gospel by a friend, so we want to help them know what to do.  Hopefully by doing this we will find more people to teach.  We also have gone and found all of the less-actives that we can meet that are close by, so we will be working with them now.  But the big thing will still be housing.  But I know we can find people.  Heavenly Father didn't send four people here to do nothing.  He sent us to work. 

 

 

Love you all.  Have a good week. 

 

Iain

Elder Lee Choro

yori