On Monday we had a typhoon so Elder Purba and I just sat trapped
in the church all day. It cleared up around dinner time and we were
able to go home and have birthday cake for dinner. Thank you Mom! It
was so good. Elder Purba sang for me.
On Tuesday we went to Tateyama as usual but Mizuno Shimai
wouldn't let us do yard work for her for fear that I'd crash going
down her hill again. So we just rode our bikes around all day and
talked to a lot of people. We found a little peninsula that had a
good beach and there were a lot of people there on vacation. Most of
them were just visiting from Tokyo but a couple were locals. We went
to English Class after that.
This week the Zone Leaders came to our District Meeting and we
did a lot of role plays. We learned how to improve our teaching
skills and I realized I have a really really long way to go. I've
gotten worse since the MTC where we had 2 or 3 lessons a day.
Kisarazu had like no investigators at all for a really long time.
BUT, that's why this week was so cool! We found a lot of people to
teach!
We had splits with Elder Watabe and Elder Johnson. I went with
Elder Johnson and we went housing for a little while. We found a
family that said we could come back and teach them sometime. We also
housed into a Filipino woman named Jamie who loooves Christianity.
We're so excited to teach them! Elder Purba and Elder Watabe found 2
new investigators and they are really golden. They taught one of
them, Mikuni, in the church for a while and he said he wanted to come
back. They also taught a high schooler basically the first 3 lessons.
We both found some new English Class students who will be coming
starting tomorrow! It was just a really good day. Splits are full of
miracles. Oh, I forgot to talk about the Nakazatos. Miyuki, the mom,
got sick and couldn't talk to us recently so we decided to visit her.
I bought her some chocolate bars and a flower. I picked the flower
off the side of the road because I couldn't find a flower shop in
Japan but she'll never know. I really love their family and they like
me so it all just works.
On Saturday we went to a baptism for someone Elder Purba found a
long time ago. He's super nice and it felt so good to be there. Then
we had Stake Conference part 1. Our old Branch President, Tanda
Kyoudai, drove us home from that because he's super cool.
On Sunday we had Stake Conference part 2. They broadcasted it so
we didn't have to travel to the Stake Center. It started off really
good...and then John showed up. John is a 60ish year old man who
believes in every conspiracy there ever was. He always tells us about
the Illuminati, Obama IS Osama Bin Laden, Japanese people aren't human
and they're trying to poison us Caucasian humans, etc. etc. etc. for
the next 3 hours with no breaks. Well, we don't like him and he just
ruins everything so we took him across the street to the park and had
a throw down talk with him. We told him that if he wasn't talking
about Jesus, we didn't care. Then he started saying Jesus was a fraud
and we just told him we didn't want to see him anymore. He started
raging so we just told him to leave and not come back. We handled it
pretty well and he may even stay away from the church now. We came
back in to the church and President Nagano was talking. About us! He
was like, "Some of you may not know about the Elders down in Kisarazu
so I want to tell you about them. Their names are Elder Purba and
Elder Rogers." At this point our members all looked at us like, 'what
did you do?' He told me the story of our service in Tateyama, my bike
crash, missionary-ing the ambulance guys, ignoring Sister Nagano and
working anyway, service at the Nakazato's, the neighborhood helping
us, and the Nakazatos becoming interested. He made it sound really
good and mentioned me by name a few times. He made me sound a lot
cooler than it actually was and now I have like 1,000 members waiting
for me to get 6 baptisms. No pressure. Most of our members didn't
even know anything about it and they were a lot nicer to us after
that. They had a meeting with us afterwards asking how they could
help and the Branch President declared next month Missionary
Appreciation Month. He also reminded the members that we have a food
basket because it's been empty for like 3 months. It was really nice
of President Nagano to do that for us.
On Monday we went to Chiba for splits with the Zone Leaders. It
started raining so we prayed for it to stop and it did. Then we went
out and tried to find people. A less active agreed to meet with us at
the mall and let us teach him a lesson there. We taught him the
restoration and apparently it was the first time he's ever heard it.
He's also crazy by the way. He asked Elder Viehweg to give him a back
massage and it was so awkward to watch. He just kept looking at me
while I tried to cover my laughing. Then we went streeting and we
found a college age guy named Hiro. I asked him if he'd ever met
missionaries, "no" have you ever studied Christianity, "yes, I've read
some of the Bible." Have you ever seen a Book of Mormon? It's like
the Bible but better. I showed him it and gave him one. He thought
it was super cool and wanted to read it and talk to us about it. He's
a new investigator now!
Tuesday, today, was Temple P-day. We were supposed to get a
typhoon as big as they come and things were looking bad. But every
missionary in the mission decided to pray that it would go away and we
could make it to the temple AND IT WENT AWAY. We all got to go to the
temple and it was awesome just like it is every time. The power of
prayer is real. It works miracles. God works according to faith and
if we pray with faith, He will help us.
I love you guys,
Elder Rogers
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