So it’s been raining for like 2 weeks straight with only one day of sun. That’s absolutely devastating as a missionary for several reasons. For one, you almost HAVE to go outside your apartment unless there’s a natural calamity of the 2nd coming. If it’s just freezing cold rain that’s 100% sure to make you sick, nope that’s not an excuse, you still have to go out. And even though we have to go out, no one else has those kind of rules so there is NO ONE outside no matter how hard you look. You just go freeze and get wet. So you figure everyone must be inside and it would be a good idea to knock doors. Well, Japanese people are probably clinically certifiably allergic to rain. They will not touch it or go near it. They’ll cancel everything for a few drops. So when you knock on their door they’ll just ignore it. So yeah, we had some rainy days. I personally don’t mind rain at all, but there could be absolutely nothing worse for missionary work.
Today it’s a typhoon day and it blew in last night making it quite impossible to sleep. But today’s Pday and we’re locked in the apartment so I think I’ll get a nap. Or I’ll deep clean.
Alright I’ll rewind to the beginning of this week. On Tuesday we went to Tateyama to see Takashi and teach some English. We walked into the mall where we usually eat lunch with Takashi but he wasn’t in our usual spot. I could see the whole food court and knew he wasn’t in there, but I felt like I needed to walk towards the back of the food court. I thought “that’s a waste of time, you’re just trying to avoid work” but my legs moved me over there anyway. It turns out that it wasn’t so much about me looking for something as being looked at by someone. I heard a lady say in perfect English, “Elder!” What? I didn’t know anyone besides Takashi that could speak English here. So I look to see who the miracle lady is and the next thing she says is, “where’s the church around here?” Words every missionary loves to hear. She introduced herself as Sister Shimaura from Thailand and she had just moved here from near one of my previous areas with her Japanese husband. 2 new Branch members! And one of them already has the priesthood! The Branch had been praying for that actually because (this is a secret) our Branch President is moving out and so is one of our old guys.....and Takashi is moving in with me so....they’re low on priesthood holders. How low? Like final round limbo low. There’s the 1st councilor, his 13 year old son, and one more old guy in his 60s? That’s pretty few. If one family got sick the Branch disappears for a week! So they said, “missionaries, you’ve got to find us some priesthood holders.” So when we fatefully ran into Sister Shimaura it was the answer to a prayer!
We also had Splits with the ZLs which was a huge miracle day. Miracle number 1 being that it didn’t rain (every day before and after it’s rained). The first guy we stopped to talk to spoke Japanese a little funny. When we asked him where he was from he said China. I thought that was an awesome chance to practice Chinese so I tried it and it worked! Score for gift of tongues when you just really need it! Then we found 2 college kids who became new investigators and want to come to church. Then we found another college kid who took a Book of Mormon and became a new investigator. So many miracles! (That’s not all, there were a lot more but if I tell you everything now you won’t have anything to talk to me about in 2 weeks).
I had a talk in sacrament meeting yesterday and I didn’t know how many other speakers there were. So I decided I’d better prepare a lot of material in case I got nervous and talked fast or if I needed to fill a lot of time. I was the second speaker and I thought I was also the last but then the Patriarch came and they asked him to talk to at the end. So I thought I’d just get done and whatever time was left for him he could cover. So I intended to leave him a big chunk of time but instead I started talking and then realized it had been awhile since I looked at the clock, I looked and there were only 5 minutes left of sacrament meeting! So I paraphrased and skipped what was left (which was a remaining 1/3 of my talk) and let him speak. Turns out he wasn’t the only speaker waiting! Sister Sensui stood up, said she had no time so she’d give it to the Patriarch, and sat back down. Whoops 😬. Never thought I’d be that guy. After church we got rice balls from Sister Higashi which were really good. I ate one and then she gave me another one. Then I realized Wenting hadn’t eaten anything so I started to give it to her. But Sister Higashi’s daughter, Ibuki-chan, decided to spit up on it (it was wrapped up in plastic so it didn’t get ruined). We cleaned up Ibuki-chan and Sister Higashi and the rice ball and then without thinking I gave it to Wenting anyway. The rice ball was still fine but it was probably weird knowing Ibuki-Chan just threw up on the wrapper. Wenting ate it though, lol. The Sophie came for her Japanese Lesson even though it was typhooning way hard. At the same time Takashi came down from his Patriarchal Blessing and so we talked a little about that. My first question was, “did you cry?” No. So my next question was naturally, “how many kids are you gonna have?” To which he replied at least one. Takashi wants like 10 kids by the way.
It was a good week. It rained on us a lot and I froze my butt off because my bike seat loves to fill with water and make me have a wet butt all day, but(if I were talking this would be punny) it was still a good week because we had a lot of fun. We even got to celebrate Jonivar’s 27th birthday with him at King BBQ! That’s an all you can eat meat etc. place and he loves to eat! We went way hard and hurt ourselves a little bit in the best way. Personally I never ever ever want to make myself hurt from a meal ever again after my mission but during my mission my body is not mine and it gets abused to make others happy. Whatever. It’s been a good experience so far.
Elder Rogers
