February 22, 2016: First Week in Odate!



View from apartment

Hello everyone it's a nice zero degrees Celsius here in Odate!  The nice constant wind really caps of my first week in Odate!  (ha ha)  All jokes aside; I really do love it here!  It's a nice break and I feel like there isn't a lot of noise here in this small town.  It is nothing like Izumi where it was constantly busy and there were people walking around all the time.  It reminds me of some parts of Utah.  It's all covered in snow and quiet which really reminds me of that feeling I got back home.  I guess that I have been in Japan long enough to consider it home. 

So my first day here in Odate we went around trying to visit old Q'S and we couldn't meet with any of them.  By the way it took all day because they all live really far away from each other and the area boundary here is huge!  So we were walking around all day and finally headed back to the church to have Eikaiwa.  We get there, set up and wait for it to start. We wait an extra 10 minutes and nobody had come!  I was like, yay Odate fun fun!   After a while one person came out of the blue!!  Yay party!  Really fun activity and really fun day over all!

The following day we had 3 lessons!  One with a guy who has a baptism date but we really don't know if he has real interest or not.  He loves to talk with the missionaries and he also smokes like a chimney!  So most of my cloths smelled like smoke.  Oh by the way my boots hadn't arrived by that time so I was wearing my regular beat up shoes.  Water has gotten in my shoes everyday... So yea I guess you can say I am living the dream!!! My shoes probably will die at the end of this transfer but we are good!

 

Signs all over the city
 "Christ bore on the cross everyone's sins"

Elder Taneda from Kobe Japan

I have been nothing but tired this entire week!  It's really draining to listen as hard as I can to Japanese, think in Japanese, and be walking around everywhere in the snow!  I couple times this week I have fallen asleep while trying to say my nightly prayers.   Funny right!  We also got a good lesson with an investigator that is showing great promise but might be moving to Tokyo in the next month.  Why???  He has read the entire bible and likes it and intends to read all of the Book of Mormon!  Yay. Oh by the way we went to go visit another investigator.  He answered the door in his underwear!  So that was pretty cool!

Elder Taneda and I almost got the standard accomplished in the 5 days we were working here in Odate!  It was a really fun week.  Oh I want to tell you about church!  At church there were a total of 13 people with 4 missionaries were included in that number!  I blessed the sacrament and the branch president passed the sacrament to all the people present.  It reminds me of a story from a member in Izumi.  She tells about when she was a brand new member and the missionaries ran everything in the branch.  It also reminds me of D&C 64:33 “Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work.  And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.”   Japan is teaching me a lot about the small things that need to be done before the big miracles everyone loves to talk about. I guarantee you that in the future when talking about growth of the church and missionary work, they will talk about miracles in Japan and how it is exploding with the work!  But before that, the small things need to be done.  All the missionaries in Japan are doing that right now!  Doing the small and simple things!

Love you all and have a good week!!

The best investigator ever, Elder Mimaki and I leaving for our new areas. 
The investigator drove us so we didn't have to buy a train ticket.

 

Church is on the 2nd floor of the office building.