March 28, 2016 But wait...we have a lesson

Last night we received our transfer calls and I am not transferring however my beloved comp is.  He is returning to his bean area which is Kamisugi.  First of all I am really excited and jealous (cause he is going back to his bean area!). My new comp is Elder Sato!  He is Japanese, however he lived in Chicago for most of his life and is fluent in both languages and he is a transfer behind me.  I haven't meet him yet I won't till tomorrow but I am really excited.

This transfer is the most crazy out of all of them I feel like.  In a letter to all the missionaries, President Smith said that just a few missionaries would be transferred.  That was wrong!  It's like he took the board with all the missionaries and just shook it around! Missionaries are flying all over the place!  

It's been a good week with some interesting events.

We had planned to do some streeting and housing on Tuesday, but it decided to rain buckets.  We started out with all of our rain gear on and no one was around.  He walked all over Odate trying to find someone, even went to places that we hadn't gone before.  Still nobody.  But here is where the happiness comes.  After we go to the apartment to change cloths we start housing again before our appointment.  We get rejected a few times then finally we house this mom.  She takes a hallelujah card and says ちょっと待ってね (just a second) goes inside comes back out with two apples and give both of them to us!!  I was so happy haha Japanese people are so nice!

On Wednesday we did have some success with the cards we have been handing out.  Then we headed over to hasebe whose Japanese is incredible, I can't really understand anything that he is saying!  Sometimes it seems like he is speaking a language that anybody knows!  Then eikaiwa, ok well were to start??  So occasionally these two little girls come to it and they destroy everything.  And guess, what they came...  glad the sisters were also there and they took them into another room while we taught eikaiwa. 

We took the train to Hirosaki on Thursday for the DTM.  At DTM we focused on Christ like attributes. I feel like the one I need to work on the most is patience.  I have been thinking about it a lot over the past couple of days and studying.   This has helped me and taught me a lot about God's heart.  After reading a lot of talks I've concluded that patience boils down to constant effort, humility and never giving up.  Like President Uchtdorf's General Conference talk!  It's excellent !

Friday I did splits with Elder Barton where we were able to hand out a Book of Mormon and got two lessons in!  Funny story about the first lesson.  We say the opening prayer and the investigator gets up and starts to leave saying that he is going shopping!  He knew full well that we had a lesson!  We were lucky enough to get the lesson in but he gets distracted.

 It is warming up here and we are able to ride our bikes which is great.  We had a good attendance at church with a couple of our investigators coming.  The goal is to just keep pressing forward and staying focused on the work. 

Keep praying!

Elder Halverson

ハルバソン長老~日本仙台伝道部