Howdy!!!! B) <(0-0<) <(0-0)> (>0-0)> Kirby dance!!!

If you get the chance to be in Japan, try saying “Hello” to little kids sometime. You won’t regret it. They all try to say hello back. It’s very cute.

Allegedly, it’s already day 100 out on the field. I’m not counting, but it’s crazy to think I’m already a seventhish of the way through the mission. Where did the time go?

These past P days have been pretty fun. Last P day, we went to Hieizan or Mount Hiei. It’s so pretty, and apparently it’s a UNESCO World Heritage site. The y P-day before, we were in Kyoto and visited a few shrines and the famous street Sannenzaka. Super cool.

Asaumi-san was baptized! I’m so happy for her. But I want to recount the events of the Sunday meeting before her baptism, because it’s so funny, and so amazing.

Last Sunday, she showed me what she wanted to say after her baptism. It was something about when she met the missionaries for the first time, a fisherman caught a fish and it was rather large. That was it pretty much. She then ended her testimony with “よろしくお願いします！” roughly translated “It’s nice to meet you!” I had no idea why the fish was important, and since I tend to laugh at really inappropriate times, I told her to show my companion. But my comp and I managed to tell her to end it in the name of Jesus Christ and to bear it from her heart after, hoping something would work out by the Spirit. The lesson after was a bit disastrous too. Somehow, the Sister missionaries’ friends and our friends were swapped, and Asaumi-san gave some answers during our time together that showed we still hadn’t properly taught everything (luckily we go back and reteach all the lessons after!).

Then the baptism. I was honestly pretty stressed out. Although I was already planning on playing violin, Asaumi-san asked me to baptize her the week before. So, I did both. After playing a duet with a member here (thank you Aoki shimai!), I rushed to change into white clothes for the baptism. I go into the baptism room, I say the prayer, and Asaumi-san gets a little nervous about going fully under the water, so I wait a few seconds for her to catch some confidence, take her under, and the Spirit rushes into the room. It truly is a brilliant thing to feel the love of God, and it is not a feeling that can be described greatly in words. The folds were then quickly closed on the baptism window, Asaumi-san goes in for a hug…but the mission rules say not to hug anyone of the opposite sex on the mission. So did I hug her?? I suppose it’s Schrödinger’s hug, isn’t it🤷‍♂️

She then gets dried, she bears her testimony, and it’s the most beautiful thing ever. She talks all about the light and love she’s felt from members of the Church and the Gospel, how her life was so dark before she realized that there could be more to existence and her loneliness, and none of that fishy business. Just kidding, she still talked about the fish as well, I just wanted to say the pun. She then closes it in the name of Jesus Christ instead of “よろしくお願いします!” Seriously, one of the strongest testimonies I have ever heard. Nobody could deny that she was filled with the Spirit at that moment. Later that day, when I’m talking to one of our friends we brought to Church, he asks the classic hard question: why do good things happen to bad people, and why do bad things happen to good people? I ended up talking about the Book of Job from the Bible with him, but I didn’t feel like my answer was great. Asaumi-san then gives the most brilliant answer that I had to translate from Japanese to English while still trying to convey her spirit. It really erased any of my worries that somehow we hadn’t taught her well enough and she was just pressured into joining the Church somehow. She really knew Jesus Christ.

I also asked Asaumi-san later why the fish was so important. Apparently, that was the sign for her to talk with the missionaries, and that their message was good. It sort of reminded me of how Elder Holland compared the Savior anointing the blind man’s eyes with spit and dirt to finding a testimony of the Book of Mormon and God. It’s really easy to want to look for a big sign or proof of God in our lives. But often, the proof of Jesus Christ comes from literal spit and dirt. Belief in God can be hard and certainly messy. Living in a super secular country as a full time missionary has certainly made that truth evident to me, and I’ve even had bashers come up to me and be like, “Do you even know what you believe in as a Mormon? Do you know the bubble you’re in?” Yes, my companion and I have both seen and read as much anti material as you, I promise!🤣 But as the blind man said to the Pharisees, in response to their accusations of calling Jesus a sinner, “Whether he be a sinner … , I know not: [but] one thing I [do] know, … whereas I was blind, now I see.” Whether it’s clay and dirt, a fish, or a mere feeling of joy that comes from reading from the scriptures, I have witnessed true miracles come from the Gospel across my mission. There is so much good that has come through a mere prompting or feeling from the Spirit in my life. I literally have felt God tell me to open a specific scripture verse, and as soon as we turn the corner of a street, exactly which person to talk to on the street. In a country full of 結構s and だめs, do you understand how rare it is we’re able to talk to someone? Let alone share a verse and invite them to take lessons as a result? I did that exact thing this past week, and God told me exactly who needed it.

I honestly think God just has a wicked sense of humor sometimes. Just laugh it off, cause He’s there. Trust in Him. That’s our message as missionaries, basically.

This week, nothing of extreme note happened. I had two exchanges back to back, and they were fun but exhausting. Pray for Huang, he is super interested in our Church, believes in God, and has been invited to baptism. When invited, he gave the best possible answer, which is that he wants to find out for himself if the Church is true before he joins through baptism. Well, I pray that he’ll be able to study, ponder, and pray about the Book of Mormon and Bible well on his own before we meet again.

Website: elder.son.org

Google photos: photos.app.goo.gl/6PuTqiB3mvJD9Qex8

P.S. Have I mentioned how brilliant Asaumi-shimai and Huang-san are? They’re both lowkey geniuses. Asaumi-shimai retired from computer science at younger than 40 and now just composes music. Huang is a master’s student at 21 and is studying hardware encoded computer vision. I had a lesson taught in three languages (Chinese, English, and Japanese) with him this past Sunday and it’s crazy how he can understand it all. I wanna learn Mandarin too! Eventually.