22 Brethren, shall we not go on in so great a cause? Go forward and not backward. Courage, brethren; and on, on to the victory! Let your hearts rejoice, and be exceedingly glad. Let the earth break forth into singing. Let the dead speak forth anthems of eternal praise to the King Immanuel, who hath ordained, before the world was, that which would enable us to redeem them out of their prison; for the prisoners shall go free.
23 Let the mountains shout for joy, and all ye valleys cry aloud; and all ye seas and dry lands tell the wonders of your Eternal King! And ye rivers, and brooks, and rills, flow down with gladness. Let the woods and all the trees of the field praise the Lord; and ye solid rocks weep for joy! And let the sun, moon, and the morning stars sing together, and let all the sons of God shout for joy! And let the eternal creations declare his name forever and ever! And again I say, how glorious is the voice we hear from heaven, proclaiming in our ears, glory, and salvation, and honor, and immortality, and eternal life; kingdoms, principalities, and powers!
This is kind of how I felt this week, lots of hard work and rewarding feelings. This is the rundown of the week, I would like to start focusing more on experiences than what I do everyday, you can know that when I send home my planners. But for now,
Tuesday: District meeting: district meeting with 8 people is a lot more difficult than with 6, and we are separated from the other Elders because we live in a different apartment across the city, so information is hard to convey. Also, half of the district is Japanese and only 3 of us are native English speakers, so I prayed a lot before district meeting that everyone would be fine with how it turned out. Everything was fine, lots of work is being done in the Machida areas, so everyone is happy. We are going to sing "If You Could Hie to Kolob" in Zone conference this next week, so I am excited. It is not in Japanese, but I have a translated copy and everyone is good at singing (except me). Then we finally finished our weekly planning, and made some good goals.
Wednesday: Eikaiwa: tonight is music night apfor eikaiwa, so instead of playing a game, we let missionaries and investigators and students bring their musical talents to Eikaiwa and preform. We had the banjo, classical recorder, Ariana Grande karaoke and some missionaries singing hymns. But me and elder Salamanopoulos teach the TOEIC and Eiken class, which is really fun here. It isn't Hibarigaoka advanced class, but it will be fun.
Thursday: second weekly planning: we needed to double check our goals and extend some plans, but we were able to keep our planning short today. Then we hoped on a train meaning to go to the next Eki up, but we started to talk to this guy and it was really good, so we ended up going to the last Eki in our area, which is in Kawasaki city. Our area covers parts of Tokyo, Tama, Kawasaki, Yokohama, Kanagawa, and machida, so that is pretty diverse, but so far everyone has been really nice to us. We had a good day of dendō and gave a Book of Mormon to a guy who is going to Kansas for study abroad.
Friday: sports night: today we went to Tsurukawa Eki, which is just over the "hill/mountain" but it was interesting, it has a different feel than Tamagawagakuen. We didn't find anyone that day, but it was nice, then we did studies and went to sports night where we gave a message about obedience. I played ping pong for about 2 1/2 hours with the sisters investigator. No one would switch me out, so I got some good practice in.
Saturday: we had a lesson! This is where all of the joy was felt. We went to teach a man who called us randomly on the church phone, and we thought that he might not be all of the way there, but we went anyways. We pull up and it takes him a while to answer the door because he is listening to some loud weird music. When we walk in, it is just crazy, the walls are covered in writings, and there are pills in calendars for him, so we know right off the bat that he is not all of the way there. We sit down and talk, but he has a hard time focusing, until we talk about prayer, because he believed that he had talked to some gods, (I was siting next to Robin, the wind God). When we taught him prayer, he literally exploded with joy! I am just going to say it, but he is the happiest person ever. We aren't going to be able to go back, so we left him with all of the pamphlets, a copy of the Book of Mormon, and who's to pray and the atmosphere in his apartment was so happy!
After our adventure with him, we ended up in a Eki called naruse, which was a bit of s bike ride from the church. We were there for a little while, but then we had a FHE activity at the church, only 3 members showed up, but we still helped them have a good time. We played some new games that I can't wait to play with all of you, but we had a nice time.
Sunday: very busy day. We went to church, and jumped in the wrong class. We walked right into the Gospel Doctrine class talking about the historical value of what was done in Nauvoo. Now, if this was English, I would have been fine, but it was rapid fire Japanese and I had a headache before we started. Wow. Intense. The. We joined the youth for a standards talk, but no one asked us questions. After church, we joined the choir or else there would have been only one guy... so we are singing again in 3 weeks. Lots of musical numbers. I hope some of it sticks for English singing. Then we eventually get home and do studies. We eat dinner and go Streeting for a bit and then sit down to contact the many strangers in our phone and area Book. Good time, good people.
Today: pizza with the district, Gyomu's super, daiso for elder Salamanopoulos' package, emails, playing 2 truths and a lie with the district and now we will continue in our efforts to see the area. Today: Shin-yurigaoka, wish us luck!
Love you all!
マーフィー長老
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