Oh wow, things are really getting good let me tell you. I knew summer time would go crazy but it's already starting. Let me explain. In America by the time I left for Japan I had settled in well with so much confidence to go and do anything as a missionary. There was no fear. I was stopping everyone and their dog to get yelled at half the time by some Baptist that thinks he's met Jesus before of something. However, when I got to Japan the language and cultural things made me crawl into this little pathetic shell again. The language progression takes time. It was slow. Then came winter which let me tell you I have really grown some anger towards. Makes me want to carry a flame thrower with me all day just to burn things out of spite. Anyways time progresses and the weather is still cold but we are reaching those no jacket afternoons and God has helped me so much and I feel like I'm starting to get back a lot of that America confidence again, a very day and night difference. I'm honestly not sure if it is the weather warming up or if I'm just at a comfortable enough level with the language or what but this week I had the the absolute funniest time talking to so many random people. Our area is progressing so much where we are forgetting who is who in our contacts. I finally feel like I know how to bring up the gospel in Japan and teach the lessons well enough and talk to people and make them laugh which let me tell you is a blast when you pull out a little picture of God and relate him to anime characters. Short story short, me and my companion who has no Idea what's happening most of the time but whom I love so much have been going crazy in stores, trains, restaurants, etc. I've made it a goal to make sure every single person that lives in our area to know us. I have had an absolute blast with so many random interactions this week and can't wait to see where things are gonna go from here. It's taken a while to learn how to present myself in the right manner and how to approach people in Japan and to make things work and now I feel like I finally can.
Alright so I'll go ahead and share our best find for the week and a funny experience.
Starting off with a lesson we had with someone named Kagarisan. We ended up going to an all you can eat place. They have a lot of them in Japan and they are the best because you have a secluded nice stall to eat at and how it works is you have a time limit of for example 120 minutes and within that time you can eat as much as you possibly can. You just spam everything you want on the tablet and depending on the place either a person or robot brings it to you. Oh and you cook the food yourself using a grill, skillet, or a broth depending on the restaurant. Anyways this one was one for mouji and okinomiya and a bunch of other stuff and we absolutely died. I've eaten lots of food at these places before because you have to but this time was the worst. I nearly passed out. It was awesome. Anyways none of that matters because what matters is we where able to help Kagari feel the spirit and progress. However afterwards it was already about 8 o'clock and dark at the station. We found out that apparently the Ota station which is actually a pretty big city's station is popping at night. We where walking and we saw a crowd of all self proclaimed gangsters. They where leaving cigarette buds all over out front of the station which I have never seen a cigarette bud on the ground in Japan ever until this point so I mean some hard core gangsters. Anyways I'm thinking to myself this is gonna be fun when my companion from Brazil turns to me and goes あぶないですから (its dangerous). Obviously I knew these guys were no tuffer that a noodle that's in between soft and hard in the mist of boilage. So we talked to them and I got to decide who looked the coolest out of them due to their wishing and got the whole lay down on the parties, clubs, and "underground" events for the next month if we are trying to get black out drunk and buzzed off cigarettes. So, we will not be attending. Right after in the station we walked up to another group and just told them we were bored waiting on a train and wanted to talk. We whipped out the God head on em and after, one of them came up to us on the train and thanked us for taking to them. It was awesome. Anyways that's the funny story. The coolest part of the week though was running into Jin. She's this 17 year old high school girl that was just for some reason so interested in talking to us. No I'm totally joking it was guy and he was really shy and just got home and was parking his bike. Like I said he, was really shy but wasn't scared. We ended up teaching him the restoration and giving him a Book of Mormon to check out. He said he wasn't really sure if there was a God or not but had been thinking about it. I am very excited to see him again and talk.
We also discovered a place called Ashikaga in our area that's only about a 20 minute train ride over and it's a beautiful decently sized city with a bunch of young people. We made friends with a lot of shop owners down there and also saw I think 2 Americans who were darker skinned riding in a tiny car bumping some jams who wanted us to get in with them. So we obviously did and... I'm kidding we did not. However I am really excited to see if we can get some work going over there too.
Alright that's all I got time for, we are going to Takasaki today for P day and have to hop on a train in just a minute. I hope all is well for those who read, you are in my prayers. Thank you.
Until water meets rice
-Elder Parker
No comments:
Post a Comment