Still adjusting to the new area

Hello family!  It was really great to skype with you last week (:  I can't believe I've been gone for almost 4 months.....oh dear.

See you in December, I guess (:

Well.......this week was slow.

We tried visiting a lot of members and less actives and 75% of the time no one was home.  On Wednesday, for example, we tried to find a LA's home for an hour in the morning and finally had to give up because we couldn't find it and the GPS was lying to us.  Later that afternoon, we biked out a distance and tried to visit some members/LAs that a member had told us to visit, and no one was home.  No one.  We even braved going into a sketchy looking apartment building to contact the LA.... oh well.

Ok ok, I'm just going to tell you about the good things.

On Tuesday we had a lesson with a 30/30 investigator, who Hansen and Hart shimai had been thinking about dropping, because her lessons were mostly just about English and she didn't seem to be interested in the gospel at all.  This time though, we were determined to share a lesson with her, and I just told her that however much time we spent on English we would spend the same amount of time on our church message.

As I started asking her questions about God, at first it was kind of hard to get her to talk, but after a while it turned out that she knew a lot more about Christianity than most Japanese people, and we answered some of her questions about original sin, Christ's life, Garden of Eden, etc.  Haha, all the hard stuff first....

She didn't seem against listening to our message at all, so I hope she will continue to meet with us.

On Thursday we met with our recent convert, Erika-chan, who is 12 years old.  This was my second lesson with her, but I feel like teaching Erika-chan is super hard because she doesn't remember anything of the lessons and I don't think she understands anything we are saying.  She looks at us when we're talking, but every time I ask her a question, her answers reveal that she didn't understand the question and what we had just explained.  She really has a hard time with the scriptures, too, and I try to explain them as simply as I can, but I often wonder if we're even speaking the same language.....

Ahhhh, I don't know how to help her!  I just want to help her feel the Spirit, but at this point I'm not even sure how to do that with her.  Honestly, I don't even know if I'm communicating anything to her.....

Ok, sorry, I'm really only going to tell you about the good things from now.

On Friday we met with Ota-san, another investigator!  She only had 30 minutes, so we just introduced her to the Strength of Youth pamphlet.  She said it was hard, but she really liked it and we committed her to read a paragraph or section with her daughter (:

We're still struggling on how to help Ota-san too.....  She's heard all of the lessons and felt really pressured to get baptized by previous missionaries, but she also brought up baptism by herself once (before I got here), and now the topic of baptism has died down again, and we don't know where she stands anymore.

.....What's wrong with pressure anyways?

We also met with Ayano on Saturday!!! (:

Ayano is a freshman at a really smart college in Nagoya, and she's super sweet and nice!  Ayano had met Nana-chan, a young women, before, so we decided to make lunch together with the four of us and have a lesson after lunch.

We taught about Heavenly Father, Families, Prophets, Christ, and Prayer, and we kind of went into depth on all of the topics, so I hope it wasn't too much all at once.  I had some trouble explaining some harder concepts, so I realized that I need to practice teaching more often....blah.

I think Ayano understood most of it, though, and she prayed in the lesson and committed to pray this week! (:  I also think Nana-chan and Ayano are better friends now, so that makes me happy (;

Ayano is suuuuper busy with school and work, so I just hope she will want to meet with us again!  And I hope I didn't kill the lesson too badly that she won't want to meet again.....haha....

On Sunday I got to give a talk!  Yay?  I initially thought that I was just supposed to be a testimony, but when I got to DCS (伝道調整集会) they told me that I was giving a talk, so I just kind of ended up bearing a long-ish testimony.

What was cool, though, was that one of my favorite YSAs from Gifu ward was there just for sacrament meeting, and she told me that she really needed to hear what I had said in my testimony!  My impromptu topic also tied into the second speaker's topic really well, so that was also cool (:

I need to be more thankful for the little miracles, I suppose (;

I also taught the Gospel Principles lesson about the Word of Wisdom, and that went pretty well too, even though we just found out that we were teaching on Sunday morning....haha.  I also think teaching a class is easier than teaching an investigator.....

Well, that's about it for the week!  No updates on OYM, except that I'm becoming convinced that I physically cannot OYM, because I can't get my mouth to open and my voice to come out.

Well.....yah.

Have a great week!  Love you all (: