Japan Tokyo South Mission: If nothing else, read the ending

Haro Friends! Every week I have so many great things to share but I'll try to cut it down to the highlights. Got transfer calls this week, I'm staying in Hachioji and Elder Nelson is coming in. I don't really know him except that he is a boss missionary. Elder Cook is going home, I've been around dying missionaries my whole mission but this is my first time killing one.

We met with the American from last week Mark again! We had a little over an hour to talk and hoped we could spend it giving an introduction of the gospel. Turned out he talked pretty much the whole time and we just listened. Usually that means someone won't listen or stop talking. That wasn't the case here though, we were happy just to chat with him. He has a crazier life story than anyone I have ever met. He has been through A LOT: abuse, lost friends, drugs, gangs pretty much anything you can think of. I can't say everything he told us but I have so much respect for him after hearing all of it. He doesn't remember much of his life before 18 when he was put in a rehab center. After a year of that the only progress they had made is helping him care about survival and know how to do so. He went straight from that to working for gangsters for 15 years. From then he had a few people that helped him come around and believe in God & forgive others. He cleaned up his life and found a good job but still was an emotional wreck. At one point he lost everything, family disowned him completely, girlfriend committed suicide and he lost his job. So he left for Japan and has since become an amazing person. At the end of the lesson we at least got a prayer in and on the walk with him back to the station we gave him a Book of Mormon taught a bit about it and our purpose as missionaries. He knows now that next time we are going to share more about what we do/why we are here and about the BoM haha. We are meeting again this week.

Shintaro is doing really great, and looking pretty solid for his baptism on the 31st! I don't know why I have been so blessed to meet such amazing people here. We had a lesson last Thursday and he read the Plan of Salvation pamphlet. We planned to review/teach it but we started asking him about different parts of it and he ended up teaching us the whole thing and we just kept telling him, "yeah that's right!" We gave him The Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet as well as the Word of Wisdom, Tithing & fasting, and Chastity pamphlet. He came to church this Sunday and had read all of them and basically committed himself to keeping all the commandments. He said the hardest one might be fasting because he will want to eat lol. I cannot believe how willing and smart he is. We still have some things we need to help him with but he is doing really good! :)

Oh yeah!! I heard some awesome news this last week!! Motoki (in Yamate) is doing really well since I left. People progress and change a lot before baptism but continuing that level of improvement is really hard after baptism. Not Motoki though. Sounds like he is headed to the temple soon to do baptisms for the dead, getting his sister to start taking lessons with the sisters & planning to serve a mission! I can't tell you how happy that makes me :)

This college kid named Kohei came to church yesterday speaking really good English and just started asking me all kinds of questions about the church. We sat down and he was challenging my beliefs a lot. He is a sect of Buddhism called Soka Gakkai and is really committed to it. I was interrupted a lot and he wasn't really listening but he wanted to know the reasons for every single thing we do like not drinking coffee, alcohol or tea. I addressed some of the reasons but he got annoyed. He said coffee & tea are proven to be healthy that religion can't argue scientific facts. We became friends and agreed to disagree. It was frustrating but I think we have all had questions about some of the things the church says. Whether you are a member or not. I still have questions as well. In fact I told him simply that I don't know. What I want you to know is what I do know. It's what I have felt strongly in my life and what God reminds me every day: God is there, he loves us and wants to help. What I do know is God has chosen a prophet, just as he always has, to help us understand what he wants for us. What I do know is I spent a lot of my life not following Christ and thought I was happy, when I changed and decided to follow my savior I found true joy. If I know that then nothing else matters. Just as Motoki said when he learned about those same standards, "if Jesus [or God] says no, no one can say yes." We can always trust God.

Whether you are a member or not. Please don't get stuck on things you have heard or don't agree with. Just like any thing in life, start with the fundamentals. Just how we can't hit home runs before we learn how to swing. We can't expect to understand or believe the hard things before we develop a relationship with God and Chirst through prayer, meeting with missionaries, studying the prophets words & attending church.

I love, think about, pray for and miss all of you <3

1. This picture is crap but we had an awesome lesson with our new friend Toranosuke and went to dinner with him and Bro. Nakamura who is the guy across from Elder Cook.