Interesting Week

A visit from an old friend 

Huge Bee!

Hello Everyone!

This week flew by so fast! There were a few interesting things that
happened too. To start off the week we were in Kure out dendoing and
we heard from someone that there was a small American military base
close by with American pizza! So we of course went to look for it and
found it! To get on base we need an escort though but with our luck
the dining manager for the base (he's American) showed up at the gate
the same time we tried to get in and said he would escort us. He's way
cool and told us to come back anytime and he would be happy to escort
us back on so we could eat American food haha. We went there today for
lunch, it's kind of a far bike ride but definitely worth it.

So onto the rest of the week we had a couple lessons and they didn't
go to bad. Our first was with one of our investigators Kawahara. She
has been taught by missionaries for about 6 months but not really
progressing to much. We met with her and she expressed her concern and
disagreement with the commandments we have but we focused the lesson
on Jesus Christ and first developing faith in him and she took it
pretty well. We're going to try and keep meeting with her and
hopfeully she can progress more. Then another lesson we had was with
Ooshita. She is a mom who has a lot of sincere interest in our
message! My companion found her about a week before I got here and I
just had my first lesson with her. She is kind of searching for truth
right now and currently learning a lot about other religions and
trying to find which one she believes to be true, so I'm really
excited to keep teaching her!

Last night we went and visited Girly and Alex. Girly is the Philipino
lady my companion and I found a couple weeks ago and Alex is her
husband. We talked with the husband and he has a really strong
testimony of Jesus Christ. He is currently some branch of Christianity
but he told us he doesn't believe it to be fully true. We told him a
little more about our beliefs and gave him a Book of Mormon (in
Portuguese, he's Brazilian/Japanese). He was so grateful when we gave
him the Book of Mormon and he told us, "Give me 3 weeks. I will read
it all and cross reference it with the bible and call you so we can
talk about it". I tried to tell him we would like to study with him
but he kind of shot that down and said he wanted to study by himself,
so for now we will probably just stop by weekly and see how he
understanding the Book of Mormon.

The last person we met with is quite an interesting story. Let me just
saw we ran into 5 Jehovahs Witnesses and then ended up teaching one of
them the restoration haha. So the first 2 we ran into actually dendoed
our apartment in the morning. We were studying and they knocked on our
door. So we went and talked to them and they left pretty fast lol.
Then on the way to a return appointment with some nice lady we met the
day previous, after we parked our bikes we see a Jehovah's Witness
walk out of the house. So we hop back on our bikes and go knock on
some doors for 30 minutes before coming back. Then guess who opened up
the first door we knocked on? Another jehovahs witness! So we talked
with her and actually had a really good conversation. She shared some
of her beliefs and we shared the restoration with her. After we finish
that little lesson we run back to our return appointment and as we
talked with the lady she seemed like she had a really deep knowledge
of God and Jesus Christ which was kind of suspicious because everyone
here is Buddhist and doesn't know much about Christianity. Then at the
end of the lesson after we taught the restoration and testify she
tells us she is actually a Jehovahs Witness and she's actually not
interested in taking lessons, she just wanted to learn what we
believed. It was kind of a bummer but we were grateful for the
opportunity to teach and bear testimony to her.

So that is about it for this week! This upcoming week we get to go to
Fukuoka for the conference and get to go up to Mihara to dendo so it's
going to be an awesome week! I love this gospel and this great
opportunity to serve a mission! Have a great week everyone!

Love, Elder Sherrill