Wow! What a busy and full week! This past week there was so much stuffed into it I could probably talk for hours and only touch on a small part of what really happened. We started the week off with two apartment moves back to back. Whenever there are missionaries that leave an area or the area closes the mission home has to pack up, travel out there and take it all down and move it out. It’s definitely a fun opportunity and we love the chance to do some service since we don’t come by it very often. The first move was pretty close to home, about 5 minutes by car to be exact haha. We have a new office couple moving in and with our old couple leaving we had to take all their stuff out and put it into their new apartment. The second move we did the next day was a little farther. It took place in a place called Miyakonojo, in the Miyazaki prefecture. Which is about a 4 hour drive south of us near the bottom of the island of Kyushu. So needless to say, we packed up our vans, woke up early and hit the road! It was a fun experience getting to go down there, have a little road trip and get to do some service. We took lots of picture and it was a great time. Japan is such a beautiful country and getting to experience it as we drove across it for so long is something I’ll never forget.
After both of the moves were over it was time for all that dendo I was telling you guys about last week! The first full day of dendo was the following day on Wednesday when Elder Miranda (Kagoshima Zone Leader) and I went out and hit the streets of Fukuoka. It was a great day of dendo and I have never dendo’ed with such a meek and humble person. Even though he was more soft spoken and quieter than other elders, the power he conveyed when testifying of the simple truths of the gospel was amazing. It really showed me the more you live and are an example of the things you teach, the more powerfully you can teach it and convey your message. He was an amazing teacher and was able to connect so well with the people on the street, I learned so much from him.
The next full day of dendo we had was on Friday and this time with the Hiroshima Zone Leaders! I went with Elder McColm, who is actually an elder I went on my first companion exchange as a Zone Leader in Okinawa last year in November! So it was cool to see how much he had improved since then and it was good to dendo together and catch up. We saw tons of miracles and met some of the most interesting people I have met on my mission. To begin the day off we run into this big black Hawaiian guy (there’s not many in Japan haha) and we had an awesome contact with him! He claimed to be spiritual rather than religious but we shared lots of our thoughts and feelings on different topics and he shared his. He was super nice and really respected all that we were doing to “spread the love”. He was a pretty funny guy who kept cracking jokes, shaking our hands, and giving us hugs haha. It was a cool little miracle to begin the day off with.
That was pretty much the first person we talked to and for the next 9 hours all we did was straight dendo. With the exception of lunch and study’s which took 2 hours in the afternoon, we went hard and talked to as many people as we could while also still trying to find people to teach on the spot. Elder McColm said he had never broken 100 contacts in a day so I told him we were gonna go well above it haha. So we set goals and plans to talk to over 100 people, get lots of return appointments, hand out Book of Mormons, and teach people on the spot to make them become a new investigator. At our lunch time we evaluated our specific goals we had set that morning, reset higher goals to achieve more and went out and just kept talking to people. We were meeting so many cool people that were prepared to hear us by the time dinner came neither of us were hungry, we just wanted to keep talking to people, so we skipped dinner and kept it going! Later that night after we were feeling hungry for skipping dinner haha we decided to stop and grab a quick bite to eat at McDonald’s around 8. We knew we only had a little bit of time left and there was an apartment we had planned to go to and we knew we still needed to go to it. So we scarf some food down and get there about 20 minutes later. I’m so glad we did too because after knocking on about 30 doors and 20 of the people rejecting us immediately the second to last door we knock on is this mom named Megumi who we were able to teach prayer too, talk with her for half an hour, said a prayer with her and set an appointment to come meet again. After her we booked it home, made it home a “little” late (but it’s okay because we taught a lesson lol). We sit down exhausted from the ride and the day, I pull out my clicker I had in my pocket and it reads, 140. I show Elder McColm and he just smiles and laughs haha.
My favorite days of dendo are when I can look back and really see that the spirit guided us throughout the whole day. We needed to be in specific places at the right time to meet all kinds of different people. In order to meet the man who approached us at the train station, the woman we prayed with at night outside her apartment, the college students outside the mall we gave the Book of Mormon too, the French couple on their lunch break, the man who had a homestay in Utah when he was in middle school, the group of firefighters on there way to study, the spiritual Hawaiian guy on his way to work, the list just goes on and on. There are so many prepared people waiting to hear the message of the gospel and we really can find them! That is why the spirit is so important in planning and having it to be your constant companion to guide and lead to those that are ready. I strongly feel it’s not only as a missionary we are led and guided to these prepared people. Even as normal members who don’t proselyte every day, there are many people the Lord puts our path for us to talk to and to share the gospel with! As I learned earlier from Elder Miranda, it’s not always what you say, but how you act and treat them that will show them what you really believe in. I learned a lot from some amazing elders this past week and for that I am grateful. We have the best missionaries in the world here in the Japan Fukuoka Mission and that is reconfirmed to me every time I work with them. I love this chance to be a missionary, to declare unto others that Christ does indeed live. That we have a living God who loves us and cares for us. What an amazing message I am so privileged to have the opportunity to share. I hope we all continue to look for opportunities to share that with those around us. I love you all!
Elder Sherrill
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