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Elder Sherrill and his district

Hello once again everyone! Before I begin we are headed to the Beach in Fukuoka today because we have a zone P-Day so this email will be rather short because I need to catch a train soon! This week was packed with lots of fun activities so I will try and give you a quick rundown of all the things we did. 

First off this week we had district meeting as usual and I really learned a lot. There was one thing that I was reminded of during training that happened at previous training during interviews with the mission president and it resulted in a sweet miracle we saw this week! Anyways the thing I liked from the training is this, "as missionaries we are not supposed to convert people, we are just supposed to open our mouth!". I really love that! Sometimes it's way difficult because you feel like you need to do so much as a missionary but really you just have to allow for an environment for the spirit to be there and let it do the work. As I thought about that during this week I focused on contacting everyone I saw while we were riding our bikes, because I need to talk with everyone and give everyone an equal chance to hear the gospel, you never know who is prepared or not. So the other night I was riding my bike and it was way dark out. I saw a man in the distance and knew it would be awkward since it was so dark out and late at night. I stopped him anyways and as soon as he saw the name tags with the name "Christ" he said no thanks and walked off before I could even give him a flyer. A little disheartened that my effort yielding no results I continued biking and saw another man in the distance. I decided to try again and sure enough this man was prepared! 

Elder Sherrill and his district doing the "Japanese Squat"

We talked with this next man for about 30 minutes! After the initial contact he instantly started asking tons of questions about the restoration, Jospeh smith, Christian churches, missionaries, etc. He began to tell us that he was really interested in how we were different from other Christian churches. After we taught a little about the restoration we exchanged numbers and handed him a pamphlet he said he was going to go home, study it and call us so we can meet! I've had lots of good little lessons on the street with people that seemed to be really good and then later them never call. I'm not sure what it was about this one but it just felt different, my companion and I have a lot of hope for him and we think we will be able to teach him in the future.

As far as the rest of the week goes we went to Kumamoto to do service because of the recent earthquake there and it was such a good experience! We got to clean out an old school as well as go to this home on the top of a mountain and clean out all of this debris. During our service I made small talk with a man who was there by himself and he was a really nice guy who actually met with missionaries 20 years ago in college! We talked for a while because his current job was similar to my old one before the mission so hopefully that helped give him another good view of missionaries just in case he ever runs into them in his hometown. 

We had lots of other little activities here and there this week but I don't have enough time to explain them so I'll just bullet point them out!

• Our new kinjin investigator from last week Kudou san fell through, so that was sad
• We had yaku niku for dinner after Kumamoto
• The people who took us to Kumamoto (Tanaka) the back of their car fell in a ditch after they dropped us off so we had to pull their car out haha 
• Had English class as usual and we got a new student! A nice mom with her daughter 
• Went home teaching and visited Mitsuko, she fed us lots of food of course

Overall a very good week that honestly flew by! I think the biggest thing I learned though was just opening my mouth and continuing to share the gospel in any situation that I am in. Heavenly Father has prepared many of his children and they come to us in many different ways! So even as a member continue to look for ways to "open your mouth" and share the gospel with others! Have a great week, I love you all! 

Love, Elder Sherrill