Hello mom!!!
Sounds like a fun week! I too did some physical labor! It was a very much needed physical labor. We got to clean the gutters around the church! I even used a shovel and my hands got a little dirty! That hasn't happened in a long time hahaha.
We also went to Kofu yesterday! We left at 7:30am and didn't get back home until 10:00pm. The drive to Kofu is amazing! The forests are so so thick! Much more thick than our desert mountains haha. You could see Fuji San in the distance. It was only the silhouette though because it was kind of smokey today. We met the new landlord and he gave us the key and Elder Hattanda had to sign some more paperwork. Then We me the elders in Kofu and went to get lunch at a place called Bonchi. It was about 8$ and had 4. cups of rice in it, two cutlets of breaded pork (tonkatsu) and cabbage and a banana right in the middle of it all. I didn't eat the banana. But it was so good! I absolutely did not finish it though. My average amount of rice is a bit less than one cup. And one cup is a lot! After lunch we went to the sisters apartment and looked at the damage. It's been used for 15 years or something like that by the sister's in Kofu. It was disgusting. I think they even had the same futons the whole time. Eeewwwww. So the sister's left and then we grabbed the kofu elders and we just gutted the whole apartment and moved everything down the elevator in to the genkan(lobby). Elder Hattanda made two trips of just hauling trash to the dump. My hands got very sticky from something. I still don't know what it was. Then we went to their new apartment and threw everything in there. We moved their washer and fridge and desks and futons and everything! There's not a single thing left over in that old nasty apartment. While the sisters were gone we organized everything( well kind of.) there is still garbage all over the place haha but I made it look Japanese style. So we finally finished moving everything after like 10 trips or so back and forth between the two apartments. We left at 8:00 ish and got home at 10pm. It was a long fun day! (We asked why don’t they just throw stuff away!) In Japan you can just scoop things up and throw it away so easily. I mean you can but it all costs a lot of money and there are so many rules on how to throw things away. It's literally more complicated than the gospel
We had the Elder Bednar conference this week! I was sitting probably 20 feet from the stand. It was so awesome! He came to our church in Sunday night to give a Japan nationwide devotional. That was amazing. Then on the 18th we met at Nakano church, the mission HQ for the birth mission. He told us right from the start that he wasn't going to call people up and nail them with questions. He said "I'll tell you what we're not going to do. I'm not gonna call on a random elder or sister and have him state the 37th section of the doctrine and covenants. I could call on anybody and they would probably be able to recite to me D&C 4 but as soon as you add 300 other missionaries, the entire area president, two sets of mission presidents and a member of the quorum of the twelve apostles, you can hardly remember your first name! When you play the 'guess what's in my head' game the spirit goes away. When you ask somebody a question asking them to respond with a specific answer that is called manipulation. We are agents and we have moral agency, that is, we can make choices by our own will. Once we play the 'guess what's in my head' game then we are turning them into an object, to be acted upon, instead of an agent, and the spirit withdraws." So the entire three hours he asked a couple of questions about the talks he asked us to read a couple of weeks ago and we responded how we felt. Then he would ask some follow up questions and the people would raise their hands and told how they felt. It was the most amazing meeting I've ever been in. It wasn't about what was talked about, it was the spirit in which it was held. I learned tons of stuff that no one else in that meeting learned. Every week at church can be like that if we prepare and go to be taught from the Holy Ghost. He taught us that there has never been a boring church service. If you think church is boring there is something wrong with you, not with the people giving the talks. Spiritual progression comes from the spirit which comes from our personal preparation and dedication to receive that spiritual revelation. He is an Apostle of The Lord Jesus Christ. I know he is. Yet he was a normal person! He was cracking jokes and we had a wonderful spiritual time! Him and sister Bednar were so cute! He told us that you can name anywhere on the earth and an Apostle has been there in the past two years. They travel the world to find ones. To help single people. They don't go to preach to a group of saints in Africa, although they do do that. They go to find and help the one.
This week when we were headed to Nakano I grabbed a Book of Mormon and a restoration pamphlet. We prayed. And then two minutes later at a stop light I started talking to a guy. As we walked through Sunroad I was able to share our message of the restoration and give him the Book of Mormon and pamphlet I just grabbed! It was amazing! He didn't accept the invitation to learn more with us yet but he will one day!
Well that's my week! I love you all!
ドレーパー長老
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