先週は最高でした！
I`m seriously concerned for life after my mission and having free time
because I`ve literally been going 100% all day every day for a long
time. I was laying in bed last night thinking about the future. It`s
crazy what a foreign concept regular member life is to me right now.
It really sparked my desire to use every minute of the time I have
left to serve the God that lends me daily breath.
So we have two Chinese investigators who are really really strong. One
of them has a baptismal date for this coming Sunday, and the other has
a baptismal date on my birthday. We were thinking about them last week
in our Weekly Planning Session and we figured it was going to be
difficult for the one getting baptized this Sunday to make that date
because we still need to teach the commandments and he needs to get
interviewed! Well the one that has a date on my birthday only has a
few of the commandments left and his interview and we felt like he
could be baptized a lot sooner. After looking at the calendar and
talking about it for a little bit, we decided it would be awesome if
they just got baptized on the same day, June 28th! Because they are
good friends, this will work out perfectly. After that we realized
that one of our other Part Member Family investigators also has a
baptismal date on the 28th of this month. We`ll be having a baptismal
service for three investigators that day! You should have seen the
Ward Council yesterday. Everyone is super excited! One of the Chinese
guys actually sadly goes back to China in August or September, and I
was thinking this week how amazing it was that he came to Japan, found
the church, will be baptized and confirmed a member, and return to
China. He`ll be here for a total of less than one year, but in that
time his life will have changed completely. I`m sure he was planning
on coming to Japan for school, but the Lord had bigger things in mind.
He wasn`t coming here for school, he was coming here to receive the
Restored gospel. We taught him about Tithing yesterday during Sunday
School and he readily accepted it. We were a little nervous in
teaching it because it`s such an important commandment, but when we
told him that we were planning on talking about something called
"tithing", he was like, "I already know about that." We thought, "well
great!" explained the blessings and doctrine behind it, shared a
scripture talking about how the windows of Heaven will be opened, and
committed him to pay his tithing after he is baptized and confirmed!
It was an awesome lesson completely run by the Spirit and an already
prepared heart.
We had an awesome District Meeting last week talking about how to
become "Full Purpose Missionaries". Seriously sometimes in Japan it
feels like all we do all day is go out and knock on doors or talk to
people on the street and it yields little fruit. We`re focusing more
now on the bigger picture of missionary work. Using technology,
visiting Less Active Members, visiting members from the Wards and
trying to strengthen them. It`s much more motivating to visit a
member, share a short message with their family, then pray with them
to find someone around where they live that is prepared to receive the
gospel, and then go out and find. We talked about how working in this
way now will prepare us much more for when we have to go home and
fulfill our missionary obligations in our own wards. I assigned a few
members of the District a few of the Great Missionaries from the
scriptures, like Alma, Aaron, Peter, and Paul, to study and prepare to
teach for a few minutes on what made them so great. The activity is
actually in PMG in chapter 1 under the "Companionship Study" (I don`t
just come up with this stuff). It was awesome and I felt like I
learned a ton. It was actually pretty great, during one of the Sisters
training on the Apostle Paul, she was talking about how he was going
from one place to another. I remembered how there was a map depicting
Paul`s Missionary Journey`s in the Bible so I decided to look that up.
I don`t think I ever realized how far Paul actually travelled! One of
the other Sister`s asked, "well are we sure he walked the whole way?"
I responded with, "would riding a donkey the whole way be much better
than walking?" Seriously, Paul was a beast and all he did was love
people. He`s a perfect example of a missionary that teaches people,
not lessons.
This week is very very busy for us. Between getting our investigators
prepared for their interviews and prepping for another District
meeting, I have to go to the next area over for a baptismal interview
tomorrow, and then a companion exchange with the Elder`s over there on
Friday followed by a Missionary Day for their ward where all the young
men will be going on splits with the Elders from our District to go
out and proselyte on Saturday! It should be fun! I had the chance to
speak in sacrament meeting yesterday about the importance of preparing
for a mission. It was the first time I just went up with a few notes
in English and tried my best to speak through the Spirit. I`m sure
absolutely none of the members could understand what I was saying, but
I just hope the Spirit testified for me. Anyway the church is still
true and I still love you all! I love being a missionary and I don`t
want my two years to come to an end! I hope you all have a great week!
I love you!
Elder Giles
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