Teaching experiences

8 December 2013

This week was pretty cool; it started off with an interview from President Wada. Every Transfer (6 weeks) we have either a mission conference or interviews. The interview is short and is just a check up to see how we are doing, but after we get to talk to Sister Wada. Sister Wada gave me a kanji lesson that was really useful.

We've had a couple of lessons this week. They were both really good. We are teaching an older Gentleman named Sakurai, he is really interested in the bible but is not a Christian. We alternate weeks of teaching him English or a lesson from the Bible. The lesson that he chooses was Matthew 6. Part of it talks about to first seek the Kingdom of Heaven. He asked us what he needs to do. Because he doesn't have faith in even Christianity I asked him how he could seek after something he doesn't believe in, and then suggested maybe his first step in seeking the Kingdom of Heaven is to gain some faith. He hasn't ever done a lesson from the Book of Mormon but he agreed that for his next Bible lesson he would study Alma 32 (A chapter in the Book of Mormon about faith). Our other lesson was with Norihiro. He's an interesting guy, but we teach him every week with half Book of Mormon reading half English class lessons. He’s really good at English and has travelled around a lot of the world to study politics.

We also had a presentation from President Wada this week in our area. He does presentations every once and awhile for anyone to come to that are just little life lessons. We watched 40mins of "Life is Wonderful" and then had a discussion about it. It was really cool because as a missionary we don't really get to watch movies, so 40mins of an actual movie was a nice little pick me up. We also had 2 investigators come to that with us. One is a High School student named Takafumi. His parents really like us and want him to become friends with us. These Grandparents did a homestay with a Mormon family in America a long time ago that left a really good impression. They think that the Mormons would be a positive influence on him, and also because we are American we can help his English. The other guy is named Ryo. He just turned 20 and is a college student. He's got a bit of an interesting background. The college he goes to is kinda like a BYU for another religion. That religion though was a made by a Japanese convert who joined the Church years ago but then after finding out he couldn't just advance to being a prophet left the Church and made his own. They have some interesting beliefs. Like tithing is a must there's no agency or freedom to choose to pay it or not. Also they aren't allowed to talk or learn about other religions once they join. We aren't sure Ryo is a member, maybe his parents are and that’s how he got in the college, because he is a way cool guy and he's talking with us....so I guess we'll find out.

We also went to a Christmas Concert this week. It was called Little Witnesses and was done by the Church. It was way good. I guess it's a big deal. They had a camera crew for a live stream on Facebook. Also Sakurai and a friend of his went with us. I think it was a great experience, plus it was good to get the Christmas Spirit going :D

I hope all of you are felling good as we get closer to Christmas!

Elder Davies

First Letter from Japan

Hey Mom and Dad,

 

These first few weeks ave been a little weird and I haven't really had access to email or P-Days really. My first week P-Day got moved to Thursday but we had to travel to go have Thanksgiving so I didn't get to email. And this week the Zone Leaders needed the lap top and the computers at church were locked. I did get permision though to write you today.

 

These first few weeks in Japan have been awesome! I've talked to a lot of people and have really had a good time. My new companion/trainer is Elder Johnson. He's is really tall and all the Japanese people wisper about his height as we walk by. He is also very good at Japanese, he only has 30 weeks in his mission left and has been in the area we live in for over 6 months (thats a really long time for a mission). The area I live in is called Kohoku. I live in a really nice apartment that the Stake President built less than a year ago as an extension to his house. In the apartment there is 5 of us all toghther. 4 Americans and 1 Elder from Okinawa. Soon though there will only be 4 of us, Elder Hill goes home the 13th of this month. We have 4 investigators. 2 I haven't met yet though. They both have really crazy scheduals and don't get home until after our curfew, but it's because they have really big test comming up, after the tests their scheduals should clear up a bit. The other 2 take private English/Religion classes from us. One we do the class half religion and half english. The other we trade off every week, but when we teach english he brings three friends and they also might start comming to the religion class with him too. He's actually an interesting old man. He's not Christian but he has a very deep interest in the bible. He finds it hard to understand though so he likes to meet with us so he can talk about his questions.

 

So a cool experiance I've had since I've been here happened last monday. My companion and I got a little lost but found a railroad crossing. There is only one railline that goes through our town so we knew roughly where we were. We ran into a man at the crossing and asked were the nearest station was, he replied that he was heding there and could just walk with him to the station. On the way we started talking and he intited us to go get a drink with him. We told him we donn't drink but we would love to hang out. So he ended up inviting us to the dinner he was on the way to with his fiance. And we happily joined along. He explained to us at the restoraunt he was meeting his fiance and also his friend played the acourdian there. We ended up going to a restraunt called Beer Hall. It was actually a really classy establishment that had a German theme to it. We had a really nice dinner with him and his fiance, his friend played us a couple of Christmas hyms when we found out we were missionaries. We ended the night and traded contact information. Even if he doesn't contact us it was an awesome night that I think he'll alwyas remember. We also had a cool experiance last night, we went to a 7/11 to get money from the ATM. The guy at the counter asked us if we are from a church. We said yea. He then wanted to know if we had a Christmas concert comming up, it so happens that we do this weekend. We are going back today to give him an invetation and invite him to go with us.

 

So to all my friends that have written me in the past 3 weeks I have read your emails, and I love them. But these last few weeks have been a little weird to I won't be able to reply to them till next week.

 

Elder Davies