28th week in Japan
2/22/2016
Always learning

Dear Family and Friends,

こんいちわ！皆さん最近はどうですか？
How has everyone been lately? I hope that you are all doing well. 田中長老 (Elder Tanaka) and I have been working hard to help out the people of Uwajima. This past week we have found a lot of new investigators. Because Uwajima is such a large area, we get to travel all over the place to meet with investigators and find those people who have been prepared to hear the gospel. I feel like this transfer has been going by too fast, but at the same time I have learned many things that will be of great importance throughout my mission. I know that by being obedient that we can help those who have been prepared to hear the gospel, to be able to reach baptism.

On our P day last week we were able to go over to Matsuyama for a companion exchange. During the day Elder Miyagi (one of the zone leaders) wanted to play some basketball. So we rode over to a nearby park and got to play basketball for a while. It was so much fun! He is really good too. One thing that is interesting about the fields and some of the basketball courts in Japan, is that they are all dirt. Playing on a dirt court was fairly interesting, but it was still way fun to be able to play. After basketball I exchanged with the other zone leader Elder Fletcher and we went to work.

One big thing that I feel like I have learned over this past week is the importance of listening. Even though I still struggle with understanding what these people are saying, I have found that as I listen intensely I can understand more and more. It is pretty tough to keep up with conversations still, but as I have learned to listen I have started to understand more little by little. I really do love these people and want to help them. I still feel fear all the time to be speaking in a language that I don't know, but I know that it doesn't matter because as long as I try to say what I have been called to say that God will help me with the rest.

It is interesting to me how different the mission life is in different parts of the mission. In my last couple of areas because they were both city we would go street contacting all the time. In Uwajima it is not easy to go street contacting because of how country side it is. I have been working on improving my way of doing housing contacts a lot here in Uwajima. Also there is hardly any youth in this ward, which is probably why it's hard to keep up with the older people's conversations because they speak a lot differently. On Saturday we were able to have a meal appointment with the youth in the ward, which was a lot of fun. We made something called nabe, which is just a bunch of different foods mixed and boiled in a pot. I hope that we can work more with the youth because they are the future of the church in Japan.

My Ponderizing scripture for this week was actually my favorite scripture in the Book of Mormon. Alma 33:23. I love this scripture because everyone's faith starts out small, but as we work to grow our faith it becomes strong. "And even all this can ye do if he will."

Questions:

1. My bike is holding up great. It is a really nice bike. I think the breaks are getting a little bit worn down, so I might have to replace them again. I think by cleaning it every now and then it will remain in good condition. Yes it is safe. There has been some fairly long downhill areas, but nothing dangerous.

2. I like going to Yoshida because it is right next to the ocean. We have to ride up a huge hill to get there, but it is really beautiful. Yes there is a castle. We actually ran up to the Uwajima castle one morning. It is way pretty and you can see all of Uwajima from the top.

3. The members are incredible. I love them so much. They also give us a ton of food on Sunday's. The members here are pretty good at giving referrals too.

4. The sister missionaries are awesome. They work so hard and are super nice. I haven't seen any couple missionaries until I came to Uwajima. I don't think there are very many couple missionaries in this mission. Actually I may have seen some couple missionaries in Fushimi one Sunday, but that's about it.

5. Things have been going awesome! I love my companion. He is way funny and helps out a lot. Sometimes it's tough to communicate, but I have learned a bit of Japanese from him and I hope I can keep learning more so I can talk to him and these people more.

6. I think there is a washer in every apartment, but I think Okayama Nishi is one of the very few apartments that have a dryer in the mission. I don't think there are very many dryers in the apartments in this mission. I sure do miss it haha.

Love you all so much. Thanks for the love and the support. Have a 素晴らしい week!!
愛してます‼︎

Hirschi 長老