37th week in Japan
4/24/2016
Faith

Dear Family and Friends,

I am so glad to be able to tell you that there were no changes in
Uwajima for this upcoming transfer. My companion, Elder Philburn, and
I will be staying here for another transfer. I have really come to
love the members and all the people here, so I am extremely glad that
I do not have to say goodbye yet. I know that it will be tough when
the time comes that I do have to say goodbye, but for now it is time
to work and help these people. This past week has been full of good
experiences, but at the same time having my faith really tested.

We started off the week last week on P-day with me eating a full king
size meal at sukiya, which is huge. It is a challenge common among
missionaries and somehow I was able to do it. However, I am not
letting the food get to me. Still maintaining a good weight. We had a
fairly good P-day other than that. Because we did not know if we would
be transferring we went to a few different places in Uwajima to go
sight seeing. That was fun. I would send some pictures, but it is not
okay to take pictures of shrines and stuff, so sadly I can't.

On Friday we went to meet with a few of the youth in the branch to go
play some basketball at a nearby gym. I was so excited because I have
been wanting to play basketball with these guys ever since I came to
Uwajima. We went to the gym only to find out that it had been reserved
by another group of people. That was a bummer, but now we know we can
reserve it for another time when the youth have a day off of their
club. We were able to share a good message with them anyways and
hopefully soon we can reserve the court to go play another day.

The day after that we had a lesson with one of the less actives in the
area named Takeuchi kyoudai. He actually used to be the branch
president of the Uwajima branch and served his mission in Kobe Japan.
He is a very smart, kind person, but he has some odd reasons for
becoming less active. We talked to him for almost 2 hours and ended up
not being able to help him very much. He is pretty set on not coming
back to church, and he even got me testing my own faith. The next day
I prayed with all my heart to be able to regain my faith and asked for
Heavenly Father's help to do so. Going to church and hearing from the
member's testimonies was just what I needed to regain my faith. I am
truly grateful for these people and all they have done for me. I love
this area and I am grateful that I will be staying here for another
transfer.

My Ponderizing scripture for this week was Ether 3:14. We have been
inviting all the members around to do Ponderizing with us, and it
seems to be helping them strengthen their own testimonies. I just love
the scriptures and I will actually be doing Ponderizing in Japanese
from here on out to help me get better at the language.

Questions:

1. I think the cherry blossoms have pretty much withered away. There
are a lot of other flowers that are in bloom now though, and they are
very pretty. We did feel one earthquake aftershock on Monday night last week, but
we haven't felt any since then. We have gone to a few shrines, but no
parks lately.

2. I will be getting the package today. I actually talked to some people at the
post office to see if they could help me out. Thank you so much! Did
you get the one I sent?

3. We play ping pong with some members from the ward on Wednesday nights every
week. I don't think Elder Philburn likes ping pong that much, but he
is willing to play.

4. Transfers are the same for us. One of the sisters from our district left,
but that is it. We are still working on the apartment. It is getting
better little by little.

5. They haven't told us anything yet about skyping for Mother's day, but I will let 

you know. I am sure that we can skype on your Mother's Day or ours. I will let you

know probably next week when a good time is. I think that in the
morning here and at night there would be best, if that is okay.

6. My ward mission leader is awesome! He is actually a missionary. He
is the elder of the couple missionaries! I don't know why, but it
works out alright for this area I guess. I haven't seen too many
missionaries that I haven't seen in a while, but we will go to TTTM
next week, so I will see some people there.

7. We don't eat at members very often in this area, but we do kneel on
the floor a lot. It is pretty painful after a while, but you get used
to it eventually. My companion does not really like kneeling on the floor to eat haha.

8. Ummm... Yes they have some good fruits and vegetables that are different here 

that I like. They eat daikon, which is pretty good. They also have really good oranges and
kanpe (which is like an orange) here that are very delicious.

Thank you to everyone for all of your love. Tell Michael I said happy
birthday would ya! Also grandma Fawcet too. I will try to send them
some emails. I love you all, have a good week,

Elder Hirschi