Week 28- What does it mean to change your behavior

Aloha 皆さん、 

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This week went by so fast, not even gonna lie. Anyways a ton happened but in specific I was talking to one of the APs (Assistant to the Mission President) and we got on the topic of behavior which struck a huge cord with me. Before when I was up in Utah on my mission and even now I guess I write these emails with deep thoughts or insights. Then when I went home I was still me and I guess to my parents it seemed like I digressed in maturity (?) Because even though I have these profound thoughts or insights and I share some in my emails I'm still ME. I'm still a 20 year old man child that can certainly act like a child sometimes. And I kind of shared that thought with my AP, that it's definitely something I need to work on. Aligning my thoughts and actions, not letting waves of emotions control my actions. And he shared that that's what it means to change our behavior. Changing our behavior is a little like changing our very habits. How we act and behave are all habits and habits are hard to break and hard to create. So yeah if you all are thinking I'm back to this profound new person I'm not….yet LOL. I'm still me, but it definitely gives me something to work on. Anyways let me know what you guys think and how that applies to you because I'm probably not the only one. 

 Highlights: 

 -Jehovah's Witness 

-Malaysia mission collab 

-Hirotaka 

-AP Exchange 

 Jehovah's Witness: I've never ever shared stories where I've met Jehovah's Witnesses before because usually it ends with someone yelling at me while I just try to tell them God loves them. But I'll share this one. It was pretty cool. So we got this referral and we went to this restaurant pretty far away and met with this guy. We kinda start talking and he says he was trying to find which church is true. Which was super cool and then he said he was a Jehovah's Witness when he was younger. Not gonna lie I was expecting to get lectured and chastised by this guy. But we spent almost 3 and a half hours talking to him about all the different questions he had. Albeit it was mostly my Japanese companion talking because the questions he had were so deep I couldn't possibly have explained it in anything other than English but it was great. We found out he just goes from church to church trying to find which one is the real truth which is so cool. Anyways we talked to him a bunch, ate and met his family and then parted ways. Then he came to church! That was super duper cool. He had so many questions and we ended up talking about the holy ghost and I gave him a book of Mormon to read. He wants to read all of it to help him decide but it was just a super cool experience, this one is definitely not in our hands but God's. But I respect him a lot for really searching with an unbiased opinion. 

 Malaysia mission collab: Shout out to the Malaysia Mission family. Sister Tolman told me about a month or so ago that one of their new members was going to move to Fukuoka. I was like pshhh that's so far away, yeah that's what I thought until he just pulled up to one of our activities. LOL anyways it was so funny to find Adam and learn he was the one Kiki (Sister Tolman) was talking about. It was so cool to hear his story and talk about Malaysia and I also got to teach him some Japanese. Unfortunately we aren't in charge of his after baptism lessons but I talk to him whenever I get the chance. 

 Hirotaka: So a couple of weeks ago I found Hirotaka on tandem (a language exchange app) but funny enough the APs were already teaching him. The APs let us take over and told us he was ready for baptism. Anyways so we were like OK cool, this was a couple weeks ago. This past week we were gonna invite him to get baptized and invited a member to join our lesson. Well it's a good thing we invited the member because he popped off asking a bunch of questions and Hirotaka answered them truthfully. We found out Hirotaka was meeting us because of English and God was just like an added plus. He didn't have a super strong desire to get baptized so that would been low-key awkward but we had a great lesson with him and talked a lot about what the Gospel could do for him but yeah anyways felt super blessed to have that member kind of open our eyes with Hirotaka so we can focus more on building his desire and testimony on God and Jesus. 

 Ap Exchange: So for those of you who don't know the APs are the Assistants to the President, basically as head honcho as you can get as a missionary. Anyways they are in our district and they wanted to do an exchange with us which is like super rare or something because no one else had an AP Exchange and they barely do it with the Zone Leaders so I was low-key stressing. It was super fun though. I got to do a bunch with Elder Davis and I learned A lot from him, especially on language studies. But kinda outta no where he was just like “so how would you feel if you were called to train next transfer…. I was a little caught off guard and I hoped he was joking but I shared I'd probably need to lock in with my studies because right now my biggest weakness is definitely not being able to lead out a lesson in Japanese since I have a Japanese comp to carry me. We talked about it for a little bit but I hope he's joking hahaaaaaaa. We will see in a month or so I guess. 

 

Right that's all again. 

SHOOTS! 

愛してます！ 

エリス長老 

TheRisingSon