Week 32- Finding Joy

 YOOOOO 皆さん、

BROOO ITS BEEN A GREAT WEEK. Tons of super cool stuff has happened and transfers happened so lots of new changes. 

Recently our mission has been focusing on finding joy in our work. Which is awesome. You think of serving a mission and you just think of sharing messages and lessons and revolving your whole life around God. Which nor gonna lie kinda sounds like a major bummer to a 20 year old male whose attention span lasts a whole 30 seconds. But recently with the whole new focus on finding joy in our work through obedience, diligence, and faith I've come to recognize the difference between finding joy and just having fun. For example, I have fun when I play sports, watch TV, read books and so on. But does joy come from that? Joy lasts and stays, joy doesn't stop when we turn off the TV, or the music, or stop playing sports. But having fun does stop. Don't get me wrong I still LOVE having fun. But I can find JOY through bringing my friends closer to Christ, and watching them grow. I can promise that I will not remember all the Sports activities or games or small details from all the fun activities we plan. But I 100% will remember all the people I talked to, all the people that were baptized. At Utah I remember all the people we taught and baptized but I don't remember any of the “fun” stuff we did. I still feel happy when I remember talking with our friends but I don't feel the same trying to remember the sports I played at Utah or the various other activities we did. Anyways just wanted to share that because I want to invite you to look inwards and reflect. What brings you true joy? What is just fun? I ask you to focus on those things that bring you joy, we can still do the things that are fun in our life but when we focus on bringing joy into our lives we will naturally be happier.

Highlights:

-Transfers

-Hirotaka

-Transfer Goal

-One Piece 

-AP Exchange

-Sunday

Transfers:

So Transfers came. Big surprise, I'm in Fukuoka. Also the APes were pulling my leg about training because it's still impossible for me to become a trainer since I'm technically still a greenie. I'm still super stoked I'm still in Fukuoka because I feel like I can really see the results of the hard work we put in this past Transfer and a half. Matsuo 長老 went off to Miyakojima and island in the Okinawa Zone. But Medeiros 長老 is now ZL in the fukuoka zone and Maretarangi 長老 is AP now. Also a bunch of my MTC mates are in my zone or the adjacent Zone so I'm super stoked for that. Honestly I'm just really looking forward to this transfer. There's so much work to be done. I also got my new companion Braithwaite 長老. Bro is 6’6” and is absolutely yoked. So this transfer workouts will be super fun. On his first day I dragged him all over Fukuoka and we found 1 new person and invited one of our friends to baptism too. Needless to say we started out the transfer right. 

Hirotaka:

So we invited Hirotaka to baptism and asked him to make a goal to work towards. He said yes (after a lot of spiritual nukes) and created a baptismal goal (He set it on Christmas day). He also came to church this past week as well and has been making a lot of friends with members. I was so lost when we had that first joint lesson with our members and he shared with us that he meets with us for Eikaiwa and God was kinda second (The APes tricked us). But slowly as we meet I see him becoming more engaged in the lessons and he has been asking more questions little by little. Of course sometimes he still doesn't pay attention. Like in church he was watching basketball but we will get there LOL. It's just been super great to see his progress and I KNOW we will be able to get him ready to be baptized.

Transfer goal: 

So when my new companion came in I shared with him that my goal for this transfer was to put 4 people on baptismal date. I carefully explained each person I was thinking of and why I think that we could do it. Last Zone conference the APes gave a training and asked us to invite all our friends we think are able to be baptized to be baptized and I really want to fulfill that. Because no matter if they say yes or no we can gain something. If they say yes then great! That's one person who's committed to coming closer to Jesus. If they say no we can ask them why and learn what to help them with to be able to come closer to Christ. Overall there's just so much I want to accomplish this transfer so please check back in 6 weeks to see how that went.

One Piece:

So we went one piece finding again and it was super fun! I got 3 lines in an hour span because we didn't have much time but honestly the more I align missionary work with my interest the more I feel so happy when doing missionary work. Also I worked Medeiros 長老 today during Pday so I'm on the up and up. Maybe next time cuzzo you'll win one day LOL just jokes. 

Ap Exchange:

Did an Exchange with the APes again. It was super cool. I got to be with Maretarangi 長老 this time and it was pretty chill. Just had him follow me around all day and join me in lessons. We didn't really talk about anything juicy but we had a fire time with our friend Tomohiro, had a great lesson about prayer then went to a dance class at church with him. We went OYMing (Open your mouth) and talked to a bunch of cool people and Invited them to activities. Then we had a lesson with our friend Aaron who is Muslim. Then ended the night with our basketball activity! Exchanges are always super fun and I can't wait to do more with our DL and potentially our ZLs (?????) (Pls)

Sunday:

Ok Sunday 3 of our friends came to church! Our goal was 4 but one of our friends said that they couldn't wake up and slept in….. oh well nothing we can really do but we will try harder next time. It was low-key stressful because I wanted to do lessons with them at different times but we made it work. We also got two of our friends' books of Mormon’s and asked them to read it! Both of them said they would! I'm just super glad that we have friends consistently coming to church because when I first got here it was super hard and we didn't really have much to do. But now I a bit overwhelming, we are lucky though because we have so many other missionaries to help us and the ward members have been great too! Overall I'm still just super excited for this transfer and can't wait!

Ok Das it.

Shoots!

あいしてるよ！

エリス長老

TheRisingSon