Shuwa

Hello friends!!!

This week was again filled with a lot of finding and trying to help less actives. Ootani is always on the move so we hammer a lot of stuff.

Tuesday some cool experience happened. We went to visit a less active named N. When we went there, Ootani forgot that she can't speak and she only does sign language. We got there and met the husband. He is deaf too. It was blazing hot so he asked for water. The guy rejected him!!! Its because he couldn't understand him. We didn't know why until a thought popped into my head "this guy probably knows shuwa." So I started to ask him in shuwa if he knew shuwa. He responded and I introduced myself and turned to Ootani and asked him "what do you want to say?" I translated Japanese into sign language! It wasn't great but I asked him if we can come again and he said yes! Yeah for the deaf members of IIZUKA! I'm going to start going to a weekly shuwa class to learn more.

All in all we just beat the pavement. Worked super hard. Sometimes numbers don't replicate our work. We didn't improve our numbers all that much but we worked to the point Ootani actually became a little sick.

Thursday and Friday the zone leaders when on junkai. That left me and Urakami to work together. We ran into this guy who accepted the Book of Mormon. As we were exchanging contact info I felt something weird. He gave us a number and we called it. He said the call came in but I didn't believe him. Later that night the person we called called us. It was the wrong phone number.  :(

Saturday poor Ootani wasn't feeling good. We still went at it. We visited a member who is less active but has been having amazing experiences with prayer recently. She prayed for the safety of her daughter. Her daughter had a baby due date of next week but she gave birth early. The place where her daughter was was not far from a hospital but that was the only hospital in the area. She said "prayers really do work, ne?" great experience.

We had a bbq with a member and it wassss soooooo good! An investigator came because he loves food. It was a good time!

Sunday. Crazy story. So apparently this lady in California, when she went to the temple, received a revelation from a relative to contact her family in Japan. She is a half Japanese and a lot of her relatives live in Hiroshima. She has been contacting our branch for the past 6 months. I jumped in the middle of it so I was super confused. But the branch president turned to me and said "I have a favor for you" I went and translated the email to him. It was really confusing but I started to connect all the pieces. We went and visited some of the family members that the branch president found. They weren't home but we will try later.

One super sad thing is that a lot of the family members on the list had a death date of August 6, 1945. Whole families died. I looked at that and was really sad. I have come to love these people so much. It hurt me to see the toll of war on these families. I'm not Japanese but at that point I felt a little bit of their sorrow. I remember talking to Masako Sherman about Hiroshima about 4 years ago. She expressed how sad she was about it. Even though she never experienced it, it hurt her. Same with me. I'm a different race, different generation, but I love these people so much. They are super goofy and fun. Sometimes they are frustrating but in the end I love them.

Keep praying for the work in Japan!

Jameson Choro