Jazmyne in Japan: New Investigators and Transfer Week

This week we have big news!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WE FOUND 2 NEW INVESTIGATORS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Basically we are super excited. :)

This transfer we started out with 3 investigators, but then within the first week we went down to 2 investigators. So this transfer we have really been focusing on getting more investigators. We've been working really hard and trying our very best, even when we were discouraged. Then this last week we were lucky enough to find 2 people who are interested in hearing the gospel!! It was truly a miracle week!!! :)

I may or may not have told you about these people already, but since I can't remember I'm going to tell you about them again a little bit.

One of our investigators, her name is Songumsuk. If you read that and think, 'that doesn't sound very Japanese, well you would be right! She is from Korea! But she speaks really good Japanese. Anyway, she has a super interesting story about why she is in Japan. She is a part of a religion (I can't remember the name) but it's a christian church and everyone in the church has arranged marriages! I didn't think there were that many people that did that any more, but I guess they do. Anyway she got married to a Japanese man and they never met before thier wedding and at that point she didn't speak any Japanese and he didn't speak any Korean. So she moved to Japan to be with him and taught herself Japanese, and then he tried to learn some Korean. It sounds so hard! But they made it work and it sounds like they are really happy now. So we first met her back in October and gave her a Book of Mormon but haven't been able to meet with her until now. She is really great and we have another appointment with her in a few weeks.

Our other investigator is Sato San. She is married and has 3 children and 3 grandchildren. She was super open to listening to us and so we were finally able to teach her on Wednesday. We were only planning on teaching her the first half of lesson one, but since she was asking so many questions we ended up teaching her the whole thing. She has lots of really great questions and she understood everything that we were telling her! It was truly amazing. And I recited the first vison in Japanese for the first time (to an investigator). So that was really exciting too!! REALLY, REALLY great week!!

This next week we have transfers so I will let you know what the results of that are next week. This is how the whole thing works..

Trainers get their calls on Monday night and all they tell them is that they will be traning (obviously in their same area) but they don't tell them who their bean (greenie) is. So they go to the honbu (mission home) on wednesday morning to pick up their bean.

Everyone else gets their calls on Tuesday (usually in the morning). They call us and tell us what our next area is and who our new companion is. Then everyone who is transfering and their companions (usually) all leave on Thursday morning. We all meet at the "transfer spot" which is a specific spot inside the subway station in Sapporo. Then you all switch and find your new companion and then head to your new area. So usually Thursday is spent traveling all day. Sometimes it's different. Like this last transfer since none of us were transfering we all stayed and Miyamoto shimai just came with the elders. So they try to save money whenever possible because traveling in Japan is really expensive!!! Our bikes are shipped to our new area as well as one of our bags so when we travel we only have to take one bag with us so that is really nice. :) So that's how it works here. :) I've actually never been to the transfer spot, but who knows maybe this transfer I will. :)

Hope you are all doing well! Much love!

Morrison Shimai