This week was the mission tour, or as they told it to us missionaries the mission inspection from Salt Lake. Elder Whiting from the Quorum of the Seventy and the Asia North area presidency came and had a few conferences and what not and it`s so funny because everyone made such a huge deal out of it, and I just hated feeling like we all kind of were told to put on our brightest smiles and wear our nicest clothes and stuff and just pretend like everything is wonderful for the general authority visit, when really I wasn`t feeling to good about things at the time of the conference. Although Elder Whiting did congratulate me on being a `mighty Olympus Titan` so there is that.
People on the mission often make bold and sometimes I feel untrue statements about missionary work. like `if you aren`t seeing success it`s because you don`t have enough faith, you`re not focused enough, you`re a bad missionary, etc.` and I just want to be like, no, you can`t know anything about another persons life, mission, effort, etc. `who am I to judge another when I walk imperfectly....` I know people mean well when they say that, but I feel like I`m already bothered enough that I`m not seeing success to have the mission leaders try and tell me it`s because my faith is lacking or that I`m not relying on the Lord enough. give me a break. God`s plan for me is different than his plan for you and even though I didn`t see hardly any success these past couple weeks I am working just as hard as any other missionary who sees 20 baptisms a month in Ghana! grrr! OH, other pet peeve about weird things mission leaders say. `exact` obedience. There is no such thing. I mean waking up at 6:30 isn`t `exact` obedience, it is just obedience. nobody can be `exactly` obedient because that would mean perfection, and we are obviously not perfect.
Everything this week just seemed to fall through. Investigators would call us the day of and cancel the lesson, not show up to their appointments, not answer their phones, and even our meal appointment with the members fell through for tonight. I feel like everything that can go wrong, either is going wrong, or will go wrong shortly. Really missionary work is so frustrating because people don`t like to change. Japanese people (particularly the older generation) are very traditional and don`t like the idea of changing anything. Many people have trouble while investigating because being Christian in Japan is odd, or strange to people who know largely nothing about christianity. At the conference Sister Whiting shared an interesting thing. It was the result of a survey done in both America and Japan as to who the most important people in History were. The results for America were Jesus Christ as number one, and also Joseph Smith made it in at 55. The results for Japan were Jesus Christ at number 62, and surprisingly Walt Disney is in the top 20... Basically people here have no idea what Christianity actually is. It is as weird to them as Buddhism or Shinto seem to us.
I wish I had more positive things to share, but this week wasn`t all that great. We went out dendo-ing (proselyting) with Asada Kyodai from the ward who really helped, we visited various inactives and I once again was reminded that my Japanese level of speaking and understanding is TERRIBLE! But I also have recognized lately that I have such little confidence in speaking Japanese because most of the time I don`t even know if what I am trying to say makes any sense, and so I speak hesitantly, not because I doubt the things I want to say, but because I don`t trust my Japanese as much as I would like to. I`m working on that as well as a trillion other things.
This email sounds really whiney probably and maybe that`s true, but basically I know that I am supposed to be here being as perfect as I can be serving The Lord that I love. Whether that results in me baptizing 5000000 people or not it doesn`t really matter, I`m just here to do what God wants me to do. And yes I have a useless annoying companion, I can`t speak this language like I want, but overall things are just fine and I am well.
Love,
ペース長老
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