Our Man in Japan

Dear family,

Sorry about forgetting to send my email last week. I wrote it and then saved it in case I thought of anything else to write before getting off, and well...

These past couple weeks we've been having a lot of lessons with investigators and it's been good. I really feel like the Lord continues to bless us. It's not necessarily that we're working a lot harder than before, because the mission has been working hard the whole time I've been out here. But the Lord blesses us more and more as we prepare and increase our faith so we can receive his blessings and guidance.

I mentioned we've been working with a Vietnamese guy these past few weeks. Right now the baptismal service is scheduled for this Saturday at 3 PM. We're not quite done teaching him all the lessons, but I think everything will work out in time. On Saturday we taught him about tithing and the Word of Wisdom, mostly out of an old Gospel Principles book. We had him list up the things we're told not to partake of on the whiteboard and asked him if he had any difficulties with any of them. He said he used to drink alcohol at parties with friends before coming to Japan, but he's stopped that. He doesn't like the taste of coffee. Tea makes him sleepy. And he fully understands the dangers of misusing medicine or illegal drugs.

Yesterday my companion almost got hit by a car. We were riding our bikes along and went behind a car that was sticking out a little without the driver looking in our direction. My companion remarked on how it's dangerous to go in front of cars like that. Less than a minute later we came across another car where the driver wasn't looking in our direction. We both noticed it but... anyways the driver only bumped my companion a little bit, he didn't fall down fortunately. The lady driving was really surprised and worried but my companion was fine so after accepting a couple little bandaids I gave her a little flyer for our English class, maybe she'll come. I know I've sent one of those flyers home before, but I really like them because they introduce who we are, what we're doing, and a little bit about our message. I think the Spirit probably warned us through my companion to be careful but we didn't really think about it.

You asked how many people attend the branch here in Miki, I think it's around 20. If we bring some people with us it goes up a lot.

Love,
Elder Andrew West