This week was interesting. It was my first experience with transfers, so that was an experience. I didn't actually end up transferring, but ended up staying a couple nights in Sendai to drop off my old companion and pick up my new one. I was sad to see Elder Free go, but I think that Elder Anderson and I will be able to do some good work together. I only have a couple of stories this week, so here they are.
First, one of the Less-Actives in our branch right now is pretty friendly with the missionaries, and asked us to help him out with some service at his house. Naturally we readily accepted the invitation and went to help out with it. It was actually pretty easy and didn't take longer than 30 or 40 minutes, but then he wanted to feed us lunch. The food was great, and he was even prepared with an adequate supply of food for a couple of hungry missionaries. :) Unfortunately he thought that mugicha was a suitable beverage to go along with it. Most of you won't know what mugicha is, and to be honest I'm not really sure what it is either. It's some kind of tea that somehow complies with the word of wisdom. For some reason it's one of the cultural foods that every missionary just has to try in order to be a missionary. Before this experience I had been told that it was basically "cigarette water" by multiple different missionaries who also didn't enjoy it. Despite this poor feedback, I was prepared to try it with an open mind. It was absolutely awful. I've tried various kinds of seafood and other Asian foods while I've been here, and it's all been edible. I've even had nato which is the other food that all missionaries have to try, and it really wasn't that bad. I wouldn't ever buy any and eat it at the apartment, but it was fine. It could not compare to the mugicha. I was trying to balance nausea and progress through my glass the whole time we were eating. It was rather difficult. I found myself holding my breath and taking a couple quick gulps before shoveling a bunch of meat and cabbage in my mouth to drown out the taste. And then the rest of the day I had a residual mugicha taste on my tongue accompanied by slight nausea and a minor headache. It was rough. Everyone who has had mugicha before is probably laughing at me right now, but I was really struggling.
The other story is of a guy that we found housing the other day. For those you who don't have a lot of experience with missionary life, housing is basically just knocking on peoples' doors and hoping that they'll come out and talk to you about the Gospel. So for some reason on this particular day we ran into a young guy that was likely low-mid twenties and actually seemed to want to talk to us. We have an English class that we teach every week on Wednesdays and he sounded like he wanted to come to that. We also talked a little bit about church stuff, but English seemed to be his primary interest so that's mostly what we talked about. At the end we asked if he wanted to exchange information (which really just meant that we wanted his phone number) but he said that he would just call us. I kind of took that as a "Sorry I really tried to sound interested while we were talking but now I want you to get off my front porch because I'm busy". I didn't expect that we'd hear from him again. But then the next day he called and asked if we could tell him a little bit more about the English class. My companion and I were both surprised. So we talked to him for a little bit, and towards the end we asked if he had any more questions. And he asked what set our church apart from other Christian churches! I was pretty pumped. :) My companion gave him a quick rundown of The Book of Mormon and Priesthood authority and he seemed to be decently interested in it. And then he said that he would come to eikaiwa (the English class) on Wednesday. I really hope that he comes and that we get the opportunity in the future to talk more about the Gospel. I know that he would be blessed by the Gospel in his life.
Those are all the stories that I have for this week, so I guess I'll end there. Below are a couple of pictures of my new companion. Next week I'll probably give a brief introduction of him once we exchange a few more life stories and get to know one another a little better.
I hope you're all doing well.
Have a great week,
Elder Mitchell
No comments:
Post a Comment