Ellie's Mission in Japan: Week 11

Hello everyone!

Things are great out here in Abeno, it was a pretty crazy week, to say the least.

We found a lot of Potential Investigators so we are hoping we can turn those into Investigators this week! We had a lot of our appointments set up for yesterday but a Typhoon came so we had to cancel all of them, which sucked haha. But everyone is safe. Everyone was going crazy and said the power was going to go out, and we needed to have water stored, and to not go outside all day. So we had to stay inside all day and the storm didn't even come until like 10 at night, and it wasn't even bad. haha

But we had a lot of cool experiences this week.

On Saturday we did this mission prep activity with the youth in our ward and other missionaries in our zone. I paired up with one other missionary and one of the youth, and we went proselyting for a couple of hours. At first, it was super rough, no one would listen to us or give us the time of day. I was just discouraged because this girl that we were with was debating on going on a mission and I didn't want her to think that this is only what a mission is like! So I just said a prayer in my heart that we would find someone. After a couple of hours, we started heading back to the church. Then the last person we talked to was awesome! He seemed super interested and I was able to tell him why I am serving a mission and how important Jesus Christ is. I was able to get his information and we are meeting with him this Saturday, so yay!! I was so glad for that experience.

Another day we went to visit a less active member. She was so sweet and let us talk to her for a little bit. We invited her to church and she said she couldn't go back because she is too far off the path and there was no hope for her. It broke my heart to think that she believed that. We shared a conference talk with her called, "Am I Good Enough? Will I Make it?", which I highly recommend for everyone to read. We told her that Heavenly Father will always love her and she is always welcome to come back to church and that it is never too late for anyone. She still couldn't get herself to go to church, but I could tell that our message touched her. I hope that one day she will get the courage to come back. But I share this experience because I can Testify that no matter what, you are never too far away from Christ's love and his atonement. We can always return back on the path. All we are asked to do is try our best, and Christ will help us with whatever we need to accomplish. I'm so grateful for that. I know I wouldn't be able to do this mission or anything really without my Savior, Jesus Christ.

I love you all and hope you have a good week!

クリステンセン姉妹