God is God

Dear Minnasan-

Well, things have been getting rather hot here! And by "rather" hot I mean, REALLY hot. But you know, life is still as exciting as ever. Oh, and the misquitos came out. YEAH for bug bites! The Convience store workers even changed their work uniforms - instead of long red jacket things, they now wear green short-sleeved jacket things! Yes, summer is truly here. And yes, I go to 7-11 way to much. This is the downfall of living two minutes away from a convience store.

But yes. Moving on.

It's interesting to ponder upon the differences between us and God. That seems rather obvious, I would think, but I find I am learning again and again that God is God, and I am not. Sure, we would never purposefully think that, but when we rely on our own strength and so-called wisdom, we find out very fast that we cannot do this alone. And I think that's the whole point. We are mortal and imperfect. God is exalted, immortal, and glorified. There's a big difference between us and Him, and yet, we oftentimes try to do things by ourselves by our own power. We forget that we, by ourselves, cannot do this work. This is God's work. It is His glory. And He has given us, imperfect, mortals a chance to assist in this work. But why?

Our Kaicho describes it something along these lines, "Missionary work is truly the worst business venture ever. God sends young, inexperienced kids to spread the word of the Lord. And as soon as they start to get enough experience, their time is up and they come home." When you think about it, it's kind of mind-boggling. But all things have been done in His wisdom. It just goes to show that God is God and we are here to learn that. That's probably one of the biggest lessons I've learned on my mission -- that there is NOTHING I can do without His help. HUMILITY is truly something I've learned to appreciate and better understand.

This week, my companion and I  weren't really expecting anybody to come to church. We had a few people who had loosly confirmed that they were coming, but as per the usual, when church started, nobody was there. God likes to try my faith in that way. Somehow, though, by the end of the meeting, three of our investigators had trickled in. One of them we didn't even know was there until after the meeting was over, and we turned around and saw her sitting in the back of the room. I am learning over and over again that as long as we work tirelessly and faithfully, then the Lord will bless us. My companion and I did all that we could think of to invite people to church. We took cookies to our neighboors and invited them. We called every single person in our Area Book and invited them. We invited all of our investigators, too. And the Lord blessed us for that effort. It's the whole "cause and effect" thing. When we do what we can do, God will bless our efforts. And usually the blessings far outway the things I did to qualify for those blessings.

Also, this week, we got our first less active investigator! We visited her to give her cookies, and just to say hello (we are still trying to figure out this whole less-active thing, but it's getting there!) and she invited us in to talk. We talked to her for about an hour, and she really opened up to us. She told us her conversion story, and why she stopping coming to church. We sang the hymn, "I am a Child of God," with her, and she happily sang a-long.

The interesting thing is, that we've been trying to visit less actives for a while now without too much success really. We realized though, that we had been relying on ourselves, and not on the Lord. We hadn't really been praying to know where to go and when, so we humbled ourselves and prayed for revelation. That's when we contacted and taught a less active, and then, on Sunday, the Bishop gave us another 15 or 20 less active records for us to visit. Funny how that worked out...coincidence? Nah, I don't think so. We have to turn to God and show Him that we are ready before He will bless us. We need to SHOW HIM OUR FAITHFULNESS.

Love you all!

Thanks for all the birthday wishes!

Sister Weigl

5 QUESTIONS:

1.  How did you celebrate your 20th birthday?

The Normal way...teaching lessons, doing normal missionary stuff. But we also went out to dinner with an investigator and a member. And the Bishop and His wife threw me a little party on Sunday (which a different investigator came to). They were really nice to me, and the Ward really remembered my birthday (which is funny, because I never even told them it was my birthday!)

2.  What do the Japanese people do for birthdays? 

I heard that the 20th year is a big deal in Japan?  Do they do anything special?

The 20th birthday is a big deal. It's when you become an adult (sort of like 18 in America). Um, they basically do the same kind of things we do in America. Cake. Candles. Presents. At least that's what they did for me, but Members are a lot more "American" than most Japanese people.

3.  Do they have birthday cake and presents?   Yes

4.  Did you eat anything special on your birthday?

Sort of ? We went out to eat and I got a salad.

5.  Tell us anything that made you feel happy this week or something you appreciated?

My companion sang me this weird birthday song and made me wear this ridiculous birthday hat when we were in the apartment.