Whirlwind in Last Few Days!

The past few days have been crazy, but very fun. I just got back in Obihiro about an hour ago. On Sunday, President and the APs came to church in Obihiro. After that, the four of us elders in Obihiro hopped in the van with President and APs, and we all drove out to Kushiro. It took about 2 hours, but we had a nice deep dive into the scriptures with President. Kushiro is on the far east coast of Hokkaido. For the first time since coming to this island of Hokkaido over 14 months ago, I finally saw the ocean!

Sunday night I went on exchanges with Elder Gandy, an elder on his second transfer. We had a fun time together, but eventually got lost because we are both Obihiro elders and don't know our way around Kushiro. We tried getting back to the apartment, and I felt that we should stop by a shop and ask for directions. Since it was sort of late on a Sunday night, not too many places were open. But I saw a group of high school students in one shop that was still open, and I thought I would ask them for directions. So we went in and asked for directions. As soon as I asked, the shop owner said "Do you speak English?" It turns out that he just moved back to Japan after living in Vancouver for 15 years. He is a former hockey player, and now he runs his own hockey shop. All of the high school kids were players for the team that he coaches. It was way fun talking with him in English, and he printed us off a map from GoogleMaps so that we could find our way back to the Kushiro apartment.

On Monday we had Zone Training Meeting and interviews with President Daniels. As always, I had a great interview and learned a lot from President. After that, I was on exchanges with Elder Kawahara for all of Monday and Tuesday. His companion, my zone leader, went with the other zone leader out on exchanges in another area. So Elder Nagata went back with Elder Gandy to Obihiro.

I had an amazing time working with Elder Kawahara. He is on his first transfer, but he is already an amazing missionary. He is amazing at finding and really good at teaching. The both of us worked with all of our might and we were able to teach 10 lessons in those two days. To put that in perspective, the last time I taught 10 lessons in one week was way back in November. We were able to do it in just two days! Elder Kawahara and I saw miracle after miracle happen as we were going about the Lord's work.

One of those miracles happened on Monday night as we were heading back to our bikes. It was 8:30 PM, and we were going to go back to the apartment. As we were walking, we saw a guy ride his bike across the road about 100 ft. in front of us. I yelled out to him, and he somehow heard me and turned his bike around to come talk with us. Elder Kawahara and I were able to teach him a lesson on the spot and commit him to reading the Book of Mormon. Both Elder Kawahara and myself felt that the man has been prepared for the gospel and was lead our way. 

Yesterday we invited a 19 year old member to come with us to a few of our lessons and team-up. The member is half Japanese half American and speaks both English and Japanese. He is currently waiting for his mission call, and he was very excited to go out and see what missionary work is like. He was pretty nervous, but it turned out to be a great experience for him. He said that he wants to go out with the elders again soon. Too bad he doesn't live in Obihiro. Maybe he'll get called to the Provo Mission and you'll get to meet him one day. That would be cool.

Well, that is about it. The past few days have been a worldwind and I am looking forward to the remainder of this week.Elder Christensen