Fruitless Finding and Families

Dear Beloved Friends and Family,

I don't exactly know what it is like in other missions, but here in Fukuoka we do lots of finding! There are lots of prepared people here of course and many who desire to be baptized, but it takes work to find them. 

The past few weeks me and my companion have been going out and trying to find people and find people, but we just weren't seeing a whole lot of fruits. It was pretty hard. It wasn't so much a "We can't find people in this place feeling" as much as it was a "something has become wrong with us" feeling. Because in the past we could always find people, but just lately it was difficult. 

After one way nice family rejected a return appointment my companion, probably out of a little frustration said that we just hadn't prepared enough our family approach. And I got kind of stressed/ discouraged too and then I realized Satan was just trying to bring us down, He always tries to bring us down and make us doubt ourselves. To be honest I think that is one of the most powerful tools Satan uses on missionaries. 

But we talked about it, talked about what we could and how we could do better. We decided that we really just needed to be more loving, more friendly and fun, and teach them in ways they can understand really simply like a simple analogy. 

A street contact might go something like this.

"Hello father (you say that to slightly elderly strangers) nice to meet you!"

-Some simple talk and joking to make him comfortable-

"We are here to share a special message about families that has really helped our families But we have a question!, If you had a car you knew would break down no matter what in a year, how much maintenence and money would you put into it?"

"Well probably not that much." The man would probably say.

"Well what if you knew it would last forever if you took good care of it? How much would you put into it then?"

Then he might say, "Well probably a whole lot!"

"Exactly father! Our message is the same, we believe that families are not just a thing of 1 year or 10 or 60 years. They are forever. So we have such a need to take care of them protect them and help them. And we are sharing the message of how to help our families the most and about their eternal importance. May we meet again and share it?"

Anyways that is something we have started using. Then on Sunday night after we did some figuring out we went to an area we felt really good about, and it was amazing! We had family after family listen to our message, and we even got 2 who gave us a specific return appointment and 1 who said to come back anytime! It was a small thing. But it was a miracle to us!

Anyways. That is a small insight into what the life of a missionary is like. 
Love you all!

Elder Walton

Pictures:

-Me in a tradition Japanese mens formal I got for 20 dollars. Such a good deal!

-Nagasaki Harbor

- Us eating a 8/10 of a meter Ice cream cone!