The power of the Spirit (& a baptism date!)

Hey Everyone!

Yamagata

The Suzuki couple have been my main focus for the past couple weeks. The Suzuki's are both in their 50s and were recently married in the Protestant church. So many prayers, hours of preparing lessons and thoughts on how to help them understand the gospel restoration has gone into this couple. There's so much pressure going into this one.

They don't drink or smoke and already have faith in the Savior, which is very rare in a country where Sake is a popular choice of drink and Buddhist infuence prevails. These are progressing investigators who have felt the spirit and have even considered baptism. We had a lesson with them this last Sunday and it was the first time I felt truly terrified when teaching.

Here's the reason why.

Sister Bean said nothing the whole time until the very end.

This took me completely off guard because she is an amazing teacher and is fluent in Japanese, but being the great trainer she is and having ALOT of faith, she gave me the chance to lead.

So risky.

And this was  probably the most important lesson of my missionary life.

I bore testimony of the Restoration, looked at Sister Bean and she said nothing. I bore testimony of the Joseph Smith and the First Vision. Sister Bean still said nothing. I bore testimony on the priesthood and saving ordinances of the gospel. Still nothing from Sister Bean.

I was sweating buckets at this point because I couldn't tell if anything said was making sense.

I then bore testimony of the Book of Mormon. Afterwards, Sister Bean finally spoke up and set a baptismal date with the Suzuki's for October 28th.

It all happened so fast, but they agreed upon the condition that they gained a testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel before that date.

This experience bore greater testimony to me, as emphazised in last week's email, of the power of the spirit. The missionary teaches the lessons, but it is the spirit that carries the message into the hearts of those being taught.

I'm so grateful to be a part of the Lord's work.

Until next time, so much love for you all!

Matsuura Shimai

P.S.

BYU Peeps: Best of luck with the first week of school!

Blackfoot Peeps: Eat a lot of fair food for me! Also if you get the chance, say hi to my dad the tiger ear booth haha.

Costco trip

The mission office has messed up on my name tag a couple times so I have enough to have a collection. The top right one is in the format for all the mission presidents. I was told never to wear it, but they let me keep it anyways ;)