(picture is of downtown sapporo)
alright well a week of miracles has been completed!!! before i do any of the follow up stuff i just want to share with you what has happend this week... so i think i told you about what we were doing with the member work out here in atsubetsu. the no name referral program. (members can give missionaries anonymous referrals, they challenged the women of the ward to give names. lately dano has been doing a lot of work with members, promising baptisms to the bishop, visiting families in the ward and doing family home evenings). well sunday was the big day to see if it was a hit or if it bombed. i will be honest i was about 70 30 odds. we started the day with our ward missionary council meeting and one of the sisters gave us a sheet with 4 referrals on it! (for our mission if you had a good week you would maybe get 4 member referrals, we average as a mission per week around 50 new referrals from the 80 missionaries that are serving here) we were very pleased with the paper. then as we waited for members to come in and greeted them at the door. i held the paper in my hand keeping a prayer in my heart that maybe someone else too might have done what we asked them. i greeted a fairly happy sister at the door, today she seemed particularly happy, i asked her why and she said nothing but just reached down in her bag and pulled out the paper with her three friends' names on it who she would like to hear the gospel. i was almost shocked... i didnt think out of all the sisters that she would do it. i stood by the door with a big smile on my face and my hand clutching the precious referrals that we had just recieved. my other hand soon filled up with papers, sister after sister with a smile and glow in their countenance handed me hope, a prospect, the thought that just maybe that friend might let us in and partake of the joy the gospel brings. at the end of sunday we received 71 REFERRALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the shock still hits me.. i have never heard of anything like it, and neither did anyone else we told. there have been many prophecies about japan being one of the best missions in the world, and that in order for there to be success there must come a change, through the members, when their desire for their friends to hear the gospel increases and they start to reach out- then will the mighty change take place. well that all started on sunday. missionaries have gone from door to door knocking and havest here thus far has been weak. but now behold the field is white already to harvest and lo he that 'worketh through the members' shall have sheaves upon his back. its so exciting to see it all happening now!!
we had president daniels over to our apartment (we invited him over for his b-day dinner) on monday and he congratulated us on our marvelous success and has us tell him all about it. then yesterday at zone conference he has us tell all the other zones about it. the way he introduced it was very interesting. previous to doing the no name referrals, we had gotten the idea from something that someone recommended at the zone leader council two weeks ago, elder nelson and i decided to go for it and then a week later got the referrals. so president daniels said "something amazing has been going on in atsubetsu, they tried the no name referrals and they saw some success, i will let them introduce it but before that how many of you were in the zl council meeting??" several elders raised their hands. "did you all hear about the no name refferal thing, they all said yes. okay now what did you do about it?? think about that because after they tell you what they did i want to hear what you did." we shared our experiences and everyone was fairly shocked. then he got up and called on a couple elders, asked them, and the response was nothing. no one did anything. he then went a little off on the fact that, our problem is that we hear ideas but no one acts!! he then very animatedly said "come on, everyone needs to step up! act! follow the example of these great zone leaders and act!"
we then had our workshop and taught everyone what to do, told them it was a multi step process that needed to take place before it was infiltrated in the ward, then we told them all to act. in fact we challenged everyone to call the bishop that night and set up an appointment!!! we told them we would call to see if you did it. so we did and everyone did it!! i think that if we can spread this to other areas the work will really really take off here!!!!!!!
we are way way excited! and i can see the change taking place. we in fact got a call from a member who said i have a question about the no name referral thing, i know i wrote down some names and gave them to you but is it okay if i give you a family i want to hear the gospel?? YES!!! ITS OKAY! she then told us their information what they might have interset in and gave the address and told us we could even mention that she told us to visit them! AMAZING!! i think the miracles are going to continue to out poor, becasue we have only introduced this to the sister!! we havent even given it to the whole ward!!!
other than that things are great, the henmi kids are looking forward to getting baptized the 23rd and i am looking forward to baptizing them!!
well, hope you all have a wonderful christmas and i challange you all to give at least two names to the missionaries to visit, you can the them its a no name referral and not to use your name but if it comes up they can use it. but send them somewhere someone is likely to except the gospel, that is all of your responsibilities!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
