I'm in Akou, now. It's pretty rural. It looks like it could be a decent sized city, but there aren't many people on the street to talk to. The part of town the apartment and church are in is also pretty small. I hear that basically every single door has been knocked on multiple times. There are other parts of town that are a lengthy bike ride away, so I guess we'll have to go out there to find! The branch here is sooo amazing! I've only had one Sunday, but I already have a way high opinion of them. Everyone is super happy and energetic and has good dendo fire. The branch president especially has way high dendo fire. When I called him after getting to the area, one of the first things he said to me was about working to make this branch a ward and get a new building! The one we're in right now is the first story of a two story office space. It's was tiny. Smaller than Tottori's building, even! One part about this area I really like is the fact that it's not very hot or humid. Not as much as the other areas I've been in, at least! I can actually eat lunch without sweating every drop of fluid I just drank!
Naturally, preparation day was spent packing since I was transferring. The next couple days were pretty crazy because we were had to write down all the information needed about investigators, members, etc for the two new elders coming in to take our places. We also were trying to meet with investigators to say bye to them and give them our meishi's. Not a whole lot of attempts worked out because we were pretty booked with getting everything done before Thursday. The transfers where transfer day falls on Thursday are the worst it you or you're companion (or both) are transferring since you have one less day to get in all the normal pre-transfer stuff. It all worked out fine, though.
We did manage to squeeze a few minutes in with the woman from last week who's way interested in Christ and several of her friends. She seems to be a guide that helps them out with Japanese and teaches them about Japan. They're all gaijin: Brazilians, Africans, Loatians, etc. It was kind of funny when we went to their place because we thought it'd only be a couple people, but once we got there they popped out from wherever they were to meet us one by one. There were maybe 15? I was certainly surprised. They're all way cool, and it's very disappointing we won't be meeting with them any longer.
Since arriving here in Akou, it's been a lot of finding. We have been re-visiting the people that hopefully will be ready to be taught and receive more. It seems a little counterproductive to me to house a place that's said by many to have been housed already a number of times before. Seriously, it has! Whenever we ask people if they've ever met missionaries before, they always say yes! That's never happened before in my areas even when we know the people were visited or met with the missionaries recently. I think we'll really have to put into practice what Welch Kaicho wants missionaries to do: work with the members and establish the church.
Nishiwaki is Fukuchiyama Zone, Ako is Akashi Zone.
That's all I have this week! Not sure how much time I'll have to email since we're going to work extra hard to find Christ's sheep.
愛、
～ウィルソン長老
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