Hope In Action

Hey everyone!!! How are you all doing??? This week was way difficult and awesome! My arm and leg are pretty much all healed, and something awesome happened this week, but I will get to that in a little bit.  At the beginning of the week I was thinking about how much left I have of my mission, and if I could really do this.  I have a lot of time left, I still can't understand as much Japanese as I need to, it is freezing every single night, and very few people actually take the time to listen to anything at all.  Missionary work is difficult.  Then I realized how selfish I was being.  I need to do this. I want to do this, and because Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ want me to do this, they will prepare a way for me to serve an effective mission that I will enjoy and love.  I am so grateful for the Atonement. The strength I receive from it every day is so essential. I think we did probably more bike riding and housing this week than we ever have before because almost all of our appointments fell through.  We found a lot of potential investigators.  Also, there are some more Spanish speaking people who started coming to our English class. Hopefully we can start teaching them the Gospel soon :)  Probably the most exciting thing that happened this week is that we met a guy named Eik from Thailand!  He actually just saw our name tags and walked up to us.  He then pointed to a picture of a book of Mormon on an LDS pass-a-long card and said, "Do you have this book?"  I smiled at hearing those words.  I gave a Japanese one that I had bought in America a long time ago because we have actually been out at our apartment. Anyways, he was taught by some sisters in Thailand and came to Japan for 3 weeks.  (He leaves this Wednesday)  We actually went and did missionary work with him that same day, and then he took us to his apartment and made some Thai food for us.  It was way spicy but way amazing. He also came to church the next day and did more stuff with us last night.  I was just thinking though how amazing it is that as members of this church, we can be almost anywhere around the world and have an instant friend, just because we have the same beliefs. Eik actually told us that as soon as he started talking to us it felt like he had known us his whole life.  That whole experience just made my week.  This week I have been studying about Charity and trying to develop that Christlike attribute.  Moroni 7:45-48 are quite amazing and I love the definition it gives in the Bible dictionary-the first line is amazing :) I actually don't have more time, but I love you all so very much and I appreciate all of you so very much!!

They are doing construction on our church!!!!

愛していますよ。

Bedard 長老