8/23 Hello :)

Hey! Sorry last week's email was super long! So I won't write as much
this week. But lots of good things are happening! We now have 8
investigators with baptism dates! I felt like the spirit guided almost
everything we did, and things just worked out better than I could have
imagined. We're trying to have enough faith to see 6 people baptized
this transfer together, and at he begging of the week, it looked
impossible, but we kept the faith, and kept praying, and found
prepared people. We will have a baptismal service every Sunday of this
transfer if everything goes as planned :D Pretty insane for Japan
haha.

Helloooo!

This was beautiful. Beautiful in everyway. I loved it :D

I think I might just break it down day by day so I don't lose track.

Monday: p-day's are usually the most stressful. Because there's so much to get done in such little time! But this P-day was just beautiful. We had a plan to teach HIrai, and Sawada our two grandpa's together since they because friends. But Sawada forgot the time of the appointment and came at 6 instead of 4. So we taught them separate. Hirai needed some coaching though so it was a blessing. When he came to the church I noticed a coffee can in his car, and took and pocketed it. We taught the lesson, and at the end I took out the coffee and asked him what it was. It was pretty hilarious. Hirai, is really slow...he apparently didn't realize de-caffè was still coffee. We took a video of him dumping it in the gutter haha then we went to a convienient store and quizzed him on what drinks were ok, and which ones weren't.

Look for the missed fist bump, it's so bad. I love Hirai, he acts like a black person, it's awesome :D we decided to move his Baptismal date to the 30th so we could review everything again for some better understanding. We also, fixed my bike, called lots of people, played bubbles and sword fought with 2 year old, practiced sining, and got tortillas, salsa and Costco muffins from Erik!

This little girl is so dang cute, we're sword fighting with my bubble wand bamboo sticks.

Tuesday: We pretty much did Less active work all day, we got to visit with 5 less active members! One of them nishizawa. Is now reading the BOM in English and Japanese, and praying daily again. It's so cool to be able to see people progress closer to God. Then at night we taught in Vietnamese! Really we just pretty much used google translate to communicate haha. It's way fun though. Vietnamese guys are super nice. 

Kinda blurry picture, but this is Thaath (pronounced tie) and Bac. They're cool. We taught them on Tuesday and Saturday. 

Wednesday: We went to lunch with some cool members the 市川家族. We arrived a little early and ran into a guy we had met yesterday on the train! Tui! He's Vietnamese, and super suteki (good looking) we had actually gotten an appointment with him on the 23rd for him to come to church, but we decided he probably wouldn't come since he doesn't speak Japanese very well. So we didn't count him as a new investigator. But then since we happened to run into him again the next day, we figured it was probably God trying to tell us we should help/teach him, and count him as an investigator.

We also taught Mori-mura, and Hirai and Sawada again. We teach them Mon, Wed, Friday now.

We just did a review of prayer so Hirai will stop reading his notes while he prays haha. The board says, prayer, thanks, questions, and things to ask for, then we listed different things from the scriptures and from their ideas. It was fun. 

Thursday: All our appointments actually fell through on Thursday, haha but it ended up being a beautiful day! We did weekly planning, then decided to call Bruno to see if he wanted to go to Homie Danchi with us. Homie Danchi is a place famous in the mission. It's just a mini Brazil in Japan. A couple thousand Brazilians all in one spot :D We had never dendoed there before, since there was a brazilian missionary here. But he transferred out, so now Brazilians are all game! It started to rain, and Bruno asked if his Brother Erik could come so he could drive. We went there and split up, me with Erik, and Hadteiter with Bruno. We visited 5 less actives, only two were actually home though. I had a prompting to knock on the door next to one of the less actives I visited. And...we found a Soccoro! She was super nice, she's catholic and goes to church every week, has a family of 4 and was planning on moving this Saturday! She said we can teach her, but she wants her whole family to be there for it, so we set up an appointment in two weeks, we also told her we'd stop by to help her move Saturday morning. 

Then on the way back we met a nice girl named Thais in the elevator. It was kinda awkward, she didn't have a ton of clothes on... so I was just looking at the wall, but she started talking to us, and asked if she could come to church. Erik switched FBs with her, she's should be coming this next Sunday. We'll just have to bring an extra button up shirt for her so I can actually look at her haha.

After homie we still had time, so we went on a road trip! There's a road that goes way up north with a bunch of less actives on it, ending with the Bishop. It takes a full day to bike up and back since it's so far, which was actually our original plan for the day since we had no plans. So we made it all the way up to bishop! Such a beautiful day :D I love it when plans cancel haha

Friday: Another beautifully guided day. Our only appointment that day was teaching Hirai and Sawada again with Aatsumi shimai as a member present lesson. We called her and asked if we could visit Mori-mura, another investigator, at his shop before Hirai's lesson. On the way there a crazy Japanese guy in a pink shirt with a British accent stopped me and started telling me how I need to go home and kick Oboma out of the presidents seat haha. He was way weird. But it turns out he had studied Mormonism before, and he wants to study again, and he brought us in to a shop we were standing outside of and told us to teach on of the workers there haha. It was way random. We're meeting them again this week. It was way funny because Atsumi shimai and Misuzu shimai went to temple square on their missions and were telling us about how weird Americans are and how everyone is normal in Japan....Then we had this guy stop us and prove our point that Japanese are stranger. Haha

Saturday: we helped Soccoro move! She introduced us to a bunch of her friends, and we're going to teach them all together next week haha Portuguese! Then we had a BBQ with two of our other Brazilian investigators, Fabricio, and Leonora. It was a party :D Now that they're friends it'll be easier for them to want to come to church.

Sunday: Sunday we had Shokujikai! A meal meeting! At night we visited Leonora again, Eriks mom. We showed her the "reclaimed" Mormon message and talked about forgiveness and how it makes us happier. Her ex-husband cheated on her, and she still has a hard time forgiving him, we  had a way good talk. She's going to come to church when we sing. It was actually way fun. A lot of their family came over a different times while we were there. We are teaching a lot of their family. Angel, their cousin, Nilda their aunt, Leonora, the mom, Kaho, the daughters best friend. This family is so Golden.

Then when we were leaving my lock got caught in my wheel, so I had to stop and fix it, then a couple of women stopped and gave me a light so I could see what I was doing. They were Peruvians but they've been here forever so they speak Japanese pretty well. 3 daughters and a mom. When they found out I was a missionary they were way happy. We're going to teach their family this Tuesday. 

Pretty much everyday we didn't follow our written plan...but we were able to follow God's plan somehow, and it has made everything amazing. He helps us if we will allow him. Just have to get out of the way and let him work :D

8/9 Week of tears and trials :')

Hello errybody :)

This week, not gonna lie, was incredibly stressful. But it's all good,
cause God's in control :D
Lots of lessons fell through, some scary stuff happened, I got really
angry at a ward member, and then transfer calls. But all in all a good
week. I'm staying in Toyota! Woo hoo! I've got another 6 weeks to try
and work some miracles here.

Some interesting points of the week:
We've been teaching a Catholic lady named Justine who lives across the
street from the church. She is crazy. Her lessons are always insane,
and super long, she has SO Many questions. It's really hard to teach
her, because she'll ask a question, and then we'll start answering but
half way through she'll ask another question, or she'll just cut us
off and talk about the saints haha. It's been a nice trial of my
patience, I did pretty good the first few lessons. In the past three
weeks we taught her, first a 1 hr lesson, then a 3 hr lesson, then a 4
hr lesson, and then to say goodbye another 2 hr lesson. The last one
we didn't have time to get to a lot of her questions before we had to
leave so we went to our friend Erik's house, and wrote down all her
questions and found answers to them from the bible. Erik is injured
right now and so he just spends his days studying the scriptures. The
next day he spent 10 hours writing a paper with all the answers to her
questions so we could give it to her before she left. By the end she
has committed to read the BOM and find out if our message really is
true. She feels like she was meant to come to Japan to meet us and
learn, i feel like she will be baptized in America sometime, it was
just a heck of an experience getting her to this point. We usually
never like to teach someone more than 45min to an hour, but she was
leaving soon and it's super hard to get out. The last lesson I snapped
a little when she started talking about how faith is built off
miracles, and feelings/the spirit is unable to be trusted.
^that was obnoxious, and pretty stressful.

Actually now that I look back on the week it was really cool. Everyday
there was something that for me was really hard. Really pushed my
buttons. And about half the time I had control and passed the test,
and half the time I snapped and got angry/just didn't handle it as
Christ would have. But this week also had lots of amazing things
happen. Every time something bad happened, something good came of it
by the end. I just need to trust God more and not worry as much.

Some cool things that happened.
Sawada forgot the time and day of his appointment, and came to church
during Hirai's lesson. So we taught them together, and they became
good friends! Now they want to be baptized on the same date and we
teach them together form now on. It's amazing because Hirai has
problems understanding, he barely understands anything...but he never
asks questions when he doesn't understand. Sawada is opposite. He is a
pretty slow learner as well, but he always tells us when he doesn't
understand and repeats things back to us when he does understand. So
he is helping Hirai to progress much better. That was a pretty cool
miracle.

8/3

Hey Familia! This week's been awesome! But I don't have any time to
email..sorry! We had a district activity today, we went to Okazaki and
had a giant nerd war! So fun :D Dendo has been the best recently.
We're setting some crazy records. I think we have the best stats in
our mission...our zone has the best stats in the mission, and we have
the best stats in the zone, so that's fun. God doing a lot of cool
stuff in this area right now :D

One cool miracle this week was meetin Miho! She came to Eikiwa with a
friend, we set up 30/30 program with her, taught her the next day,
and....committed her to baptism! Now we have 4 people that should be
baptized next transfer. :D transfer calls are this Saturday, I really
want to stay with Hastriter, so much cool stuff is happening, and it's
sooooo fun :D he has requested he mission president 3 or 4 times that
I stay with him, so hopefully we will.

This week I taught priesthood, it was kinda stressful preparing the
lesson in Japanese, but way fun. I think since this is so short, I'll
just attach the English copy, so you all can read it. It was about
prophesying and the Book of Mormon. Fun stuff :D

7/26 Wow. Cool stuff :D

Helloooo America! Or wherever this email happens to find you.
So, life's been pretty good recently. Well it's been pretty great
spiritually, and good for the work, but physically I'm dying haha. I
think we haven't eaten both lunch and dinner in the same day in over a
month haha. We're just too busy, it's so good :D we found 12 new
investigators this week, almost half of them were people that our new
investigators from last week invited to our lessons. Their families or
friends. It's a pretty cool compliment, they thought our message was
specially enough that they wanted their family and friends to hear it
too.


So I don't really have time to email today unfortunately..but lots of
cool things happened I promise! Haha we did lots of music dendo this
week, we rapped to a random kid on the street then made up a song in
Japanese for him, then when we went to leave Haustriter tried to give
him a handshake but the kid thought he was going for hug, and it was
the most gloriously awkward hug ever haha. We rapped and beatboxed and
breakdancer probably everyday this week haha.

We also had a huge firework show last night, we threw a party on our
roof. It was awesome. Erik and his whole Brazilian family came and our
awesome investigator Sawada came. He's so funny. After the show ended
they made Hastriter dance, and in tern he made everyone else try and
dance haha. Sawada even did a summer sault and then wanted to try a
hand stand, but we stopped him (he's almost 70 years old haha)

We also had a lot of fun run ins with drunk people this week. Gotta
love drunk people :)

Anyways I love you all, thank you for your prayers, they help so much.
Keep on dendoing!

7/19 The miracles never cease!

Hello! Konnichiwa! Ohio Gozaimasu! Life is good, God is Good Dendo is
great! Man! Have seen some cool miracles together! I don't even know
how it's happening, or even why it's happening. I'm NOT that good of a
missionary, but good stuff just keeps happening!
So this week I really am appreciative of the power of music, and
especially the hymns. They have made such a difference in my dendo, in
our member work, less active work, investigator lessons, it brings the
spirit so fast it is incredible.
D&C 25:12 A song of the righteous is a prayer unto the Lord." Elder
Bryce Coleman

コールマン長老

We've had other similar experiences like this with investigators as
well. This Sunday we had 6 investigators come to church, and two of
them came because we said we would sing for them before church
started. It is the easiest way to teach people what the spirit feels
like, and what it will feel like when they receive an answer from God.
The ward has now asked us to sing a hymn before sacrament starts every
week to bring the spirit into the meeting.

One other cool experience we had this week, was on my exchange with
the other elders in Toyota. They aren't doing so good, they only have
3 investigators and are losing hope... Me and Lehman had a long talk
about obedience and faith and how that relates to how much God can
help us in our work, then we prayed to find a prepared person. We only
had an hour left of the day to dendo, and we went to a less active
lady, tanaka shimai, that I had been working with for a while. She was
actually busy and said she couldn't talk at first but she had a friend
over, so we just talked to him. His name is Fujisawa. I came in and
started talking to him, and I could feel the spirit working on him,
and see in his eyes that he needed what we had. He looked at me for a
little while and then said I was glowing, he said I looked like Super
Saiyan in Dragon ball Z, then he looked at Leehaman and told him he
would eventually become like that. He now has a baptismal date for the
9th of August, I'm kinda sad that I don't get to teach him, but I'm
way happy that the other elders have someone preparing for baptism. We
made a companionship goal to baptize 6 times together, so that I could
fulfill the mission goal of one month one baptism. I wasn't in control
of my circumstances much before but now I feel like God is preparing a
way for us to build up his kingdom.

Some other miracles.
-Hirai has magically been able to stop smoking, drinking, and
everything else needed for baptism. He's the coolest!
-We had a lesson with Mori-mura on Wednesday, which isn't the usually
day for his lesson, and while walking here we ran into Bruno! Who just
so happens to be the kid we brought to his lesson last week! The
lesson was beautiful. We tried to commit him to baptism, and then
found out what his real problems were. His family has been Buddhist
for generations apron generations...and he feels like he can't betray
that trust. But besides that large problem, he said if it wasn't for
that he could keep all the commandment, change his day off to Sunday,
and be baptized. I have no idea how to help him though, just gotta
pray for a miracle. Bruno helped a ton in the lesson, it was such a
miracle he was there.
-We got a little discouraged on Wednesday actually, because we still
hadn't found anyone new yet that week, so we decided to stop and pray
to be able to directed to find someone, then we took a path under the
railway and met a cool guy in a scooter/wheel chair named funehashi.
We set an appointment to meet him this last Sunday. We went over
yesterday and had an amazing time just getting to know him, and
helping him feel loved. We sang for him and then he said he'd come to
church this week. We also complimented him on his hair, and he said he
had it so long because he can't afford a haircut. So we told him we
could have a member give him a free haircut if he'd like. So he's
going to get a haircut, from brother Takami (who's actually less
active, but he's a barber and he's cool) on Wednesday. He can't use
most of his left side of his body, so it's hard for him to walk/get
around. He's an armature painter and has some pretty awesome
paintings.
-We had 7 lessons on Saturday, it was by far the most I've ever taught
in a day. People called us during the day and asked us for
appointments, we found 3 new investigators. It was awesome. It looked
like we weren't going to be able to accomplish our goals, but we
actually ended up exceeding them!
-We had interviews with the mission president and the zone
leaders/Ap's on Wednesday. It was fun receiving training from them,
they pretty much just told us to keep doing what we're doing. In
Hastriter's interview he requested that I could stay one more transfer
with him, and Ishi kaicho said he's consider it. If I can stay another
transfer, we can baptize 6 times. I don't know how, but it will
happen.

That's about all the time I've got. The past few weeks have been
amazing, and soooo busy. I love being busy. Keep up the faith and
please pray for the missionaries! Prayer is the best use of your time,
all the time.

7/13 Miracles despite the rain :D

Hey! Elder Bryce Coleman

コールマン長老

This week has been crazy! I feel like I say that every week, but like
for real, God is awesome :D
So I don't have much, but there's so much to tell so I'll probably
just do a list.
This week it rained almost everyday. It ruined our dendo. People
wouldn't talk to us on the street, which is our main source of finding
investigators, the investigators we found last week on the streets
didn't show up tot their appointments because of the rain, it was
beginning to look like our streak of success had run out. But! Rain
doesn't stop God's work from going forth! And we still saw a TON of
miracles!
-We accomplished nearly all the standards of excellence, 15
investigator lessons, a member present lesson everyday, a referral,
etc. it didn't look like we were going to have any stats this week,
but the last few days God just pulled through miracles so that we
could accomplish e goals we had made in faith.
-The rain stopped Saturday so that we could have our lesson with kato.
Our paragliding grandpa, but there was no wind, so while we waited we
taught the whole first lesson, then taught him prayer, and told him we
could pray so that God would send wind, and guess what... We prayed!
And guess what, there was wind! The wind was so strong when Hastriter
tried it, it picked him up off the ground 3-4 feet!
-Since it rained so much this week, and streeting wasn't working, we
tried to house at every opportunity. BUT something I have now realized
that housing In the day, in Japan is a dangerous thing! Sometimes,
people don't have close on when the answer the door! Three people In
particular left fairly scarring images....yah. Watch out kids. It's
been really really hot and humid, so people just shred their clothes
during the day, and sometimes don't have time to put them on again
when we knock I guess..haha
-We met with the Suzuki fufu, something we had been praying for, total
miracle, we taught all of the restoration message and they are excited
to pray!
-We met, taught, and committed to baptism a cool grandpa yesterday. We
now have three yakuzokusha's! We're actually he only elders who have
anyone with a baptismal date in the zone, I guess we actually are the
only ones really having much success in general actually...I don't
really know why, but they read us the average stats for the zone and
they were less than a third of our average for the past three weeks.
We sorted and threw away probably 20 trash bags full of garbage this
morning, it took 4 hours or so, no one who had lived in the apartment
before had known how to throw away/sort the trash, so it had really
piled up!
-ok here's the big one! So this week we had been praying for 3 things,
tachiai lessons, a referral, and a family. We really really wanted to
teach a family together. And we set out to find one Saturday night,
housing. But! Everyone kekkoed us (said no) and we were kinda sad, we
really felt like we would find a family! So we biked home, and on the
way home my seat broke off my bike, and I jumped off! I wasn't riding
with hands at the time so I just kinda hopped, and my biked kept
riding without me. For 30-40 yards! It went across the Main Street,
and turned left the finally fell over. It was crazy! We were in shock!
Then we thought that there must have been a screw that fell out that
made the seat fall over so we begun looking for the screw. Then a
family crossed the street and asked if we were ok, and what had
happened. They saw it form their car! Anyways they are super prepared,
they are looking for God's true church, their read the bible daily,
and pray and their daughter goes to a catholic school, and they lived
in Michigan and speak fluent English! Sooo prepared! God found our
family for us! We didn't get their number, but they want to meet, and
will hopefully call us or come to church, I feel like they will, God
wants them to be taught.
That's all I have time for right now, I love you all! This work is so amazing!

This morning's project!