Today was fast Sunday and after attending the Kansai Branch with our boys we headed over to the Okamachi church for the baptism of Sakaguchi Megumi. She began hearing the lessons after attending the English class the missionaries teach. She was baptized in the Senri Ward. The service was wonderful as there was over 80 people in attendance including several investigators from that area and others.
She was taught by Sisters Kaneko and Kobayashi. She is pictured here with two other recent sisters baptized this year in the same ward and Sister Iwasaki who helped teach her.
After the baptism Sister McIntyre made us Korean bibinbap. We all loved it and we were pretty hungry by the time we returned from the baptism.
We also did a couple of missionary interviews while at the baptism. In the picture above, Sister McIntyre shows off two belated birthday gifts from the elders. A giant cookie and a dream catcher.
I have had some inquiries about how many baptisms we have actually had this year. We do not normally publicize those numbers, but I will say we have more than doubled last year and are working on tripling our efforts by the end of the year. Having said that, we are not Brazil. I hear that they have a baptism for every door we knock on here in Japan;) I am grateful we are only comparing ourselves to our own past performance and simply striving to do better. Nevertheless, we have seen many great miracles and we hope and pray we can continue to be worthy of seeing the work move forward at a faster pace in the coming few years. In the mission office we have a new convert board (pictured above) with pictures of our converts from this year. Don't bother trying to count the pictures, some pictures have multiple converts in them and for some baptisms we do not have a picture on the board yet. It is a wonderful thing to look at though and see the wonderful new converts from this year and the fruits of the missionaries' labors. We hope we have to add another board. Two may not be enough! We are planning for at least three next year.
After the baptism Sister McIntyre made us Korean bibinbap. We all loved it and we were pretty hungry by the time we returned from the baptism.
We also did a couple of missionary interviews while at the baptism. In the picture above, Sister McIntyre shows off two belated birthday gifts from the elders. A giant cookie and a dream catcher.
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