Email April 21, 2019

Email April 21, 2019 – Elder Jackson Kunzler Burton

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter Everyone!

                  I hope you all had a fun, Christ-centered Easter! Here in Japan people barely even  know what Easter is, which is sad, but it was fun teaching people about it! We just said we were sharing a message about Easter and a lot of people were down to at least listen a little. Besides that this week was pretty uneventful, we had a lot of lessons fall through which was disappointing, but we were able to find a few people with interest which was great! The hardest thing is just helping them to continue to progress. A lot of people aren't keeping commitments which is kind of frustrating, but that's missionary work!

We also found three people from Finland and two of them came to a sports activity we had! They aren't super interested in the gospel but they're happy to come to activities and they're fun. Hopefully their interest will grow through more exposure to the church. They're way tall, especially compared to Japanese people, so they had a fun time playing basketball. I'll send a picture.

                  On Easter Sunday I was asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting which was fun. The theme wasn't Easter though, it was working in unity to push the Lord's work forward, which I was happy about, because we need the members' help. So I connected that to Easter and hopefully motivated the members to be a little more involved in missionary work and talk to their friends. We had a lesson after church with a couple of YSA members to talk about doing missionary work and mission prep, and it went really well. One of them said she'd never told any of her friends she was a member of the Church; her and her family actually try to keep it hidden, even though they're active members. But we challenged her to tell a friend that she went to church over the weekend, and she said she'd try! That's a big step for her so it was exciting, hopefully she'll have a good influence on her family and the branch too. The fear that members have about sharing what they believe is one of the biggest obstacles to the work in Japan I think. Once that changes I know the work will move forward much more quickly. But it's not just Japan, as members everywhere follow Elder Uchtdorf's advice and share the gospel in natural, normal ways, I know that the work will hasten immensely and we will prepare the world for the second coming. I know this is God's work and I'm grateful to be a part of it! Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Elder Burton