Dear family and friends,
It’s a New Year here in Japan and we’ve started it off with some new changes and additions to our assignments.
We already have plenty to do, and if you’ve been reading our updates, you know that we keep ourselves fairly busy every day managing multiple tasks from multiple directions. We have assignments from the Asia North area, the Tokyo Stake, the Tokyo Temple, the Tokyo area Institute, the YSA branch in Tokyo, and of course our Tokyo South mission. A lot is going on.
But more is needed, and the needs are great, so we’ve taken on a few more things starting this month. But first:
A New Year
The New Year holiday is the ‘big’ holiday in Japan and we did have some fun. We have a young member in our branch who invited us to be with her family on New Years Eve. It’s an annual tradition for her family to have as many missionaries as will fit into their humble apartment every New Years Eve. Then they eat an amazing meal all together. They made sukiyaki with lots of steak and fresh vegetables, along with ice cream with Pop Rocks in it. We all stuffed ourselves and laughed a lot. We realize what a sacrifice it is for this wonderful family to give up the biggest holiday of the year to serve the missionaries. We are grateful.
On New Year’s Day we decided to be brave and go to Meiji Shrine. It’s a tradition in Japan to go to a Shinto Shrine on New Years and pray for a good year. Meiji shrine is the busiest shrine in Japan on New Years Day. This year, 3 million people entered Meiji shrine on the New Year holiday. (Perspective: Been to a big football game? LaVell Edwards stadium holds a mere 65,000). We wanted to see what it would be like and have an adventure. It was an adventure. We’ve never seen such a crowd before. But all were kind, patient, and polite.
By the way, we were standing in Meiji Shrine with 3 million of our closest friends when the big earthquake hit. But since it was hundreds of miles away, none of us even felt it. We were just fine.
“J-Kaiwa”
Our mission leases classroom space in a neighborhood called Takadanobaba (try saying that three times fast). It’s about a 20 minute train ride from our apartment. Takadanobaba is a college town. The highly ranked Waseda University is there, along with lots of other schools. In addition, there are a lot of English language schools as well as Japanese language schools. As Japanese population continues to decline, more visas are opening to foreign workers in order to cover the workforce shortage that is slowly growing every year – but immigrant workers need Japanese language ability in order to work here. So, a lot of Japanese language schools have opened in Baba in the last few years.
The mission leased the Baba classroom years ago, back when our son Sam was a missionary here. We leased it in order to have a space to teach English conversation classes. Missionaries have taught free English classes in Japan for decades, and it’s a great way to find new friends and introduce the gospel. We have a website and everything. (See: https://goeigo.org).
When the Baba classroom was first leased it worked very well and led to dozens of new friends and members. Then COVID hit and it’s been closed ever since. Until this week….
This week, the mission reopened the classroom, and President Node reassigned two talented elders to the Takadanobaba area for the first time in four years. They’ve moved in, essentially cold, and are now working on finding people to teach. In addition to teaching English at the Baba classroom, President Node wants to try teaching free Japanese as well, and he’s asked us to do the teaching.
We had our first Japanese conversation class in the Baba classroom this week, or at least tried to. The young missionaries are working through their contacts and inviting as many Japanese learner friends as they can, but not many showed up this week.
But it’s only the first week and we have a lot of leads coming in. We’re working on flyers and posters, and the elders tell us there are many students of Japanese who live in Baba and tell them they’re planning to come.
This means we now have to plan lessons and curriculum for this Japanese class every week, and we are doing that now. We’ll be focusing on the requirements for the standardized Japanese Language Proficiency Test and hopefully helping students prep for it. We think this class will take more prep than a typical institute class. The elders will be prepping a scripture, spiritual thought, and invitation to present each week as well.
We have high hopes for this. We already have contacts from Romania, China, Vietnam and other places who now live in Japan and are planning to come. We pray that this will work.
More Institute
As you know, we already teach an Asia North institute class on Thursday nights. The new semester started this week and our course this semester is “Foundations of the Restoration.” We have 34 students signed up for this class and they’re scattered all over Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Guam, and the Marianas.
We taught our first lesson on Zoom this week: The First Vision. What an absolute joy it was to teach. We love the curriculum for this class. We have one student in Korea who joined the church last week. We have another student in Korea who was baptized four months ago, and another who is not a member at all, but comes because she is a BYU Pathway student. Institute attendance is required for BYU Pathway enrollment. This class will be so eye opening and amazing for them and they were so excited on the first night. We really hope and pray we can strengthen and enlighten all who attend. We have high hopes for this semester.
It really is amazing if you think about it a little. Dozens of people, scattered across thousands of miles of ocean and islands, gathering online for a few minutes every week to study the miracle of the restoration – because of the miracle of the Restoration.
“And it shall come to pass that they shall be gathered in from their long dispersion, from the isles of the sea, and from the four parts of the earth; and the nations of the Gentiles shall be great in the eyes of me, saith God, in carrying them forth to the lands of their inheritance.”
Even More Institute
In addition to that, the institute staff asked us to take on another additional class on Tuesday nights. This one is in person at the Shibuya Institute building and we’re teaching it in Japanese. The class: “Preparing for Eternal Marriage.”
We had our first class this week. We put in a lot of time preparing for it. Sister Low worried if anyone would come. She kept saying, “What if nobody shows up?” But the institute staff had already sent out emails and social media blasts advertising the class. They also made a cool flyer and posted it in the foyer of every church house in the Tokyo metro area.
When it was time to start, we had 19 students attend. Pretty great. They came from all over. One came all the way from Nagoya (about 300 miles away) and took the bullet train to attend. He told us he plans to attend the temple the next morning and then go home and hopefully he can do this every week.
Think about that one for a little bit. You’ve heard from us before about the criticality we feel for more eternal families here in Japan. This is an example of the real struggle and desire our beautiful YSA members have when it comes to this subject.
The subject of our first lesson was “Our divine nature and inheritance.” We think it went well. Elder Low asked all the students to ponder this week how our lives are different because we know we are literal children of the most glorified beings in the universe – and what that means for our outlook on life.
After class, Sister Low prepped a big pot of hot miso soup and a rice cooker full of warm rice. The students were surprised by this and yes, they devoured it all. We told them to come back next week – there’s more where that came from.
A side note: We’ve been working for months on getting a set of miso soup bowls for the kitchen in the building. Miso soup is a staple in Japanese cooking, and it really can’t be served in paper bowls. We’ve been asking the branch, stake, and institute how to get them purchased and nobody would come forward and offer to buy them. So we sent a message that we’re going to go ahead and buy them ourselves and they can be a Christmas gift to the building from Elder and Sister Low. A few days later, a beautiful set of 40 miso soup bowls magically appeared in the kitchen. Now we can use them every week – multiple times per week. We’ve already used them twice.
Last night was Friday night and we used them for the Institute “gathering” we have at that time every week. Brother Honda taught an amazing class about this week’s Come Follow Me, then we all sat together and ate snacks, warm rice, and hot miso soup. One student brought a friend from work who wasn’t a member and she absolutely loved it. We hope she comes back next week.
YSA Temple Night
This week we took a step in the right direction for the YSA Temple Night we’ve been trying to get going every Wednesday. A young member of our branch received her endowment and decided to do it on our Temple Night. Then she invited our entire branch to attend and come be with her for that special experience.
We had about 6 or 7 seven members come to attend, along with the branch president and his wife.
Elder Low was assigned to officiate for that session and Sister Low was assigned to the veil. What a joy. From Elder Low’s vantage point in the endowment room, he could see all those members we love, along with some of their parents. They were so beautiful. He sat there and thought to himself, “I can’t believe I actually get to be here and have this experience.” It really was incredible for both of us – here we are in Tokyo Japan, in the Tokyo Temple, thousands of miles from home, and officiating in ordinances for these wonderful people who we’ve grown to love. How can life get any better?
Since that Wednesday night, we’ve talked together a few times about what we would be missing if we hadn’t decided to come on this mission. A miraculous night like that would have passed by and we wouldn’t have even noticed. We would have missed out.
But instead we’re here. We are blessed. We love what we do. We are so grateful.
So that’s our update for now, but there’s more to come, so stay tuned. Dear Grandchildren – please don’t forget to pray for Grandma and Grandpa Low. We need it.
Love,
Elder & Sister Low
ロウ長老姉妹
Elder & Sister Low 