Seven Minutes

March 6, 2024

Dear Family and Friends,

Greetings again from the center of the most amazing city in the world, where the work of the Lord continues, and Elder and Sister Low continue to work hard to try to bless the lives of others. We have some interesting updates for you, so here we go:

Office Work

Our assignment expanded this week.

Elder and Sister Elsmore, our office couple, are ending their mission. So are the local service missionaries who handle housing and finance. And the other Member/Leader Support couple, the Lerchers, are also leaving us. We’re running low on senior missionaries.

We do have a replacement for the Elsmores. Elder and Sister Burnett are already here and coming up to speed great. But the Burnetts aren’t a bilingual couple like the Elsmores were. There is office work that requires reading and writing Japanese, including foreign registrations for our missionaries, health insurance processing, etc.

So . . . You guessed it. President Node has asked us to help out in the office in addition to our current assignments. Sister Low will be handling “government relations.” Elder Low will take over technology for the mission. This includes supporting the phones for every missionary.

We expect this will require us to spend a day or so per week in the office in Kichijouji. We have transfers happening this week and a bunch of missionaries will be coming in and going home. Elder Low needs to collect used phones, help returning missionaries transfer their photos to a non-missionary google account, and set up and register new phones for all the new missionaries, then get all the security software installed on them. Sister Low will get new missionary foreign registration forms, pension forms (yes, required), and health insurance forms filled out and then work with city hall to get that all set up and registered. This means we’ll be driving to city hall multiple times per month to meet with them.

Can we do this extra work? Of course! If not us, who? Do we have time with all the other stuff we do? Of course we do! We’re glad to serve in whatever way we’re needed. But to put in a small pitch: it’s safe to say that we could certainly use more senior couples in our mission. We’re sure every mission in the church would say the same thing.

Senior Conference

Since we are seeing senior missionaries leave for home, and some new ones come in, President Node decided it’s a good time for us all to get together, learn from each other, and eat good food. So last week we had a “Senior Missionary Conference” at the mission home. He asked each couple to come prepared to present about one miracle we have seen as we’ve served. He told us, “Keep it to one miracle, please. And keep your presentation to 7 minutes.” Elder and Sister Low laughed a little about the assigned time. Not 5 minutes. Not 10. But 7. “We might need to practice the timing on this one.”

The conference ended up being incredible. Absolutely incredible stories. Each couple stood and shared one amazing story that has happened to them. We were completely stunned by each.

We thought carefully about what we should present. Actually, which topic to cover ended up being a “spirited discussion” between the two of us. We have had incredible experiences with young missionaries as they taught lessons that were miraculous. We have seen the gift of tongues happen in real time right in front of us as we’ve helped young missionaries learn Japanese. We’ve seen amazing miracles in the temple – some that wouldn’t be appropriate to share. We’ve seen literal life-saving miracles as we’ve encountered strangers in the street that we can’t explain. We’ve seen great miracles with our family at home as we’ve served. All of these were great, miraculous things we could talk about. But in the end, we decided to talk about the miracle of YSA Family Home Evening.

FHE wasn’t happening before we arrived. We started it the Monday after we moved into the branch. Only 6 came that first week. Over time, the activity has grown and become more popular. We intentionally try to keep it low-key and relaxed, and focus on having fun, learning something, and eating good food together.  And we have learned how to introduce the Spirit into the meeting as we study the gospel together.

We now have about 35 to 45 YSA kids come every week. Last week, 4 of the attendees weren’t members of the church and 3 had recently returned to the building after years of inactivity.

For example, we have one young man who comes every week faithfully. He devours whatever food we have. If we have leftovers, we let him take them home. We can tell he lives on a meager budget and is always hungry. He kept telling us that he comes “just for the food” and once he told us that he’s actually an inactive member of the church. Elder Low told him, “How can you be inactive? You’re standing in the church right now. You’re here every week.”

Two weeks ago, he went to his boss and told him that if he doesn’t get Sundays off, he’s going to quit his job. His boss reluctantly agreed to let him take weekends off from now on. Now he comes to church every Sunday.

We have a dozen stories just like that we could tell – all from a Family Home Evening meeting that wasn’t even happening six months ago. We think that’s a miracle.

At the end of the “miracle presentations,” Sister Node stood and took her turn. She told us the real miracle was the senior missionaries we have in our mission. As we listened to her express her love for each of us and how much we have blessed her life and the lives of our missionaries, the room became a swampy puddle of tears.

After that, President Node told us he has a surprise for us. “We’ve made a video for you.”

You can watch the video here:

As you can imagine, all of us were pretty much a wreck after that. We could barely talk through the tears as we broke for lunch.

These kind of experiences are precious to us. It’s hard to describe what it feels like and what it means to us personally. But it underscores why we’re grateful and lucky to be here.

Meeting With Missionaries

We continue to meet with missionaries and study the Japanese language together with them. Last week we met with about 30 of our 107 young missionaries. We have had wonderful, powerful experiences with many of them as we work together.

Today we met with a young elder who wanted to talk about “what to say” when introducing the gospel to people on the street. He already knew the basic phrases he needs and is very competent in Japanese. So the conversation evolved into the questions of the heart and how to say them best: Why am I here? Does anybody out there really love me? What’s going to happen to my family? Is there a God?

That lead to a discussion of how to show love to others here in Japan and what happens to our friends when they know that we really do love them. It was a powerful discussion and the Spirit taught us as we discussed this together. We have meetings like this with missionaries almost every day. We love them all.

Institute

Last night in our Eternal Families class we talked about “When Blessings of Eternal Marriage and Children are Delayed.” This was a very difficult lesson for us to prepare, and we worried about it quite a bit, but we felt strongly that it’s an important topic to discuss. We have so many wonderful YSA members who desperately want to get married and haven’t yet found a way. Some of them come to our institute class every week.

We taught that blessings do come. In fact, we promised that blessings will come. Anybody who wants the blessing of eternal marriage will receive it. Being a true disciple is what should be primary in our lives. Then blessings come.

We also talked about “the ideal family” and that, in reality, it really doesn’t exist. No family is ideal and we’re all dealing with situations we didn’t ask for or timing that isn’t what we expected. But we continue to work toward the ideal.

In the end, it was a wonderful meeting and we all felt the Spirit teach us. It’s wonderful to be able to look at them straight in the eye and promise blessings, then see their spirits lift.

Elder Low said: “Don’t ever think that nobody loves you. That’s just not true. It’s a trap to think like that. First of all, we love you. And we promise that there are many who love you.”

After the lesson Sister Low served some homemade Mapo Dofu over rice with Asian cabbage and eggplant in it. Once again, we ended up scraping the bottom of the pot. It’s so fun to see them eat and talk and laugh together. We want them to spend as much time as possible doing just that, and we sit back and quietly smile as we watch them eat our food and socialize with each other. Last night, they hung out for an additional hour and a half after the lesson.

Since we have purchased 80 miso soup bowls to use for these kind of activities, we now have a situation where the dishes need to be washed at the end of the event. The kids literally fight over who gets to do the dishes, and the kitchen has now become a crowded social center during cleanup time where they all wash, dry, cleanup, chat, and laugh together. Cleanup time has gotten so fun now that we quietly back out of the kitchen and let them do the cleaning by themselves. It’s wonderful to hear the sound of laughter come down the hall.

We are falling in love with our YSA kids more and more every day. They are truly amazing. We love them and worry about them and feel closer and closer to them as time goes on. We want the best for them.

And that’s it for now. But there are more incredible things coming our way, so stay tuned. Please know that we love you all and miss you. Charlotte, Graham, Bentley, and Wells: We really love you and miss you. Please don’t forget to pray for Grandma and Grandpa Low. We need your prayers.

 

Love,

Elder and Sister Low