Finding Charity in the World Around Us

 Finding Charity in the World Around Us

"But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him." (Moroni 7:47)

Our home ward asked what scripture we would like on our mission plaque, and Moroni 7:47 came to both of us as one that best captures why we are on this mission.  Since coming here, we have found that charity towards others expands our mind, increases our understanding, and allows us to see more fully how our Heavenly Father sees all his children.  We have seen this in those at church, at the military installation, and in the Japanese community.

For our district meeting on 14 February, Valentine's Day, Sister Melton felt inspired to buy a rose for each of the five sister missionaries in our district.  As they work day after day, showing enormous love and charity to others in sharing the gospel message, with seemingly little results, we thought they might appreciate this small gesture to let them know they are still loved as daughters of our Heavenly Father.

We love having the proselyting missionaries in our branch come to our small apartment for dinner.  This is another small gesture to let them know how much they are appreciated for the work they do.  During dinner we are able to discuss the gospel at a little deeper level than they would with those they teach, while at the same time give them a small respite from the pressure of their missionary work to open up about their interest, hobbies, friends, and family back home.

We have found that charity is definitely not limited to within the church.  At NAF Atsugi, we continued to find new opportunities to serve and show charity to others.  More and more we see this type of charity among other members of the base population.  We provided service during a clean up effort just outside the base.  We continued working with the Chaplain's office, the American Red Cross, the thrift store, the elementary school, the youth center, and other locations throughout the base.  Another example of charity was when the base chaplain was able to approve our application for using chapel resources and facilities.  Though not required nor expected, he was able to streamline the application process to have us approved quickly.  Now we are able to use chapel resources to provide our own religious and charitable services in these beautiful, spiritual facilities.  As we serve, we have found several others who also have the light of Christ in them and are serving with us side by side.  

We have been blessed to observe the Japanese culture at a level we didn't imagine before coming here.  It is true that they are very discipline in how things are expected to be done, but at the same time they are some of the most helpful service oriented people we have ever met.  As we mentioned in our last blog entry, we returned to the Japan DMV to pay the taxes on the mission car, have it registered for the next two year, and have it inspected.  We approached a window where we were told to go to another window next door.  Seeing we did not understand the language, the woman behind the counter accompanied us to the correct office, spoke to that individual about what we needed, and thanked us for our time.  The lady at this second window asked a few questions, which we were able to answer thanks to google translate, completed the forms we needed, and collected our money.  As we were leaving, she called us back to say she calculated the money wrong and gave us back 1000 yen (about $6.50) which we never would have noticed.  She also let us know that we only had to turn in the form she drew up to the next window, and would not have to fill it out ourselves as everyone did.  At the 3rd window, the lady looked at the forms, did some stamping and directed us to the lane #5 drive through for our inspection.  As we waited our tune in the drive through, we watched the cars in front of us to get an idea of what we needed to do.  When a young man came to our window, I showed him our google translate saying we did not speak Japanese.  He called another gentleman out who spoke some English and stood by the car through the whole inspection process at each stop and pointing out what I needed to do every step of the way.  Unfortunately photos of the inspection site were prohibited, but the process was impressive. We left with a better understanding of the expectations the Japanese place on doing things correctly.  But we also came away with a greater understanding that despite the expectations, they are some of the most charitable people when it comes to helping others out.

Beyond the great things we have witnessed in terms of acts of charity and seeing the charity of others, just a couple of other notes about this last period.  First we visited Shibuya, possibly the closest area they have similar to NY Times Square, and has one of the busiest train stations in the world.  Outside the station is an extremely busy business area.  It was interesting to see how the normal traffic flows through this area with the traffic signals, and then seems to magically fill with hundreds of pedestrians crossing at the same time in every direction.  It was fascinating to watch!

The second item was the 9th birthday of our granddaughter Rose back in the US.  We were able to watch her excitement on line when she opened our gift to her, her own quad set of scriptures.  She is such a beautiful, smart young girl whom we dearly love!

With love to all our friends and family,

Elder and Sister Melton


Roses for the Sister Missionaries


Dinner in Our Apartment


Community Clean-up


Car Registration Adventure

Shibuya @ 0:01


Shibuya @ 0:30

Shibuya @ 0:56











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