a good feeling
on a sunny spring morning two years ago, i was sitting in the hallway of a church building in northern kyoto studying japanese literature. a young man named ishida walked up to the church door and peered in so i opened the door and asked him if i could help. he said he had heard about the book of mormon a few months earlier on an online message board, but because of his work schedule, he had never had a chance to find out anything more. that morning he happened to have a few hours off so he decided to come by the church he had seen a few times on his way to work. he hadn’t expected anyone to be there since the church had always appeared empty every other time he passed by, so he was happy to see me and a few other students at the church studying. i gave him a quick tour of the church and tried giving the missionaries a call on their phone but there was no answer. so i sat him down and did my best to remember the first missionary discussion in japanese, something i hadn’t taught in over two and a half years. we exchanged phone numbers and that evening at english class i gave the missionaries his contact information. two weeks later the missionaries let me know that they had finally gotten to meet him and he seemed like a really great guy. because of his work schedule and his wife’s feelings, they weren’t sure how things would go, but they would do their best to teach him. i let them know i would keep ishida in my prayers. a few months later, back in provo, i received a facebook message from one of the missionaries who had been in kyoto that spring to let me know that ishida had decided to be baptized. you can’t imagine how cool that was to me. it felt so good to have been able to help out by being in the right place at the right time. well, this morning as i was rushing to me signal analysis class, professor watabe, my old japanese sensei, stopped me and told me that ishida’s wife had also been baptized and that they had gone to the temple to be sealed this last month. when i heard that, i definitely felt a good feeling.