Thursday, February 26, 2015

Nago and miracles

This past week was awesome!!!! Not much to say because the details are quite difficult to explain but I'll try my best.

So I'll start off about H. M. He dropped off the map. We tried to talk to him and he never responded. Granted he is very busy, but he did not once call us back.

We did some gardening for K. Her house wasn't the best shape because no one does anything for the house really. So we cleaned outside. She was really happy about that. We weren't able to meet her the rest of the week really but we will meet her today.

Tuesday we randomly meet K. He walked up when we were about to teach W and he joined us. Even though he wasn't a member he knew quite a bit about our doctrine. He was testifyng to her that if you prayed and read about the Book of Mormon you would get an answer. The guy was so funny. We met him the next day and had a great talk. oOur relationship with him changed 180 degrees and its now good again.

Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and yesterday, we met this guy named S. Y. Holy moly! This guy is the bom.com. He completely blows my mind. He is a 20 year old college student who loves meeting and talking with us. He went in one week not knowing about God to believing that God and Jesus Christ is there. He takes the teachings and quickly applies it to his life like "what would Jesus do?" Then he goes and picks someone's fallen bike back up. Or he felt like giving up when he locked his keys in his car, He remembered "God gave me this life so I can give effort and become a better person. He ran to a key store and asked for help. These things seem small but through small and simple things brings conversation. It shows how much he is learning from the lessons. He asks so many amazing questions. I'm learning more about the gospel because of him. He understands, in one week, probably more about the gospel than all of our investigators do. The bad thing is he leaves in a week and won'tn be back for a month. Ahhhhhhhhhhh why is there always something in the way!!!!! I'm really grateful for him though. He is a wonderful person and I love teaching him. He is a great friend and he came to church too!

T is great! He came to church as well! We called him Sunday morning if he would come. He said at 11. Church and sacrament starts at 10. I got kind of mad actually and called him back (in a friendly tone) "T!!!! Why cant you come at 10? We are going to be singing today!" He laughs and says okay he will come.

Before this we met him on Friday and taught him the story of Enos of how he can know if it is true. He has a hard time understanding what believing means. We sat him down on Sunday and asked him what he thought it meant. Because he always says "if I believe I will be saved. I want to be saved." He actually didn't understand what it was. We asked him, "do you think through Christ you can overcome death and sin?" He said yes. Then we said "then you believe in Christ." Man that was so cool. Things just clicked for him. He was really happy.

C! Holy moly she has a baptismal date! April 5th. We visited her, she said that her mom died. We re-explained the plan of salvation quickly and asked her if she wanted to go to the celestial kingdom. She said yes. Then we explained what baptism was and its purpose. she said "I have interest in that. I would want that." So we set up a date for April 5th.

It seems like all the people that have dates really truly have interest but they are so busy. Its so sad because we set appointments with C and we can never meet her. Her life is so crazy, We can never meet her. Please pray so that we can set this out so she can be baptized!

I love Nago. iI has so many wonderful people! I love Slsen choro. He is the best. Nago is going to explode with miracles!

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

The Lord loves Nago



SO on Saturday I ate sushi for the first time. Holy moly. That was crazy. I've avoided it like the black plague my entire mission but the branch president took us out and I have to eat. Nothing other than sushi. Have you every has wasabi? holy cow that is flaming hot. O about died. I had the most wasabi on my sushi than everyone else.
Wasabi

So this week was a really interesting week.

Tuesday was packed with lessons. We met this woman named M last week. A Japanese woman who is fluent in English and is a tattoo artist. Pretty cool lady. She has studied a lot about religion and has some crazy questions that I have never been asked before. We met her on Thursday as well. Man I don't know how to explain it but she is crazy and cool. We haven't taught anything deep - just answering her questions. She finally told us that she was looking for the purpose of life when she was young and could never find it. Well... we will talk about that later.

W was better this time. She brought up a good point during the lesson. Heaven wouldn't be heaven without my family. It was a destructive thought for her. She thought if there is a chance that I can't live with my family, I don't want to take that risk. But by doing that she makes it so she can't live with her family. Tts sooooooooooooooo difficult.

T is awesome. We talked about prayer and invited him to baptism. He said he always wanted that happy feeling that comes from prayer so he wants to be baptized. He said that "when I pray I feel like I start to forget all the bad things of the world and I like that."

A. Met her on Sunday. Then met her on Tuesday. A cool college girl that is about to graduate. She took the lessons well and started to cry at the end. She is such a kind girl and she really wants the best in this world. She will move soon so that is sad but we will see if we can help.

Wednesday. We met this less active named K. We were so blessed. She probably has different reasons why she isn't coming to church but she said that first.... she has bad relationships within the ward. She was such a strong member and when she went less active, like 7 others did as well.

The church doesn't have perfect people but has a way to perfect people. She has forgotten the purpose of the church and what the Spirit feels like. Listening to her it makes sense logically why she went less active but in the heart it doesn't even compare to the Spirit of the Lord. Good thing she has invited us to help her at her work place. So we will see what will happen.

On Friday we had Elder Whiting of the 70 come to Okinawa. Man that blew my mind. I wish I could say everything that I learned but I'll save that for a different time. Basically it was how we can be better people and do those simple things better. I want to be more like Christ. I want it more than anything right now.

Saturday we taught K. She is doing good. We taught the restoration and she said that she thinks that Joesph Smith did see God and Christ. The problem is that we don't know how much she is telling the truth. She always makes excuses for appointments and coming to church. It didn't feel like she was telling the truth when she said that.

Saturday we met H.M. on the street. He works for apartments with college students so he has been really busy this past week since they have been moving out. He wont make his baptism because of this but we will move it back. He came to church on Sunday!

We met C. Brought her chocolate. Made an appointment for Wednesday. Her mom recently died so she completely went off the map for a week or so. She said she still wants to study.

We met this really great guy named S Y, He was sooooooo cool. He said he wants to go to church to see what is was about. He wants to know why and how Christ became like God (he brought up by himself. We didn't teach that.) He has all the free time in the world before college starts up again. We are super excited for him.

This week was great! Lots of cool miracles that I wish I could tell you more about. The Lord really does love Nago and the people.

Monday, February 9, 2015

Miracles for those who serve with faith

So I'll start this week out with a cool miracle that we saw on Friday night. We have been trying super hard to dendo 3 hours a day - plan specifically as where to go and how long we will stay there. It turns out when we have been doing this, we have been meeting less people. On the other hand we have been having more conversations about the gospel rather than people rejecting us at the door.

Friday night was the same. Knocking on doors and people not answering. We finally get to this one lady. She opened the door and she looked like she was about to kekko us. The beginning of the contact was terrible. It was super awkward and she wasn't really responding to our intro. Then I saw her necklace which seemed to have some figure that looked to be something of Christian belief. So I asked her what that necklace was. She looked at us with a surprised face and said that is was an image of Mary. Then we talked about Jesus for a bit. We asked her if she believed in God and she said that she believed in some large existence. Then abruptly said "why did you guys come HERE" and pointed to her apartment. Then Elder Olsen goes into explaining how we plan every night to know where God wants us to go. So we pray and ask for guidance. Then the woman really started to be surprised. She said, "I received this necklace from a friend. I haven;t worn it in over 2 months. I randomly decided to put it on 5 minutes before you came here. Then you come here talking about guidance and this necklace."

It was cool to see how she was connecting the dots and her belief of God increased. The Lord truly provides miracles for those who prepare to serve him with faith.

This week was difficult. K's understanding of things are pretty messed up. He went from kinjin to well... probably the hardest person to teach. Lets say that he doesn't have a baptismal date and next time he wants to meet, he will call us. He thinks this church is scary based off of not understanding things well. So please pray so he can have his mind eased.

W was surprising. She went from saying that she was starting to enjoy the lessons to saying that she hated our God because of how there are "ranks" in the life after this. I think the plan of salvation is amazing with how people, even thought they may have not been the best, can still have happiness of some sort. She completely missed the point and hated the fact there is divisions of people. She thinks everyone needs to be equal and that women should have the priesthood and be prophets as well. She doesn't understand that everyone is different and will have different outcomes in the life to come. We will try to ease the situation but sadly this may be the last lesson with her.

T is doing great. He is praying every day and feeling happy when he does. We had to review lesson one with him. He still had some points he didn't understand. Now he understands. We want to help him understand prayer a little more. Every time we ask him a question of what do you think about blank.... he says "if you believe you will be saved." I'm not quite sure how to respond to that. It seems like he may understand something but we will address that next time. He has more time this month so maybe we can set up something for him.

D and Ki. We visited on Friday. D was sober!!!!!!!!! He is back on his horse. Since we last visited him about 2 weeks ago, he hasn't drank or smoked! Also the people saying that he has to leave to go to America don't know what is going on so he gets to stay another month. And if they still don't know by then, they will continue to prolong it. He is doing good. The relationship in their family is getting better. We taught a little bit of the plan of salvation and that went well. J came to church with 3 of his friends. We trapped him before he could leave and took them to primary and lucky for us the other member came with her children so there was a primary of 6 kids!!!! That's awesome!

We weren't able to meet H.M. that was sad. We will meet him soon though. It's getting dangerous because his baptism is soon.

Til next week!

Elder J.

Monday, February 2, 2015

He is aware of His children

One thing I could use your help in is prayer for my investigators. It always seems like we can set baptismal dates well but they fall through. It has happened enough on my mission that it is something that I wish to stop happening. Granted some people will fall through, just how can we limit that more? Please pray so that Elder Olsen and I can figure out how to help people apply the gospel in their lives. (I asked Jarom how we could direct our prayers in his behalf. Please join us in praying!)

So this week, wow! We didn't have much time to dendo. The numbers do not reflect what happened this week. We had a bunch of stuff come up and not only that, interviews and Stake Conference took a huge blow out of our time for the week.

Tuesday we actually had some time to go out...... but!!!!! We stopped by K to give her bananas since she was sick. It is a week day and usually D is not home. We got there and saw his car and Elder Olsen said "Oh no. This might be interesting." We talked to D and showed him some videos from Mormon channel. The poor man is so emotional. He cried after the video "The Savior (lord) wants to forgive." Then K came out and we showed some things in Japanese for her. The first video she picked out was a video about strengthening marriages. D is just not very smart with what he says. Doesn't ever watch his words around K and makes her mad. After she got mad he got really scared. He begged us to stay home until his son came home so that they wouldn't fight. So we tried to calm the situation and then the son came home and told them not to fight. Isn't that crazy? An 8 year old boy telling his parents not to fight. D is scheduled to go to America on February 7th. Maybe this might be good for K? We don't know. Only God knows what will happen to their story.

Wednesday, We had a lesson with W. She swore she would never have a spiritual  experience reading the scriptures. As the lesson went on we felt prompted to share something and she read it and she said "I really like this scripture.Ii think this scripture is right." Then had this look of "oh stink. Did that just happen. I just liked this." It was the best. She is slow but she is coming to like the message more and more as we explain it.

Then sitting in the church talking about the lesson, this man walked up to the church and started talking to us. He was saying how there was something going on in his church, so he decided to start coming to ours and be baptized. He has free time every day so we can meet him and teach him. We set another appointment for Friday. His name is K.

We met C for the first time in a while. She is progressing soooooooo much. She has been praying everyday. Her sister that had cancer is going to work now. She says that she thinks that God is there and that He is answering her prayers. We taught the plan of salvation to her and she said she wanted an eternal family with perfect bodies. One of her sons is severely handicapped so she loves the idea of resurrection. I love this lady so much. I wish we could meet with her more.

Thursday, interviews! Kaicho! I'm so thankful for him! We came back then taught eikaiwa. Its going super good. It keeps growing and more and more young people are coming. We have about 4 high school students regularly coming. We sometimes for asaundo play basketball with them.

Fiday we met with K and set a baptismal date for the 21st. He has been to church in the past and has been a Christian for over 20 years. We do need permission to have him baptized on that date since the time he came to church was about 8 months ago. But he really wants to be baptized and willing to do anything to join our church since his church basically disowned him.

Then we had to do weekly planning after that. We had a little bit of time to dendo so we did that.

Saturday was crazy. We first went out a dendoed a little bit but then had 2 appointments with people to go down to the sakura matsuri. At the end of one, we invited our friend to listen to the lessons. He said yes! He said he would try his best to meet often. Right after we left him, we started to head to the church but this American stopped us. (At the matsuri, about half the people were from the bases. there were so many Americans) He started talking about the church and how he used to be in it. He was totally less active. He told us why he was less active and how is was hard to come back. We were walking together and then we found a spot and stopped and talked more. He talked about how he was feeling so guilty about his past mistakes. We told him that he can get rid of that guilt and be able to feel that same joy he felt when going to church. (He said he liked it as a kid.) He talked about the articles of faith and said how he liked the 13th. He tried to recite it. he couldn't do it but he talked about the principles in it. He said how much he like it.

Right at that moment the woman standing right next to us the whole time pulled up her phone and showed it to him. The guy freaked out. The couple standing right next to us the whole time were members. We stopped right in front of church members and they heard the whole thing. She pulled up the articles of faith and showed it to the less active. Wow! Crazy timing. The members testified of how the :ord is always watching out for us and that He loves us so much. Later we got his name and gave it to the Elders who live near him. He said "man it has been such a long time since I have talked about this, but there have been times where I still sing primary songs to myself when I'm sad. I don't know why I'm talking to you guys but there is something that makes me want to talk to you."

This experience really testifies to me that the Lord is so completely aware of all His children. He places them where they need to be in order to come closer to Him.

Later we met that less active K that we found on the street about 2 months ago. He is doing super good. We are going to try to help him find a job on base so he can live closer to us or other missionaries.

Then T and his friend came with us to eat. The friend totally has interest in the gospel. He asked me questions about what heaven was. I explained what it was and I said I wanted to go there. He said "Yeah that sounds great. I want to go too. How do you get there?" I said, "Well that's why we are here, to teach people how the can go to heaven." He said he wanted to go to church if he had time. T's baptism date dropped because he couldn't get to church but on Wednesday he came to the church when K there. They introduced themselves and K thought T was a member. He said, "No I'm not but I have been thinking about becoming one." Then K said he wanted to as well. As a missionary that is awesome.

Sunday was spent in Okinawa and dendo for about 2 hours or so. The numbers are really low this week but there were so many cool things that happened.

Elder J