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.

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.

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

Miracles and progressions

The chances of meeting Nathan are really low. I would have to be in Fukuoka early in the day or have to be in his zone later in the day. It depends on where I get sent next and where he will be sent. (Jarom got news that one of his best friends, Nathan Sherman, was just called to serve in Fukuoka!! Sadly he will arrive in Japan the same transfer Jarom leaves. We are praying that there is a chance they will be able to see each other the day or two they are in Japan together!)

My memory is starting to fail me. I used to be able to remember so much but there is just so much to remember and so much to do. Its impossible to remember it all without writing it out. That and also I think that the sun has just blown up my brain. Jokes aside, I'm just saying I'm having a hard time remembering all that happened this past week.

So miracles and progressions this week.

Monday we just went to work and dendoed hard since we have been told to try to dendo 3 hours each day. It is such a blessing because it just refills our teaching pools, and miracles are something that comes with it. We found a couple of people on Monday night. One in particular is S. An 18 year old that just wants to find God's love in his life. He believes in God and prays to Him by himself.  He wants to find a way to not only to ask God for favors but to also be able to serve God. This kid is way amazing. We met him on Tuesday as well but since then we haven't had luck.

The area we went to go house was this danchi area over by our apartment. We have avoided it all of my time here because we thought lots of missionaries hammer it. Well actually the opposite is true. Lots of people have never met missionaries before and they seem really welcoming.

Tuesday we had our weekly lesson with W. It seemed like the normal lesson with her. Somehow we got to the point of comparing the gospel to food saying that it is the best taste and most healthy thing in the world. Then it changed to how people have different likes. She said at the end, "wait. I don't know what my favorite food is. I don't know what my favorite doctrine or religion. In order to find out I just have to try to eat it and figure it out." Break way. She said she wanted to try out our religion to see if she likes it. Hopefully things will finally get better with that.

Other than that we met some awesome people. I is one. She is this older woman but seemed to just drink in what we taught. I hope that we can review on her next week.

Wednesday. I have absolutely no idea what happened. That day is just gone from my memory.

Thursday we were able to meet K for a second to give her son some cookies we made and just say hello. It was good. I love that family. Her oldest son who is 18 is smoking now. Not a good thing but hopefully we can get to him soon. He loves reading and has a Book of Mormon. Maybe later on after he graduates we can help him.

We then had eikaiwa. It was super good. We are just trying harder and harder to get more people coming. If there are any ideas that would be great.

Friday. We ran around trying to visit a lot of people and because of that we didn't have a lot of time to dendo. We actually had to split because we had too many appointments that we couldn't cover. We visited E shimai. She got in a fight with a member a few weeks ago. It sounds like a different member sat her down and talked her through it. We called another member about a less active and she said that the less active had bad member relationships. I asked if the member that caused the relationship to go bad was still active. she said "Yes, she is a very strong member."

I don't think it is any of our business to dig into who did what. But if there is anyway for us to help the member relationships to become better that would be great. There are so many people in our ward who are less active because of members.

We were able to go on splits and Elder Just and I went to T. He is great. He has a smoking problem but other than that he said that he wants to believe in God so badly. We taught the first lesson. He said that he wanted to believe in Joseph Smith's keiken.

Later we met a member with the intention to meet her less active son. He wasn't there but right before we left he came home and we were able to talk to him a little bit. He is super busy all the time so this was really rare.

We taught H on Saturday. It wasn't all the best because the member there was mostly building a relationship with M. I guess that is okay but we needed to focus the lesson.

Later we were able to visit K. She was sick but we were able to fit in a 10 minute lesson about prophets. She loved it. She loves the idea how prophets are here to guide our families. She couldn't come to church but I'll talk about what happened in a bit.

We were housing and we prayed where to go. The place wasn't really receiving what we were teaching but in the middle of a contact a friend of ours that came to the Halloween and Christmas party showed up. He is a college student and we were able to get his number and get back into contact with him. A rich blessing!

Sunday was great. The two companionships combined - we had 6 people at church. The other elders have been blessed with crazy awesome people. They had 4 come to church. We had M and T come. Not only that but K sent her son to church. The 8 year old boy walked all the way to church and brought 3 of his friends. They were so funny.

After sacrament it was really stressful because we had to figure out what to do with all the people. Elder Olsen and I went on splits, he went with the Branch President and taught T. I took another priesthood and took M to gospel principles. The other elders took E and taught her and put their 3 other investigators in the youth class (since they had one 14 year old girl come). It was really hard to keep them all with someone they knew and a missionary. But I'm grateful that we have this chance to do this. Hopefully this will continue.

We taught M during 3rd hour. He is doing good. He committed to pray and read as a commandment. After this we will head into the 10 commandments.

We later visited J with a member and a youth. We watched the restoration. She said she felt goosebumps all over her. We testified to her that was the Spirit and it was telling her it was true. She said she thinks its true. The only problem is that she said "I'll come to church ever week. I'll come to church things. But do I have to get baptized? I want to die a catholic." We didn't even bring up baptism and she said that. We will have to explain that to her later. She actually doesn't know how to pray without a prayer book. She is Christian but seems to have forgotten a lot about it. This makes me so grateful for the Restoration of the gospel.

Elder J

The slightest breeze brings about change

So This week! It was super fast. With me being sick on Monday, and p-day being Tuesday, I really only can report on 5 days which 2 of them were filled with Elder Pollister getting ready to go home and the other was planning. In the end there is really only 3 days to review for. A little sad but we were able to see some cool things and some extremely frustrating things. I know the work of salvation will move forward, but it seems like sometimes here in Japan, if we are not careful, the slightest breeze could change someone.

Wednesday Elder Pollister needed to get a hair cut. But it turned out really good. We ran into the less active's (who we found on the street a month or 2 ago) uncle's girlfriend who knew about us. She cut
Elder Pollisters hair and told us about Ko. :ater that night he emailed us but he is super busy. I don't know when we can meet him. iIs really sad but it was great we found a connection with him.

Later Elder Tagawa and Olsen taught Wa. She is feeling the Spirit but she has a hard time believing that it is the Spirit. We are thinking how to testify and teach so that she can understand that she is feeling the Spirit.
Elder Tagawa and I went out to eat with an investigator named Ta. he came to church and few weeks ago and has a baptismal date. We taught him about scripture study and prayer (met twice this week teaching these things) He wants to believe in God. He says that he is a bad person and wants to change. He also wants God to help him in his life, with regards to all things, but particularly he wants to find a girlfriend. I'm not quite sure if that will happen so we haven't promised him that he can. We have promised him that if he relies on God, he will receive what he needs.

On Wednesday morning we gave a blessing to D. it was awesome. He was sober for 3 days or so. On Friday we has an appointment with him. He called us and said something about how he was busy. It sounded exactly like when he called his boss saying he couldn't come to work. I was really worried that he broke down. Well, I'll explain that in a second when i get to Saturday.

On Saturday we had some great things and bad things. M dropped. He said some other people who told him that God told them that Mormons were bad. This is the second religious group that has done this to him this week. The JWs and Happy Science. He completely turned on us. Sad but we pray that he will be able to find happiness where he will go.

On a brighter note Ma's lesson was super awesome! We talked about how to study the scriptures better and recognizing the Spirit. We have taught this before but for some reason this time it was different and it really went home. I love this guy so much. He is starting to change and the process is great. He actually came to church too! Now he is qualified to be baptized any time now, just needs to pass the interview and hear all the rest of lessons. He is doing great. The lesson after church was really good too. We are hoping we can build his faith enough so that he can hear the law of chastity lesson. We watched some things the church had about being gay within the church. There are some super strong gay members so we have hope for him as well.

Later we stopped by Do on Saturday. He was super blasted. It didn't surprised me but I just wondered how could I have helped him more. Probably since he was blasted, Ka went out with friends and didn't come to church the next day. He said it was due to Ka asking for money to do things, like to get her medicine and haircut and other things. He made it seem like she was just taking his money and he flipped out and reverted back. IT IS SO HARD TO TALK TO PEOPLE WHO ARE DRINKING. Just straight up difficult. It makes me have a crazy amount of different emotions. I don't know what to do more for Do if he is so conditional on other people. I guess we just have to help try to change the people before we can change him.

That was our week investigators. We are trying our best in finding for 3 hours each day. It is helping so much. We are finding so many cool people. Trying our best to be guided by the Spirit is a hard thing and takes constant effort but the rewards are great. The slightest of feelings could result in someones salvation. I can't imagine why the Lord would trust a 20 year old boy who can't really understand his own feelings. But we are called and we behold the miracles of God. Granted there are lots of people that say no. At the same time there are some people who say yes. As we have been trying hard to find more time to find, amazingly new areas pop out to us/ We recognize new apartments we have never seen before. We explore and find a huge area for finding. Like last night, we climbed a hill looking for something and on top of the hill was many apartments. I had been told there was nothing up there. But we went and there is so much in Nago to do. I just hope I can help find the people that are waiting.

Love Elder J.

PS: We met this old investigator named J. She is from the Philippines. We thought it has been such a long time since we have talked with her that we will just reteach the restoration. She actually had a friend over so we taught her as well. It was a crazy lesson and all these little things that don't ever come up in a normal lesson with Japanese people came up. It was due to a lack of understanding of basic doctrines. Her friend thought Jesus came from the ribs of Mary. It was really bad. But we just said "as humans we don't understand things all the time so that's why prophets are important." Taught the restoration and J said that she believed that Joseph saw Jesus and God. She was testifying by the end to her friend about the truth of it. At the end the friend wanted a copy of the Book of Mormon and was really happy she met us. It was a great experience.

Blessings

Hello there!

This week has been really weird and flipped around quite a bit. Parts of it I'm not allowed to tell you about but lets just say half way through the week we were put on permanent comp exchange until the end of this transfer. President had to call a few times to talk about what would be best for next transfer. Spoiler alert -  nothing is wrong with Olsen and me. We are going on to transfer 3 together.

So I guess I'll start out with the best blessing of the week which is that 6 people came to church this week! Investigators I mean! 4 of our investigators and 2 of the other elders investigators. Ma, S, W, and K. The other elders had a Chinese girl named E, and an eikaiwa student named T. He and his wife started to take the lessons this past week. Great miracles!

So things learned about our investigators. This week was really rough but great at the same time. We are on the line with Ma and S. Found out some shocking news about H M. K and D are still awesome. C was a bummer. We went to her house and she wasn't home - she has work. Its getting rough with her because it seems like she is running low on money. Her phone was shut off. She is always working. Poor woman. O just want to teach her how she can get through it.

Ma, we met him and he committed to quit alcohol and smokes by the 14th. He didn't come to church because we couldn't set up a ride to pick him up. If he doesn't quit smoking and drinking, we may have to leave him alone for a while. Its a sad thing. We are praying so that he can quit.

S, The elders went on splits and I didn't get to meet him but from what I heard, it doesn't look so good on his part either. He has some kind of problem in his mind where the parts of his brain that are supposed to remember things are failing. So he has an extremely hard time remembering things. He is accountable for things, he just forgets our message. At this point we are trying to figure out how we can help someone who forgets quickly.

M. We were able to meet him 2 times this week. It was super awesome. The first time we watched Finding Faith in Christ. He said that he believes that God loves him and that Christ died for him. The next day we talked about baptism and he committed! February 21st. We will work hard at it. The bad thing is, we have had something tell us since the very beginning that there was something different with him. On Sunday when he came to church, he saw K and they hugged! They are friends! The other elders visited her later on Sunday and she said, "M IS GAY! BE CAREFUL!"

K and D. Dramatic weekend that ends out with a great victory. We did service for them on Friday where we cut some weeds outside their house. Their house is pretty beat up.  It was good to help them. K came to church and said, "I will come every week from now on. I loved it." D and K's relationship is improving and they say it is because of us that it is getting better. Its not really us but rather the Spirit of the Lord they accept when they accept us. K just loves us. She loves the church. She loves the people. She hugs half of the people in the church. Great woman. D is great too. He is just in a dark place. K is trying so hard to get him out. So are we. On Sunday the other elders were able to help D commit to Christ. He said "I know you are here to represent Christ. I know you are  here to do as he does." Then he talked about how Christ told the lame man by the pool to stay and take up his bed and walk. That's what the elders told him to do and he committed to it. He asked us if we practice blessings and asked for one. We will go give him a blessing tomorrow morning.

Monday I was hit with a pretty bad 24 hour virus. I was down the whole day but I'm completely better now.

That's basically our week. We did a lot of finding and found some great people! Hopefully I can start reporting about them next week!

God prepares people

Helloooo!!!!

This week was a little difficult because it was new years. All of our investigators were super busy and not a lot of people were home. At the same time we had some cool miracles.

Tuesday we had a junkai and man that was packed with all kinds of miracles. I can't really say much for what happened on elder Olsen's side but they found 3 investigators, 2 in their 20s and this 14 year old kid that wanted to learn more about the gospel. Crazy they found all of that by just trying to talk to everyone. They also met M. He said that he committed to quit smoking on the 14th! He was bent on quitting so that he can be baptized.

They also met S. Poor guy. Not even out of the hospital for one day and he was completely blasted. Elder Olsen said that he got pretty bold with S. It worked it seems. They figured out what were some of things that were holding him back and how to apply the message to him more fully. His desire is to meet his mom. That's the one thing he wants in his life. Nothing else. No other desire. So from here we will focus on that.

They met Ma as well. He is interesting. He said he doesn't really know why he meets with us. We think that by hearing the gospel he will come to understand. Because he didn't come to church Sunday, his baptismal date dropped. That's okay because not we don't need to rush.

On my side, Elder Jolly and I went and visited E. She hasn't come to church for 2 weeks and the other set of elders when they visited her last week, she said she didn't want to come to church anymore.

We visited and checked out what was up. It turns out she got in an argument with a member. I'm getting tired of seeing on less active files "bad member relationships" Anyways, we talked to her about the temple and sacrament. That was really good. She recommitted to coming to at least sacrament meeting!

We did some dendo and talked to some kind people. Then had a great lesson with W. We taught about the restoration because she was saying "I BELIEVE IN THE EVOLUTION THEORY" mostly because there is evidence. Then we talked about the first vision and the Book of Mormon. Great lesson. Now she wants to know why all of this is important. We will move into the last part of the plan of salvation next.

Wednesday we spent planning for the fireside that we will had on Sunday. We tried to end the night with dendo. It was interesting because we were catching everyone right before they left. Over all, pretty good night.

Thursday morning we had an activity where we drove out to a part of the island and watched the sunrise. The Chinese investigator took her friend and she actually wants to learn more about the church now! Actually the other elders are seeing a lot of miracles with that. E is progressing so fast. It's crazy to see how God prepares people.

We dendoed the day away because we couldn't meet our investigators. We met this one guy named J. He lived in America for 3 years and was in an all Christian high school. We had a pretty good talk with him and gave him a Book of Mormon. We will try to meet with him soon.

Friday I honestly don't remember what happened. I think it was spent in weekly planning and finding. Nothing too special happened.

Saturday was really great the members fed us and I've never had a happier stomach!

We were able to meet D and K on Saturday. It was the first time that we have actually taught them as a couple. It was an interesting experience. But it was something that was amazing to see. They were so open with each other and they were saying how they wanted to be a better family and how they wanted to love each other more. Their relationship has improved so much. K is awesome. She forced D to call in sick so that they could come to church.

Speaking of which, Sunday! D, K, and J came to church. It was perfect. The testimonies were perfect for them. K hugged half of the members, the ones who could speak English came up and started talking to D. K kept saying how it was the best thing ever. Dominic really liked it as well. I have the opportunity to translate for him. I learned a lot because I had to focus for him. It was wonderful.

We had a fireside afterwards talking about inviting people to activities and fellow-shipping them there. It turned out really good. We showed what were some good ways of inviting and some ways to fellowship. The members seemed like they had a great time.

Later on we met C. We haven't met her in 2 weeks. We gave her a talk to read about Christmas and she read it! She said she understands how Christ was sent here to take our sins away. She is thankful to God for helping her family and to us for teaching her prayer. She wants to learn more. I love this woman so much and I love these people.

Love Elder J