8th week in Japan
10/5/2015
Looking for the Elect

Dear Family and Friends,

I am very appreciative of this opportunity that I have to email each
of you every week. It is so much fun to tell you about all that is
going on in Okayama. Thank you for each of your prayers and support. I
know that I wouldn't be able to serve this mission without each of
you. I am truly grateful for your help. This week has been a little
different than all the weeks that I have been in Japan. My companion
Elder Weakley loves to go and talk to people on the street. He has a
lot of courage and it really helps me come out of my comfort zone. It
really lights the "Dendo fire." (dendo is missionary work). Over this
past week I have really learned how to just start talking to people.
Honestly, I will admit that it is pretty tough to walk up to random
people on the street and try to talk to them in a language I barely
know; however, when I see people on the street now I know that they
are all God's children. I know that he loves each of them individually
more than we can even imagine. He wants each of us to be able to
return to live with him someday. Even though when I walk up to someone
and I have no idea what to say, I just start talking to them because
it doesn't matter how bad I speak the language. What matters is that
they know that they all have a father in Heaven who loves them.

Last week I challenged myself and each of you to pray more sincerely.
As missionaries we have to follow up, so have you been doing it? I
have really thought about what it means to pray with sincerity. Before
I thought that praying sincerely was trying to tell Heavenly Father
about everything, and trying to give a long prayer. When I really
thought about it though, I realized that isn't what it means to pray
sincerely. Yeah, I am sure that Heavenly Father does want us to pray
to him by telling him everything that is going on, but that is not
necessarily what praying sincerely is. As I thought about it
throughout the week, we had a district meeting on Friday about  that
exact same topic. Elder Sproat, our new district leader, talked about
how we can pray sincerely. He talked to us about captain Moroni. I
always love reading and hearing about captain Moroni. He referred us
to Alma 46:12-13. I can just imagine Moroni preparing for war, ripping
his coat off, writing what he is fighting for, and all the enthusiasm
he has. He is ready to go out and fight. After all that he has done to
prepare and put on his armor with so much faith in God, he then prays
to God mightily in behalf of blessings for his brethren. It is
incredible to me that even though he is about to go out and battle all
these people, with a huge risk of dying, it says that he prays
mightily for his brethren. There are numerous times in the scriptures
that it talks about prophets praying mightily for the welfare of
others. In 3 Nephi 1:11, Nephi prays in behalf of his people. I think
that in order to pray sincerely we prepare to pray like Moroni did,
and then we pray mightily in behalf of others.

Yesterday after church I was able to witness a baptism. One of the
little girls in our ward just turned 8 and we taught her a little bit
about baptism on Thursday. The whole ward had a little program for her
after church. It was a very spiritual experience. Hearing the
baptismal prayer and confirmation in Japanese was really cool. My
companion and I were invited to participate in the confirmation, and
as the dad gave the confirmation I could just feel the spirit so
strong. I know that the spirit is so real and helps us so much. There
are many times when I have no idea what people are saying, but because
what they are saying is true, I can feel it through the spirit. I know
that it applies the same way to us as missionaries. When we teach
investigators, even though they can only understand some of what we
are saying to them, if we can help them feel the spirit through our
testimonies they will be able to know what we are teaching is true.

I have almost finished the Book of Mormon, and I still continue to
learn so much from it. I hope that each of you get the chance to read
it, even if it is only a few verses each day. I can promise you that
if you do it will change your life. I am currently reading in Ether. I
hope that I can finish it before we have general conference next week.
I hope that conference was awesome for all of you. I won't be able to
watch it until this Saturday/Sunday. I actually had no idea that Elder
Scott had passed away until just this Sunday. I can't believe that 3
of the apostles passed away in such a short time. I hope that your
questions were answered in conference and that it went well. My
challenge this week is to pray for others.

I hope that all of you are doing well back in America. Thank you so
much for all of your emails and packages/post cards. Also on music I
don't really ever listen to music from the iPod or iPad. Each of the
missionary apartments has a CD player, that we just plug a flash drive
into, so that is best. Just the flash drive is awesome thanks so much.
I don't think our iPads have drop box.
Questions:
1. My companion likes to do wrestling, play zelda, skim boarding (in
the Virgin river in St. George), and snow boarding.
2. I am absolutely loving it here! It has been a blast this past
couple months. I am starting to understand a few more things that
people say, but not too much. I am getting better at just walking up
to people on the street and talking to them though.
3. We get to watch conference next week at the stake center. I think
it is at the Okayama church, but it might just be at Okayama Nishi. It
is this weekend though.
4. At Okayama Nishi we never really get to use a computer, unless we
want to pay to use one. At every other area in the mission, they have
computers.
5. Yes, we were able to set up ping pong on Saturday. Sadly not many
people showed up, but we had a lot of fun anyways. I hope we can get
more people to come.
6. Not that I can think of, thank you for all of your help. I know it
is a lot of work to forward to everyone, and forward everyone else's
emails to me. You are the best.

I hope that school is going well for all of you. I love all of you and
pray for you every day. I hope that we can all pray for others this
week. Thanks again for everything.

Hirschi 長老