10/12/2015
Conference week at last!
Dear Family and Friends,
Wow, it truly has been such a wonderful week this week. I hope that
all of you are doing well back at home. I really appreciate all of the
emails and prayers of support. I honestly cannot express how much help
I have been able to receive from all of your support. Thank you all so
much. The time continues to fly by at the speed of light. I still
feel like I left the MTC just yesterday, and that I left the St.
George airport the day before that. I cannot believe how much fun it
has been to come out here to serve the Lord for these next 2 years. I
guess time just flys by when you are engaged in the work of the Lord.
Last week hopefully all of you were able to watch general conference.
It is truly a privilege to be able to hear from the prophets and
apostles each conference session. I was not able to watch conference
until this last weekend, but it was such a blessing to hear all of the
talks and thankfully in English. I learned so much from all of the
talks that were given. In Elder Christofferson's talk he talked about
how we are called to preach the good news. In Japanese the word for
gospel is 福音. In other words the literal translation for gospel in
Japanese means "good news." It was cool to think that as a missionary
I literally am called to preach the "good news" (gospel/福音) to the
people of Japan. I also thought it was really cool that President
Uchtdorf talked about faith, and he mentioned my favorite scripture
Alma 33:23. He talked about how there is no magic to believe. The way
to believe is by constantly exercising our faith. Even though all of
conference was awesome, my favorite talks were by Elder Haynie and the
new apostle Elder Renlund. Elder Haynie's talk was on repentance and
the atonement. The spirit really hit me as he talked about Jesus
Christ volunteering to be the savior in the pre-earth life. The savior
descended beneath all of us, and now he pleads with the father in our
behalf for the salvation of our souls. It is truly incredible to me
how the savior knows each one of us perfectly. He also talked about
how repentance is not easy, but the result will be worth it. I also
really enjoyed Elder Renlund's talk about serving others. Our callings
are not about us, they are about serving those around us. In order to
serve those around us we must see other people as Heavenly Father
does. Only then can we see the true worth of souls. Conference was
truly spiritually inspiring.
I finally was able to finish reading the entire Book of Mormon last
week for the first time. As I came to the end of the Book of Mormon I
read in Moroni 10:3-5. Moroni talks about how we can know of a surety
that the Book of Mormon is true. We always talk to our investigators
about this and show them these verses, but I never really thought
about it myself. After finishing the Book of Mormon I took some time
to ponder about it, and then do as Moroni asked. I prayed to our
Heavenly Father with a strong faith that I could receive an answer.
After praying I received an immediate witness from the Holy Ghost that
the Book of Mormon is true. I know without a doubt in my mind that the
Book of Mormon is the word of God. He gave us these holy scriptures so
that we can be guided and directed back to him. I am sincerely
grateful for the sacrifice that the prophets of old made to preserve
the Book of Mormon for us in these latter days. It is a truly
incredible gift to be able to read from it every day. I sincerely
plead with each of you that even if you only have a little time before
going to bed, to read and ponder about the Book of Mormon each day. So
many people have sacrificed so much for us to have this book now. It
has been a life changing experience to not only read, but really
ponder about what I have been reading while reading the Book of
Mormon.
Last week I invited everyone to join me in praying for others. I asked
that when you pray you would seek to pray for those around you. This
week I have really been striving to do just that. I know that as we
put others first, the Lord blesses us even more for it. God wants each
of us to be able to return to live with him in Heaven again, but we
cannot do it alone. We must help and pray for our brothers and sisters
so that we can all receive eternal life together. When Heavenly Father
sent us to Earth, he did not send us alone. My challenge for this week
is to remember the savior and his atonement throughout the week. We
heard in conference from multiple talks about the importance of the
sacrament. If we always remember the savior, we will always have the
spirit to be with us. I will try my best to constantly remember the
savior throughout this week, and I would invite each of you to join
me. The savior made the biggest sacrifice imaginable, and we cannot
comprehend it in this life, but if we try our best to think about what
he did, I know that Heavenly Father will give us the spirit to always
be with us.
Thank you to everyone who made my birthday so great. Honestly it could
not have been any better. Weakley choro and I surely celebrated it. I
woke up in the morning to a huge mess of strings tied around the
house. Hahaha it was hilarious I will have to attach a photo and
video. I had to untie the strings and then we made some Oreo pancakes
for breakfast. Afterwards we headed to Zone Training Meeting. It was a
good on of fun to see all the missionaries. I saw smith choro again
and another sister in my MTC district. I really miss those days with
them, and hopefully I can see them all a few times while I am out
here. Anyways somehow the zone leaders knew about my birthday, so they
had everyone sing to me. Also sister Welch called me up and sang to me
with president Welch. They are the best. After ZTM we went out to eat,
and I even got to have Alfredo noodles for my birthday. I was told
there is no Alfredo in Japan, but we found some in the mall at a
restaurant. Afterwards I was able to make that cheesecake, and it
turned out really good so thank you. Thank you everything. Also for
priesthood session on Saturday we had some traditional ice cream
afterwards, and bought some werther type things to do the werther
challenge. I heard that you guys did it back at home so I figured we
would continue the tradition here in Japan haha. Thank you again for
everything. I want to try to start a photo share on the iPad. It is
way easier to attach photos and videos on it and you can attach more.
You could also send me videos then, hopefully including the video when
you went boating and you tried to send it. Yesterday we had a fun
festival also. I will send some pictures. We just finished a fall
festival at our stake center a few hours away today.
(Also I don't know if this matters to much, but a few people told me
it was illegal to send jerky to Japan. They didn't take away the
package so it was okay, but that's just what I heard anyways)
Questions:
1. Yes, I loved the package. Thank you so much. I got some really
awesome ping pong paddles and cool ties, from grandma and grandpa I
think. I also got a letter from Kayli, Brinly, Chayla, and Siela. I
got the new umbrella so now I have two brand new ones haha. Owell at
least now I won't need one for 2 years ha.
2. Yes, I got to make cheesecake brownies,p and have Alfredo noodles.
It couldn't have been better.
3. My investigators are doing well. We had to put Shu's baptism back a
week because stake conference is on the 24th, but he is doing great.
We are working on the word of wisdom with him because it is hard for
him to understand why we don't drink tea. We continue to pray for each
of our investigators each day. We might have one other investigator
who could be baptized by the end of this transfer.
4. I think I have been doing a little better. I just try to look for
landmarks and stuff, but I still struggle a little. My companion and I
are doing awesome though. Even though sometimes we get lost we just
follow where the spirit takes us.
5. Our stake will celebrate Halloween, but it is not very big in Japan.
6. We just had a zone training meeting. We also will have trainee,
trainer, training meeting, and hopefully I can see my whole MTC
district there.
7. My bike is holding up really well. I crashed it once and felt dumb
when I did it haha. Thankfully the bike didn't even get scratched and
I was fine also.
8. I am pretty sure that I got grandma and grandpas stuff, and I
cannot express how thankful I am. I truly appreciate it. I don't know
if I got Sheila and George's stuff, but I am thankful for their help
and support also. Thank you for making my day great.
9. We haven't been able to play ping pong again yet, but we will
probably be able to play again soon. My companion is very good at it.
10. I was able to open the video, and it was awesome. Thank you. I
hunk with the new photo share thing, we can share photos and videos
easy. I will try to set it up.
Thank you to everyone for all of your support. I love you all so much.
I hope we can all try our best to keep the savior in our thoughts this
week.
Hirschi 長老
No comments:
Post a Comment