Elder Evans in Kobe: Missions are Awesome!

Hello everyone!

Another week has passed, and a lot has happened! It was a really quick
week because we were pretty busy! Lets just jump right into it! We
taught a total of 27 lessons this week, and for a whole day, we
weren't even in our area. So it was a very successful week for us!! On
Tuesday we had interviews with our AMAZING mission president, Welch
Kaicho! For interviews we get 15 minutes with him, and it goes by SO
FAST so you have to be prepared with what you want to talk about with
him. For this interview he asked us to say the opening prayer for the
interview in Japanese. Then we talked about our four gospel challenge
(Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and applied it to our missionary work.
He gave me some amazing insights on the four gospels, and it was an
awesome 15 minutes!

This week we also had kokkans (companion exchanges) with our zone
leaders. Since my companion is our district leader, we both get the
opportunity to go on splits with the zone leaders. Our zone leaders
are in the area right next to us, and they share the same church
building with us, so their area isn't too far away. I went with Miller
Choro. He is from America but he is fluent in Japanese because his
whole life he moved back and forth between Utah and Japan. His mom is
Japanese and his dad is America. I'm SUPER jealous of his Japanese! We
spent the day climbing hills looking for a couple of less active
members houses. Then we went with my companion and the other zone
leader to a 19 year old members house for dinner. Overall, the kokkan
was a lot of fun! It's always fun to split off with another missionary
and see how they do missionary work.

Yesterday I had to speak In sacrament meeting for 10 minutes. IN
JAPANESE!!!! I pretty much got up on the stand and made funny noises
in the microphone and told everyone to listen for the whole 10
minutes. Poor members who had to watch and listen and endure all of my
talk! That's why enduring to the end is a commandment right? Though it
was a very good learning experience to have to translate a talk, and
then speak in front of everyone. We also had 3 of our investigators
come to church, and a less active member that we have been working
with! We were very happy to see all of them come! After sacrament
meeting, we went to teach one of our very strong investigators,
Yasuyo-San. My companion met her a couple weeks before I got into the
area. She is in her 40s and has a 15 year old son. For her lesson, we
used a fun little analogy, just to make things more entertaining. We
took a dollar bill, a friction pen, and a lighter. We asked her to
scribble all over the dollar bill with the pen. She was very hesitant
to do so, but we got her to do it. The dollar bill represents us, and
the pen represents sin. We mark up the dollar to show the sins, and
then we take a lighter (which represents baptism and repentance) and
run it a little below the bill, and all of the ink disappears. It was
a fun little example to show that through baptism and repentance, we
can become clean. After that, and showing a video, we extended a
baptismal commitment, which she quickly said Yes to. Her baptismal
date is set for the middle of February, and we can't wait!! We are
super excited for her, and for her willingness to follow Jesus Christ.

We were supposed to have a baptism this week, but our investigator has
been super busy with work lately so he hasn't been able to meet, or
come to church! So we will have to push his baptism back a little bit,
so that we can make sure he is properly prepared for baptism! But he
really really wants to get baptized! So we are super excited for him
as well! Please keep him in your prayers, so that his schedule will
open up!

This week on Sunday, I am going to see my first baptism as a
missionary!! The other elders in our area have a really solid
investigator who is going to be baptized. There is still a little
preparing for him to do, but we are expecting his baptism to be within
the next week, or two!

Anyways, the work is moving forward here in Japan! I love being a
missionary, and being on his crazy wild adventure! Thank you all for
reading this! I love you all so much!!

エバンズ長老