December 11

Hello y'all!

    This week was great. We were able to do splits with the zone
leaders in Yonago that ended up being a great learning opportunity for
me. I went with Tanaka choro who is a full blooded Japanese
missionary. It was a great time and we focused a lot on members and
teaching them about member missionary work. We had to help with an
activity that morning at 8am and then we were out until 9:15pm that
night working. It was a full day, and a great time to learn from
Tanaka choro. It felt good to do over 12 hours of good missionary
work. Those are the best days.

    On Tuesday we were also able to go with Brother Baba, the Okayama
Nishi Elders quorum President, and visit a bunch of our members and
talk about missionary work and our plan to work together! It was such
a fun night, and it was fun to work with a member and become a
tripanionship for the night. Working with members is the key in
missionary work. So try and help out the missionaries in your Ward
this week! They need it!!

    On Sunday, we had a full day! We had Elder Aoba from the quorum of
the 70 visit the Okayama nishi Ward. It was a great opportunity to
hear directly from him, as well as being able to talk to him about
missionary work. After church ended, we rain to the train station to
pick up hart choro and his companion so that they could do Hiroyuki's
baptismal interview for us. Hiro did great and is so excited to get
baptized in a few weeks. He is doing so good at remembering what we
teach, and it's been fun to see how much more open with us he has
gotten. I sure love Jessica and hiro's little family. They are the
best.

    After that we went down to the bottom part of our area and met
with a family that we taught a couple transfers back. We had a big
okonomiyaki party, and talked a lot about the church and Christmas! It
was such a fun time, and I hope that they keep on listening to the
message and letting it have the effect on their lives, that it has had
on mine.

  I love this opportunity to serve here in the freezing cold Okayama
city, Japan. It's been such a blessing and I've learned so much
through the hard times, and the good times as well. So many people
here have made an impact on my life and I'm grateful to every one of
them. I am also grateful for everyone at home's love and support. I
love you all!

Lots of love from Okayama city, Japan:
Evans chorrrrro


A Family we are teaching


Zone Conference in Yonogo


Doing some housing

Repentance

Konnichiwa!

    I don't know if my life has been really boring the past couple
weeks, or if I have just gotten really lazy at writing emails, but we
will see what I can ramble on about today from this past week. I'll
talk about everyday last week so it gives me something to talk about.

Monday- Had a zone p day in our area. We went to the park and played
soccer and basketball and it ended up being a good time. Afterwards,
we were able to all work in our area and do splits with each other
because we had zone conference the next day. I was able to work with
elder Wheeler and we had a great time. He is full of energy and loves
to talk to people. It was fun to work with him and learn from him for
a night.

Tuesday- we had zone conference in Okayama and it was great. We
focused on faith and repentance and we are starting a new Book of
Mormon challenge on faith and repentance that I'm really excited for.
It was a fun day to learn how I can better myself as a missionary.

Wednesday- we did weekly planning and had English class. Nothing special.

Thursday- we did some service for the light the world activity that
the church is doing for the month of December. Then we went to a
member's house for dinner and had a great talk with him about how we
can help the Okayama nishi Ward and how we can all work together as
members and missionaries.

Friday- we did a bunch of finding and met with a couple less actives.
We were all over the place but it was a good day. Sadly, we weren't
able to find any new people to teach.

Saturday- we met up with Jay. He is doing good. But since his dad has
told him he can't be baptized, he isn't really progressing anymore.
Hopefully we can get him coming back to church and moving a little
bit. He is a great guy and I've loved getting to know him.

Sunday- it rained all day but the spirit was so strong at church.
Hiroyuki has his baptismal interview next week and he is so excited.
He is still doing well, and he is going to be baptized in January. I
can't wait!

Other than that, I learned a lot this week. I've really enjoyed the
learning opportunities that the mission has brought. I love being a
missionary. This is a great adventure. Sorry I suck at writing emails
so much. But i love you all!

Love
Ebanzu chorrrrro


Last week's note:
Well, nothing much happened in the area this week. We moved
apartments, and learned a lot about finding. There really isn't much
to talk about, and I don't really even have pictures! But I'll send
the ones I have of today at zone sports day. I'm sorry this weeks
email is so bad. I'll make up for it next week! Love you all!!

Evans choro

Okayama Nishi Part 3

 Transfer week transfer week transfer week! I'm so glad that it is
over! And I'm glad that... Deschamps choro and I are staying here for
another transfer!! Woohoo! It's been fun to work with him, and I'm
grateful that we get one more together! Inaba choro took off to
Matsuyama to be a zone leader, which was really sad. But I'm excited
him for him and his next part of his mission, and I'm grateful for the
6 months that I had to work with him and learn so much from him!!

    This week we were literally all over the place helping with
different things. It was a blast. We also saw a couple miracles in the
little bit of time that we had to work in our area. We were able to
meet with a lady again who we found a little bit back and she accepted
to take the lessons, and she gave us all of her information. It was
cool to have someone to be so willing to meet with us. On Sunday
night, we were walking down the street and a guy named taguchi that we
had contacted and gave a Book of Mormon to 2 months ago passed by us.
2 months ago, When we first contacted him, we weren't able to get his
information so we never were able to follow up with him. This time as
he passed by,  I failed to stop him, and I was way mad at myself for
letting him pass without saying anything. Deschamps choro and I looked
at each other and said "let's repent and never let anything like that
happen again."

    Well, about a half and hour or so later, as we were walking by
the train station to meet up with a less active member, I was on the
phone with one of our friends, when out of no where, taguchi walked
by. I literally grabbed Deschamps choro and threw him at taguchi so we
wouldn't miss a SECOND CHANCE to talk to him. (Smooth elder Evans)-
Deschamps choro, being the stud that he is, picked him self back up,
and started up a conversation with taguchi and we were able to follow
up with him, and get his information...

    There were 2 things I learned from this. 1... there are better
methods to handle situations like these, rather than panicking and
throwing your companion at someone. And 2. The lord gives us second
chances. No matter what happens in our lives, if we are prepare, and
ready, and commit to the lord, he will show us miracles and give us
another chance. When that chance comes, we better take it, because
that's when true miracles happen.

    I'm grateful for this opportunity to serve here in Japan. I'm
grateful for all the learning experiences that I've had. -Both the
good ones and the bad ones.- I'm grateful for the priesthood and for
the power it has. As we were called on to give priesthood blessings
this week, I've thought a lot about how important it is to ALWAYS be a
ready and worthy priesthood holder. I'm grateful for the Japanese
people, and for my family, and for my friends. I'm grateful for
everyone's love and support. And most importantly, I'm grateful for
the savior, who i feel out here helping us with the work everyday. I
love this gospel and I love the happiness it brings. I hope you all
have a wonderful week, full of turkey, mashed potatoes, and all of
that good stuff. I'll stick to my sushi over here in Okayama japan.

I hope you all have a good week! Love you all so much!!

Ebanzu choro

Bye Bye Transfer 9!

Hey hey!

I don't have much time to write today, but I just wanted to tell
everyone I love them! Transfer week is here, which means my 9th
transfer is now over. Here comes the double digits! 10! I can't
believe time. It's something I will never understand. Anyways! This
past week Deschamps choro and I have decided that we are going to
start over here in Okayama with investigators. Sadly, the Nishiyama
mom and daughter didn't keep our "make it or break it" commitment, so
we made the hard decision of giving them sometime. We will see how
they are doing later on, but for now we are going to try and find some
new investigators. It'll be fun to start some finding! Because we are
going to be doing a lot of it from now on! I'm excited for this next
challenge.

In order to find new investigators, we have been trying to do new
things. We drove with a member and her boyfriend down to a city in the
very bottom of our area, to see what we could do down there. We had
two less actives that we could visit, and then we figured we would do
some housing. Yeah... long story short, THERE WAS NO ONE IN THE ENTIRE
CITY! Haha! But it was a good chance to work with one of our
investigators and his member girlfriend.

Other than that, we did an iron rod activity on Saturday and it went
well. We did it with the other Okayama Ward and there missionaries. We
were all inside tempting people and guiding people through the course.
It turned out to be a good learning experience for everyone involved.
It's fun to try new things as a missionary.

Anyways, we are taking off so that's about it for this week! I love
you all and hope you have a good week.

Evans choro

One year in 日本🇯🇵

Hello hello!

Not too much to talk about from this past week due to getting sick! My
companion and I have both caught colds which kept us inside a little
bit (which we were not happy about). And other than that, it's been a
hard week as far as the work has gone. Here is a bit of the update...

Jay: was progressing super super well. It was looking like he was
going to hit his baptismal date for this coming week, November 13th.
As he was preparing, he talked to his family (back in China) to tell
them about his decision to get baptized, and he ran into a few
problems. His dad won't let him be baptized right now, and doesn't
want Jay coming to church. Jay and I talked on the phone for a while
on Saturday. He was frustrated, but he told me that he is going to
keep reading and praying and if he feels like he should still get
baptized in a few months, he will let us know. I still feel like Jay
will get baptized eventually. Please keep him and his family in your
prayers!! It's just a minor set back!

This area is FULL of less actives. So we have really been working to
help get all of them back to church. We aren't just going to their
houses and saying "hey get your butt back to church!" We are trying to
help each of them build their testimony and find the reason,
personally, why going to church is so important. But with that, we had
4 less actives who said they were going to come to church this week,
not show up. Not one of them came. Which was a bit of a
disappointment. But now we are just going to switch our mindset a
little bit, and try something new working with our active members to
get the less actives back to church!

On a better note, we had a great ZTM this last week! I learned a lot
about the importance of bringing the spirit into our teaching. I've
thought a lot about that as well. Looking back at Jessica shimai and
her baptism, it was the spirit that did everything in her conversion.
As missionaries, and as members, it is our job to make an atmosphere
where the spirit can be welcomed. The spirit is doing the teaching, we
are the tools it is using.

That's it for this week! Love you all!! And congrats to Drew on the
engagement!! Wooh wooh!!

I love you more than Deschamps choro loves Halloween 👻
Evans Elder