Pray with Real Intent

Nothing too exciting this week, but we did have transfers. I'm still in aizuwakamatsu and I have a feeling that I am going to be here for a long time... Hahahaha its a good thing.

 

This week as we were tracting we went to go visit an old investigator who was a foreigner.  My companion and I thought awesome, someone we can speak to and we will understand everything they are saying! So we went, and to our disappointment, he moved. It would have been the first person from America that I would have met in Japan. I have met a lot of gaijin but they are usually from Europe and don't like religion. As we were leaving this apartment complex I noticed on one of the mailboxes it had a gaijins name on it. So we walked back up the flight of the stairs but sadly no one was home. So we went again the next day and I go up there all confident because I was thinking sweet I get to speak English. Then the first thing I hear is some weird langauge I thought I had never heard before. I was a little bit worried but than a lady swings open the door and it was a women  from Jamaica. She was speakin ``ya man`s`` to me. I was shocked. But she listened to our message and told us that we can come back anytime. So we are going to visit her again today. How cool would it be to baptize a Jamaican in Japan!?　But I think that if she becomes an investigator we will pass her to the sister missionaries because one of the sisters is an islander too and probably would have a better connection.

 

We are teaching our investigators and I think that they are slowly feeling like they want to know more about the Gospel. I've been praying so hard to know what they need right now and they are such a great family and you want them so bad to have the Gospel in their lives. This week we taught them about prayer and what it really means to have real intent when we pray. There is a difference of sincerity and real intent and that real intent is acting upon the answer you recieve and that if you pray with no intentions on not acting upon what you will receive, then it's not real intent. One of my favorite stories of this is in Alma when Aaron is talking to the king and he finds out the kings needs and he teaches the king how to pray, having faith in Christ a desire and sincerity. The king then does exactly that, he kneels before God and says Heavenly Father if this is true then I will give up all my sins to know you. I think the key was that he told Heavenly father in his prayer what he was going to do if God answered his prayer. I know that it is the same with us.

 

I almost forgot to mention that me and my companion go to a daycare center and we talk with a bunch of elderly people. There are people in their that are 102 years old and they can walk really good and are pretty healthy. Its insane! There is a lady in there who always makes me happy she always is hootin and hollerin when I come and she screams America America! and takes my hand and kisses it and she calls me her grandchild. She is a hoot. Whenever you are feeling down she is a great picker upper. She will definitely go to heaven.

 

Please tell everyone Hello for me and that I love them.  I'm sorry I'm not too good at writting letters and things but there should be something coming your way. Sorry I can't send pictures.  I use a computer at the library which means I can't send anything. So you probably won't get pictures unless someone sends them to me in an email.

 

 Love,

 

Elder Nebeker

Unseen Miracles

One of my favorite people in Hachinohe, Kouhei san is a person that we invited to Eikaiwa.  We had befriended him and he came to church the next sunday. Hopefully you can remember me telling you this in my past emails. But he was baptized! I was so happy! SOOOO sooo Happy! I loved him and it was hard to leave Hachinohe and him but knowing that Heavenly Father is aware of his children and all of his missionary's hard work made me so happy. He has a way strong testimony.  He is very young too, he is 21. I was so happy!

 

That was super awesome, Anyways we saw some other mirales too this week. This week was the last week of the transfer so I had splits with the Zone leaders.  Because the zone leaders work in the same area as us we had to split again so I had 2 splits.  During this split I was able to visit a less active with one of the zone leaders.  We just went there to visit and check up on her because I had given her a blessing about a week ago and she was doing really good which was super awesome. Then the zone leader looks at me and says do you have a message to share. I was a little bit in shock but I flipped open my scriptures and it was scripture about how when we do Heavenly Fathers will, we will be blessed. I asked when she had felt she had been blessed for doing the will of the Father. She told us of how she met the missionaries and how she gained a testimony of church. She actually knew the missionaries for a long time and didn't really care to hear what they said but was nice to them anyway.  Then her son got leukemia when he was in college and passed away. That's when she remembered that the missionaries had told her families can be together forever. She remembered that we can pray and ask for Gods help and she did exactly that. She prayed and asked Heavenly father for help and she felt comforted at that time. She noticed her daughter was having a hard time with it too, so they decided to pray together. After not very long the missionaries showed up at her door again and she was soon baptized after that. We were on her front porch and she told us that even though it is cold outside she feels warm inside. It was really awesome.

 

This week my companion and I went to a festival that a member had invited us to. It was way cool.  There were lots of people and they had this weird tug of war contest with grown up, slightly heavier than normal, men in diapers. It was really quite disturbing not to mention that it is freezing outside. But it was really funny to watch. Then the guy announced that those who would like to join in the tug of war can and then the Church member looks at me and says I challenge you. So I couldnt say no... So I  squeezed my body between some diapered men and pulled. Wait I forgot to tell you why they do this! So they have the two teams, one is red and one is white. If the red team wins the price of rice goes up for that year. If the White team wins the price of rice goes down. Alright anyways I went and squeezed myself between some red diapered men, dont know why, but I did it. And within like 10 seconds I had like 5 camera men on me. So embarrassing, but I did. And we lost just to top it all off. But it's okay because I went to Eikaiwa class the next day and a lot of the Eikaiwa students said they saw me on TV and when I went to church, people said they saw me on tv. So I'm getting famous here in Aizu. hahaha.

 

Love you and I'm so grateful for your prayers.

 

And I think your prayers helped the Hoshi family showed up to the last Hour of church :)

 

Elder Nebeker

Keep Swimming

This week was a week for growth as a missionary. I learned a lot about how the Lord works.

 

This week my companion and I felt like we needed teach our investigator about baptism. So we really thought hard about this and prayed and we both felt that teaching and extending a baptismal invitation will be the best way to determine to what extent they were interested. We talked with our mission leader who just got back from his mission in Nagoya and felt it was the best action.  He said that he would join with us for the lesson. So for the day of the lesson my companion and I had fasted that everything would go smoothly and that either way things went we could take it and have it be a good experience. We had prepared a lesson which included an object lesson to show them how baptism works. It was water, food coloring, and bleach. The water was expressed as our purity in life and the food coloring was represented as sin and things that draw us away from God and then we used a white paper to cover up the cup so you couldn't see the food coloring and expressed that we can hide our sins from the world and no one would know but God will always know. Then we used the bleach to represent repentance and baptism. So when we pour the bleach in it  takes a little bit of time so we used that time to explain Baptism with our investigators and we talked about Christ being the Perfect example and showing us everything that we must do in order to return to our Heavenly Father. So we shared Christ's example with them and how even He being perfect, the Lamb of God, still needed to be baptized. They asked us a lot of questions and were very receptive to our message. The joint helped a lot. So it got down to the end of the lesson and I knew it was time and I asked them if they would Follow Christs example and be baptized. They both were in kind of shock and said that it would be hard to be baptized. And I asked them why it would be hard for them and they explained to me that everyone in Japan is basically budhist and that if they converted and they would lose friends and lose trust at work with employees and that it would be a betrayal to their families. They explained that Japan has a negative image towards Christianity and it is a really hard decision. They asked me a question ``being a Mormon in Utah if you were asked to convert to Buddhism, what would you say?`` I told them I understood and I bore witness of the truthfulness of the Gospel and explained that Everyone has their personal agency and they said that they love this Church and how they are different from all the others in letting people exercise their Personal agency and they thought it was very unique. At this moment I was pretty sad inside but I wasn't going to let myself breakdown because I still had to teach them English. But they told me something that gave me hope and I realize and I know it is essential for them to be baptized. They said that if they can know that this church is true then all those other problems with friends and family won't matter because this is the path. So they said please continue teaching us and so I still have really good hope for them and I hope that through my obedience and diligence as a missionary they can feel of the spirit and gain that witness that this church is true and receive baptism.

 

Now I felt a little bummed that day, not going to lie. I had fasted all day and I just felt like I wanted to pray. So I did, my companion was in the bathroom and I had a good prayer and I really began to learn and be humbled. But I knew Heavenly Father is aware of me and of those we teach and all the people we talk to.

 

So the next day was Sunday and I was greeting the members who were coming in, when unexpectedly a less active member who we had tried visiting when I first came to Aizu walked in.  I was in shock because when I had met him he wouldn't even allow us to pray. He had come to church, I was so happy and I knew Heavenly Father works in mysterious ways and that he is aware of all his sheep.

So we also had an appointment with another less active that I talked about last time. I had made some cookies that you sent for Christmas to take to bring to that appointment and I felt like I just needed to ask him how he gained a testimony of the Book of Mormon because I was still thinking about The Hoshi family and I wanted to know if it was hard for him to convert. And he explained and opened his scriptures and shared his experience it was amazing and we talked about how the he came to understand the scriptures and we received revelation on how to teach using the Book of Mormon and we asked if we can visit him every Sunday night and do a scripture study.  He was actually really happy.  He has a special room that he likes to study scriptures in that is full of plants. So It was a miracle. This man has a testimony!  It's just figuring out why he hasn't come to church in 20 years now.

 

Anyways I don't have too much longer.

 

I love you all and I pray that everyone is happy and healthy.

 

Love,

 

Elder Nebeker

Jinja and New Years

Dear family & friends,

 

This week was a short but effective week.

 

This week was new years which is about a thousand times more popular here in Japan than Christmas... When it was Christmas, I would say Merry Christmas and get glares from people so I didn't say that too much to people... Hahaha. I found out too that everyone works on Christmas, super lame. But I found that saying Happy New years to people is a good way to talk to people.

 

Anyways Because New years is so popular here in Japan, we aren't allowed to dendo (Proselyte) during that day so instead we clean our apartments all day. And it really did need all day to do it. So I was in charge of the Shower and Sink Area.  In Japan if you say bathroom they think you are talking about toilets.  They are seperate here in Japan. Anways, I hadn't seen any bugs really here in Japan since those huge spiders in Aomori and the occasional poisonous caterpillar.  As I was cleaning our very moldy shower, yes moldy because of the humidity, I saw my first cockroach crawl out of the bathtub.... Lovely... He unfortunately drowned....

 

Just in case you were wondering what I was doing on New Years.

 

The following day, we had a couple of appointments with members.  Our misison leader who just returned from the Nagoya mission said that most of his baptims came from a member refferal. So we had a lunch and a dinner appointment and we were able to build a stronger relationship with some of the members and begin teaching them to share the Gospel with their friends.

 

The next day we had the opportunity to go into Koriyama with our investigators and basically spent awhile that day with them doing a lot of activities and were able to build a really good relationship with them and talk about the church with them.

 

The day after we had planned to contact a referral that we received from a less active member.  The referral wasn't home so we had a prompting to go and visit the member who gave us the referral.  She was very sick and said that she was suffering.  I asked her if she would like a priesthood blessing and she said yes, so we were able to give her a priesthood blessing.  It made me realize what a wonderful privilege it is to exercise my priesthood and help this women in anyway I can, she is still struggling with coming to church but we are still working closely with her.

 

The following day after that we had another opportunity to meet with our investigators for a lesson. During this lesson we were able to talk about Christ and his Atonement and that how through Baptism they can recieve the affects of the Atonement in their life.  Our investigator basically expressed to us the steps of repentance wich was super awesome, and they said that before they commit to anything they want to see a baptism to see what is like.  Luckily we have a baptism in Koriyama that we are going to try and get them to come to. I felt like they are really making progress and even though they are struggling with coming to church I know that Heavenly Father can and will provide a way for them.

 

 On Sunday we had an awesome experience.  After Church my companion and I went back to our apartment to do personal study, because we can't do them in the mornings.  We both just kind of felt like we needed to go and visit this less active member who we have never met and hasn't come to church in over 20 years. So we put our coats and gloves back on and went out. We first stopped at the potential investigators house first because it was on the way and found out that they didn't live there anywmore but talked to the man who was there and were able to share our message with him and give him a Book of Mormon.  Then we continued on our way to the less active members' house. We arrived and knocked on the door and no one was home.... I was kind of bummed like why was I told to come here and have him not be here, So I decided to knock on the doors around him to see if there was a different purpose of me going there.  I got rejected by everyone. So me and my companion thought that we would just head back then.  As I was putting on my helmet I saw a man looking at us and it just happened to be the less active we wanted to talk to. He was hesitant at first but then he said "Its cold get in my house." So we went in and were able to share a quick message with him and have an appointment to meet with him again next Sunday.

 

Anyways that was my week for you. Hope you all have a great one!

 

Elder Nebeker