So I guess I will just start with the biggest news, transfers.
So
Elder Thayne will be the new district leader, ( this is his last
transfer) and his
companion is going home :( In his place will be a 4th transfer
missionary from America. Also My companion (Elder Drenk) will be
transferring to Misawa (American Airbase) and in his place I will be
getting a brand new missionary from America named Elder Thompson. This
will be my second companion named Elder Thompson but I will be his
trainer. So I will go and pick him up from the airport this week. Also
Kitakami became part of Ichinoseki District so I can go visit some of my
old Investigators! yay!
So other than that
information I gave a talk on Sunday! They told me I could talk about
whatever I wanted to. So I started out by saying, "I have an
announcement, Yesterday was Transfer calls and ..... I
will...... not be transferring. They thought it was pretty funny.
But I chose to talk about families. I have been
studying a lot about families and I am becoming to realize more and more
just how important family is in Gods plan. God has said that he created
Families for the purpose of our happiness. It was one of the first
commandments given to man. President Spencer W. Kimball said, "Society
without basic family life is without foundation and will disintegrate
into nothingness......" Also in The Family Proclamation to the world it
says, "Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring
upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by
ancient and modern prophets." It was interesting this week as I asked
members when we visited them about what kind of direction do they think
families in Japan are going, they all shared similar things. They said
that a lot of parents don't stop to care about what there child does,
they don't go and support them because they are more worried about their
job. They don't care when their child gets in trouble and so there is no
punishment. They aren't being taught right, so then that child grows up
and has children and does the same thing and family value
disintegrates. I feel very scared for Japan. But This week was 3/11 the
day that the big earthquake and tsunami happened 4 years ago. 18,000
people died from the tsunami. In the Ichinoseki boundaries there is an
area called kessanuma. It is right by the sea and it was hit by the
tsunami really hard. They also had oil tanks in the ocean that the
tsunami ripped out and the oil flooded the city and something sparked
the water so it was a tsunami of fire. It burned most of the city down. I
got to attend a a memorial for it where they had little kids sing songs
about hope. I felt so much hope for the younger Generation of Japan
too. I really felt like I understood at that point why Christ wants us
to become pure like a little child. This week, Elder Nelson
came to Japan and he did a devotional and gave an apostolic blessing to
the members of Japan of safety and love in the homes if they obey the
commandments of God. It was really cool.
Well
Anyways I guess what will be happening this Saturday is we will have a
big meeting about the Ipads so Everyone is going to Sendai to get the
training and I guess we will probably receive them there.
We met with a lot of cool
people this week, first we met with M- our investigator, and he
said he had a lot of questions about the Book of Mormon. He usually
asks some pretty deep questions. But he said that Other Christian
Churches don't believe that Jesus Christ came to America, but the Book of
Mormon says otherwise what do you think? I never really thought I would
be asked this question because I don't serve in the bible belt - I serve
in The Buddha belly. I pulled out 3 Nephi 16 so fast on him,
it talks about how Christ said he will visit other islands and people
who not yet heard his voice and then I pulled out John from the Bible
where Christ said that He will visit a Land that is not Jerusalem after
his ressurrection, people who have yet to hear his voice.
Yeah
he was really impressed and he just started laughing. And said well I
guess that answers that question. He now does not doubt the Book of
Mormon but he still is convinced that Buddhism is correct because the Buddhist religion has never caused war like Christianity has.
We
met with a lady whose door we knocked on and she invited us in
and gave us dinner. She was super cool, she is a retired Elementary
school teacher.and told us about some of the students she had taught. She still follows them today to see what kind of people they are
becoming. She also has a book of everyone that has ever visited her
house and she has them right something down and a picture. She took a
copy of me wakeboarding. She thought it was super cool. But then she
asked why we come and do 2 years of missionary work, she asked is it
because we want to become priests, or to get into a christian school or
something. W told her no, and that we are volunteers because we believe our religion has taught us true happiness and we want to share it with
other people. She was super impressed and told us to write that in her
book so that when other people come and visit they can see it and know
what we do.
We gave her a book of Mormon and will probably
follow up in 2 weeks or so because things will be to crazy with
transfers this week. ：）
That was my week!
Elder Nebeker
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