July 26, 2015

[Mom's note: I guess this makes up for last week ;) ]

Wow things are way crazy here at Honbu, it is super busy all the time, especially during transfer week, and good news didn't transfer hooray more time it Honbu!! but ya anyways I picked up the recorder responsibility, and secretary too, and I still get to do the wonder Financial stuff! Cool benefits of being the financial guy I get to have meetings with all the other Financial Secretaries in Japan and the Finance guy who is in charge of Japan Area Finances, Another interesting fact I am the only Financial Secretary who is not a senior missionary yay maybe hahah anyways we got a New AP and it is my Trainer Elder Horne "Called it" I told him day one that he was going to be the AP and he became it keiji(revalation) or what.

Transfer week at Honbu are crazy, me and Elder Hishii my new companion are in charge of opening new apartments for the mission and since the mission is growing we have to open a lot of new apartments which is super difficult and annoying because it takes time and we can't get a lot of missionary work done, Especially during transfer week we are in charge of a lot of stuff for incoming and leaving missionaries making sure flight plans and everything is good, we both just want to get out and dendo(do missionary work) but were super busy this week, but on sunday we had some time in the evening, and it was super funny we were both super excited and happy and we got a good 1 hour of finding time, but the first house was the funniest we were so excited and like omg so happy to be housing I love this stuff hooray for dendo, and on the first house Elder Hishii did the Contact, long story short we got yelled at for about 4 minutes because the dude was shokujichu(in the middle of eating) but it didnt even matter because we were able to get and get stuff done so we were super happy!!!

Also me and Elder Horne took the written drivers test, we both passed it was a 10 question test made for 2nd graders I think studied the book so  much but then when I took the test I was like I wasted so much time!!! For example one of my questions was "I had a long day of work and I am super exhausted but I decided to drive anyways is this ok?" Like seriously this question was so like i dont even know why they asked it but ya those were the type of questions.

Anyways I love you all hope you have a great week!!

Elder Stevens 

                                                                      Hawaiian party

                                                                        Sister Free ( By the way that pic with sister Free she is the one who knows Dr. Wynn but thats not it she was also best friends with Maddie Glenn yes the same one who lived next door to us, where we jumped on the tramp for hours!! Way cool right?)            

                                                                      zone serious

                                                                       zone funny pic        

                                                District plus investigators and a member

July 19, 2015
[Mom's note: This is all we got from him this week.]

No time this week at all its transfer week and things are crazy more updates next week but lots of stuff to do and no time I love you all talk to you next week!!

July 12, 2015
[Mom's note: I think this is his longest email so far ;) ]

One week down in Honbu with the new Responsibilities and everything went great I was able to get the work done pretty quick and we were able to get out there and get some good work done found a lot of really nice people and hoping that when we go back that we can get some great opportunities to share the gospel.

This week we had ZTM and our ZL's gave us 2 great workshops the first one was on doctrines, principles and applying those in our lives as well as the the people that we teach emphasizing the use of the book of Mormon, and the other was on listen to people it was really good the Mogi (role-play) that we did was really good and I learned a lot from it, we have a lot of investigators in Japan where ever you are that have just one problem and the mogi helped remind us that listening and asking the right questions are super important. 2. You ask Mr. B (who is investigator of Elder) what he thinks about Christ. He said, ?I believe that he was certainly a great

teacher. I enjoy reading his teachings in the Bible. But I am not for sure about his being a son of God and his atonement. 4. You are talking with Sister D (less active for 2 years), she says, ?I don?t quite understand the Book of Mormon. I don?t get too much out of it. So, I don?t enjoy it very much.

These were the two mogis that I did.

I also had an opportunity to give a talk in Sacrament yay!! Always nervous and this ward is an actual sized ward and everyone knows more people equals more scary right??! But it was all good had a lot of help from the lord and spirit so everything went great, this is my talk.

Self intro

-Family, #, age, Little brother has mission call to Fukuoka

-Japan Stuff, How Long: 8 Months, Areas Asahikawa 3 Months Kitami 4.5 Months, and Hakodate 3 weeks

-Favorite Food, Katsudon and sukiyaki

-Hobbies, sports especially Football

-Excited to work in the Kotoni Area, With Kotoni Ward

Message

Akashi

What is Akashi?

Scripture Guide , First sentence after that Alma?s Testimony, Alma 7:11-13

How can we obtain Testimonies like this??

Gekiteki and teikiteki na experiences talk about that.

GoDoy?s Story

Alma the Younger

                -Gekiteki Change

                -Teikiteki Teachings

Getting your own testimony is important but even more important than that is sharing it with all the people around you

Lastly Alma 29:9-10 Share

                -From This Scripture through sharing our own Testimony we can bring others to the joy of the Gospel, as well as remember the joy we felt at our own Conversion.

Akashi

Iesu Kirisuto no mina ni yotte o hanashi Akashi itashimashita Amen.

If you don't know a word good luck with Language study:) After church we also had an amazing activity we taught about missionary work then we split up with members and young men and did some Missionary Work!!!! It was way fun!

But those are the Highlights of the week hope everyone has a great week!!!

                                        Japanese King size LOL!!!                              

  ( Mom's note: king size candy bar in Japan is the normal size candy bar in the U.S.)

                                    

                                                        we climbed another mountain yay!!!

July 5, 2015

[Mom's note: I have fallen behind again. I do have a reason though, it's work. The new system is driving me crazy and we were on a vacation.]

Crazy week got Emergency Transferred!! In our mission we have couple missionaries and they got an all of the sudden call from President Uctdorf, to become the Temple President of the Montana Billings Temple I think, its in Montana and whether or not Montana has 2 or more temples I know not!! But anyways they are leaving on the 10th and there responsibilities are to be in charge of all the money and finances of the whole mission!! So I got a call from the Assistants on Wednesday Morning saying that they want me to come to Honbu (Headquarters) on Thursday morning and I took the the train by myself the only missionary on this mission to have done that pretty cool but also kind of scary only been to sapporo twice for transfers so that was kinda crazy but everything was totally fine so no worries!! Anyways I got to Honbu and I am receiving Training from Elder Getz the Senior missionaries but i will be in charge of all of the finances in the mission until the new couples come and they will be here anywhere from end of august to December sooo my mission life really changed!! I am glad to have the opportunity work really close with President Nakatsuka but I dont really know what to think yet we are in the office until like 4:30 every day and we dont have a whole lot of time to do missionary work but I am excited to get out there and get stuff done in the short time that we do have!! We also dont get language study so that makes me kind of sad... But my new companions are amazing missionaries Elder Birch and Elder Hishii, one is Recorder the other the comissarian (idk how to spell) but they are amazing missionaries and super hard workers so I am ready to pound it out with them!!!! Elder Birch is just one transfer ahead of me and Elder Hishii is Japanese he is one transfer in front of me as well but started his mission the same time as me!! But ya to summarize it Up I am the Financial secretary for the mission until the new couple arrives!!!

Love you all hope you have a great week!!!
__________________________________________________________________________

June 28, 2015


 Another really fast week we have the new area book app right now on
our iPads so we have to take an hour a day and input stuff from the
area books to the new app so that really takes up some time because so
many missionaries before me had such bad handwriting and it is super
hard to tell what they wrote down and it is even harder because they
are writing in Japanese and it literally looks like chicken scratch it
is pretty awful plus they don't always use the best Japanese or didn't
report on the lesson so it's really and tedious so I don't really like
to do it, but you do what us gotta do right. Other than that really
didn't have all the much else go on beside the usual here. We visited
a lot of people and we found 2 new people to teach!! One of them seems
really promising she is a mom of two boys and has learned about
Christianity before so she wanted to hear more and we made an appt.
for Wednesday so I am excited for that. We got a  sushi goach(free
meal) from a member it was meh... I don't like sushi and everyone(5
missionaries in my district) said this place is so freaking good and
it was meh, my companion ate like $80 worth of sushi I had just under
$17 which was the least amount too, the member threw down like $250
and I felt so bad that is so much money! So made her a card but still
feel like I gotta do something more.

Any Sunday was good we had like 120 people for church it was so many
for a Japanese church I was blown away but it felt good to have a lot
of people at church! And have a lot of less actives show up as well we
did have a meal after church but whatever gets you to church right!!
Usual amount of people is 80ish so it was a pretty good jump!! But I
love this ward it reminds me of an American ward so that makes me
happy!!

Love you all have a great week!!!!

_________________________________________________________________________

June 21, 2015


Another week down in the Sapporo Japan Mission!! Lots of fun we
climbed Hakodate mountain not really a mountain but a big hill last
Pday so that was pretty fun! Went to a place called Yakiniku Bancho,
an all you can eat meat place so that was way delicious!! Other than
that is was the usual daily grind in the mission field lessons housing
finding and NA visits, we have a couple of good investigators here,
but progress is slow for most of them right now 2 of them come to
church and keep every commitment but have a few problems that we need
to help them with but things are looking up and I am super excited to
get going!

Saw a fox that was pretty cool the view was pretty good, very
beautiful city and decent view from the top of the hill.