Elder Watkins Japan Nagoya Mission: "In this Mission we... What?

Miranda!!!!

Lil Smith and Elder Pennington

Hey folks! What a busy week! So many things, I'm not even sure what to
cover first.

On Saturday we did a lot of service. We went with a member named
Moizes, who's basically Brazilian Larry the Cable Guy, to his garage
full of random car parts and bath tubs and stuff. He gave us his
security camera system, brand new, and asked us to set it up. So Elder
Gifford got it hooked up to the TV and I did my best to get it on his
smart phone. Using Japanese instructions and a little guessing, I
actually got the cameras to appear on his phone. It was a Christmas
miracle! I felt like a sort of genius, but I don't know if I could
pull of the sane trick again, haha.

Later on Moizes kyoudai brought out a cage containing a Freshly caught
Susume batchi, the Japanese killer bee of Japan. Two hits from that
thing, and you're dead. What did he do with it? He dug in his garage a
minute and came out with a torch. And he lit that sucker on fire! Now
I really felt like I was back home on some crazy adventure. Why have I
not seen these nasty bugs until now? I'm thankful of course, but why
do I have to see them at all? I saw a snake last week too. Almost went
two years with out any such thing.

Sunday was good, two investigators came to church. The members made
friends with them. I sat next to the mission president's 11 year old
grandson and he was telling me about how he shook Elder Rasband's
hand. I told him I shook hands with him too along with Elder Ballard
and Elder Bednar. He countered back saying that his grandpa, President
Ishii, shook hands with the prophet, Thomas S. Monson. I said well of
course, your grandpa was a seventy after all. Then he said, yeah and I
got to ride in the car with the Presiding Bishop, Bishop Stevenson.
"You got me there" I said. Haha!

Hamamura shimai goes home soon!

The pizza girl came and spoke English to me and showed me pictures
of some journals she found for me. Gave me some recommendations. That
was pretty cool. I'll try to go get one this week. But first I have to
fix my bike, because I got a flat again! Yay. This time it's the other
tire.

During the third hour we were teaching our investigator a lesson
when the fire alarm sounded and we all had to evacuate the building.
It was just a drill. We then had emergency training and CPR training
by Elder Suzuki. Luckily our investigator is good friends with
everybody and was totally cool with it all! Haha.

Speaking of general authorities, on Wednesday we had a Mission Tour
with Elder Whiting of the Seventy, currently serving as Asia North
Area president. He and his wife served in the Japan Tokyo North
Mission when they were our age and they can both speak Japanese! That
was pretty cool. He asked me how long I'd been in Japan, my concise
response was "almost two years" that was weird to say. "Well you've
just about got it figured out then" he replied.

My boys

He spoke about a ton of stuff and I had many thoughts about what
he said, but the biggest message was about faith. He asked us to ask
ourselves "do we have the faith to baptize?". We have a mission
president hand picked by the Lord, we are obedient, we work hard,
where are the baptisms? We need more faith to back our works. Faith
that we can see the hand of God each day in this work. God wants it to
happen. We just have to trust him. He then asked us to finish a
sentence "in the Japan Nagoya Mission we what...?" I could hear a
faint reply from my brethren, "love the Lord, trust the Lord, serve
the Lord. 1 companionship, 1 baptism, 1 month". We just need to have
faith in Him who is mighty to save, and we can and will see baptisms,
and miracles every day.

So that is what we are striving for now. As President Ishii has
taught, Faith is the Power.

Well this week is transfer calls. My only wish really is that I can
serve the Lord in whatever capacity He needs me to, and that this will
be the best last two transfers of this mission. Please pray for that.

I'm also going on two Kokans this week, that should be fun. I love
you guys, I pray for y'all every night.

Love,
Elder Watkins