Elder Watkins Japan Nagoya Mission: Transfer 14: The Final Destination?!

Might be my last time to see Grilo Choro. He's so awesome.

Back in Aichi. It's sooooooooooooooooooooo hot. Just like last summer
when I was here. The train ride here felt like coming back home after
a vacation to another state. So many familiar things that I haven't
seen in a while, mixed with the unfamiliar scenery of Toyohashi.
There's a lot more buildings and people, but the roads seem way
complex for me. Still don't know where anything is.

Express train

The ward is pretty nice. One thing I want to focus on here is member
work since that worked out way good in Takaoka. So this week was Obon,
which is a Japanese holiday weekend when ,they believe, the spirits of
their ancestors come back home from the spirit world for the weekend.
So the whole family gathers together from out of town and has a
celebration, including fireworks. Members of the church often
celebrate by going to the Temple to do ordinances for their ancestors.
So there were a lot of folks from out of town, and a lot of folks who
went out of town last week.

At sacrament meeting, two young women shared their feelings about the
Temple. One of them spoke for about 15 minutes and was holding back
tears as she spoke of the feeling she gets each time she goes. I was
really impressed with the faith of these two teenage girls, they have
strong testimonies and really cared about the gospel. Not something
you see very often I think.

We accidentally bought a bullet train ticket. Whoops. Yolo

We have a lot of investigators here, it's pretty cool to have
someone to teach each day. Elder Gifford is a young and very energetic
missionary. He's so full of energy, it's hard for an old timer like me
to keep up. He has a big vision and he's full of the spirit.

Well I'm slowly adjusting. It always takes a little time to get used
to the new place and people. You just have to give me someone to love,
and a few fun locations, and it all starts to fall into place. I hope
and have faith that we can see miracles here. Toyohashi is actually
the mission president, president Ishii 's home ward. So I feel special
being the first missionary he has assigned to work here since he
became the mission president.

Love you all, have a good week! Fight the fight, finish the course,
keep the faith.

Love,
Elder Watkins

All the young missionaries.

My boys

New trainers, mueller, Mahony, and Klien.

Japanese missionaries

Basically all of the sisters got transferred.

Hamamura Shimai! ^_^

Had lunch at our dendo shunins house with the fufu (senior couple) missionaries. That's right we have a senior couple in Toyohashi! The Suzukis! They are awesome. Suzuki shimai is even going to fix the pants I broke. Anyway lunch was awesome!