An American serving in Japan on American soil

Faith in Failed Appointments and Former Investigators

This past week Nagamine Shimai and I hit our year mark together! It was super fun being able to celebrate it together. I can't believe it's already been a year since I entered the MTC. Time is flying faster than I can keep track. This past Monday we had scheduled to do a FHE with one of the Families on base but it ended up falling through when they got super busy and called us a few hours before the appointment to cancel. At first, we were a little disappointed, but if there is one thing I've learned out here, it's that failed appointments almost always lead to miracles! So with that attitude, we said a prayer, a re-planned our evening. We felt good about going up to a specific part of town, and I actually had one street that popped into my head, so we decided to go with that. Let me just say, it was some of the best finding I have ever done on my mission! It seemed like every single person we talked to was there for a specific reason. We were able to have a ton of really good conversations with people, gain like 4 potential investigators, and 1 new investigator, and have a wonderful visit with a less active to finish off the night. Failed appointments are really just blessings in disguise! Another cool miracle of this past week happened because of the other sisters that I live with. Sister Olsen, my roommate has actually been locked inside the apartment for the past week and half because she caught pneumonia. This has led her and her companion to have time to go through our entire area book and call a bunch of former investigators. They made an appointment with a man named Takeshima. Turned out that by the time the appointment rolled around, Sister Olsen still wasn't feeling good enough to go out so we did a companion exchange I ended up going to the appointment with Sister Pinzon. The first meeting we had with him was really good and he let us know that he had been really struggling lately with his life and purpose and just a lot of trials that have come up. When he recieved sister Pinzon's phone call out of the blue, he felt like this was his answer to his problems. He was able to attend a baptismal service on Saturday and come to church yesterday. Because of Sister Olsen's continued sickliness, we've actually ended up being the missionaries teaching him, and yesterday when we tried to make a goal for baptism with him his only real concern was that it would be embarassing to have so many people there watching him. He said if it was only us, and the person performing the baptism, he would do it. So now, we've just got to convince him to let a few more people attend the service, and I think we can set a date with him! Anyway, there's miracles happening every single day here. Okinawa is the best place to be. Even though I literally have sweat dripping off my nose when talking to people on the streets, there is no where else in the world I would rather be right now and I'm so happy to have this opportunity! Hope everyone enjoys their 4th of July weekend and remember to be grateful for religious freedom! Sister Wells

Pictures of Fish Eating Dead Skin!

Blast From The Past

This week was an interesting one full of goodbyes and reunions! I went to the airport Thursday morning to see off my dying companion head back home to America! It was super weird. Then, Thursday night Nagamine Shimai came to be my new companion! She was my roommate in the MTC and I love her to death! I'm so excited that we are going to get to work together. It's funny because my MTC companion and her MTC companion are a companionship right now up in Hiroshima. We basically just switched. It's been super fun so far. Okinawa has officially gotten hot. The rain is getting less frequent and the sun is burning us up. I got my first sunburn of the season this past weekend. By the way, you know how people always tell you that even when it's cloudy the suns rays are super strong and you're super likely to get sunburned? Not true. Not in Okinawa. I spent 6 weeks outside in the cloudy rain weather and never once got a sun burn. Then we had one day of sunshine and I'm a tomato. Myth busted. Anyway, this past week we've been trying to get a feel for how we want this transfer to go and working our tails off trying to find some new investigators and trying to determine whether or current investigators have real interest or not. Nagamine Shimai is a super hard worker and her Japanese is fly so we've been able to see a lot of miracles in finding and in the less active work we've been doing. There will be more to tell soon I'm sure! I hope everyone is enjoying their Summer and appreciating things like cars and lack of humidity. Okinawa is wonderful, my companion is wonderful and this work is truly the Lord's work! Love you all and thanks for the support! Sista Wells

My First Kill

My companion goes home in 3 days! Weird. We get transfer calls today. Hence the Tuesday P-Day. My prediction: I'm still in Okinawa, and I have a new companion. Haha. I'll let you know next week what happens! This week has been the wettest yet. Non stop rain! We're basically always wet. And our rainsuits have become somewhat useless. Makeup is pretty much useless as well. My mascara literally just gets rained off my face. I never thought I could be so wet. ANYWAY. This week has been full of member visits and goodbyes. And rain. It's weird having a companion getting ready to leave and sharing all of the things she's learned and what not. A recurring theme of this past week though has been "Never give up, never surrender." Missions aren't easy. There's times when we wonder why we're here, if we're making any difference, and if we should just go home. But a year and a half isn't as long as it seems at first. And the fact is, before we even came out here, God knew what we would accomplish, and he knew what we wouldn't accomplish. And he still sent us out here. Which means that when all is said and done, we came out here for a reason. We may not ever know the exact reason, but there's a reason we're out here nonetheless. With 5 and a half months more to go, I'm excited to work hard until the very end and be able to look back without any regrets. The church is true, missions are wonderful, hard, fun, and wet. Thanks for the love and support! Wet Wells

Pictures of Sister Wells water bending!

Chibariyo

The time is winding down and my companion is going home in like 10 days now! Yeesh time is flying. Safe to say the next week and a half is going to be full of hard work and lots of goodbyes for her! We had an interesting experience this past Saturday where we got to go onto base for a "Songfest" held at one of the chapels. It basically consisted of the different congregations that meet at that chapel (Catholic, traditional, contemporary, and gospel is what they were called) each doing musical performances. It was actually quite a lot of fun. Very Very different from our church music haha. A lot of standing up, putting your hands in the air, singing along, and repeated choruses. Overall, a good experience. Another event of last week was at soccer! I was actually starting to get pretty into the game, and even starting to be somewhat useful, learning how to aim and not completely freak out when the ball comes my way, I start running towards it, and out of the corner of my eye I see Elder Bullock coming my way. Next thing I knew, I was on the ground, trying to get back up, only to discover a large amount of pain near my right ankle. Now 2 days later, I've got a swollen, slightly purple foot that makes me limp a little bit everywhere I go. Good times. Anyway, I've got more stories about probing questions from investigators, fun p day plans and crazy military Americans, but I want to have time to send pictures this week so it's gonna be a short one. Thanks everyone for the love and support. Hope you're all doing your part as well to do missionary work in your own lives, because we truly can't do this without the help of the members. Peace and Love! Wells Shimai

Keep Calm and MormOn!

This past week went by super fast! Some notable things that happened: We found some really cheap meat last week at the store on Pday and decided to give it a try. None of us knew the characters on the packaging, so we didn't actually know what it was. The next day, we cook it up, and its a very strange texture, and we get a little curious as to what we're actually eating, decide to look up the characters, and discover we bought "granulated chicken liver". That was an adventure. On Tuesday my companion and I walk into the church and 2 of the elders asked us if we rang the doorbell. We said no and went on our way. A few minutes later a member that happened to be at the church comes our way with a woman who had been waiting at the other door for someone to come let her in. Apparently she used to go to a baptist church back in the states and her daughter had been bugging her to go to church again, so she had seen our beautiful new building along the road and decided to stop in and see what time our service is! I couldn't even believe it! People just walking in to church wanting to come! We didn't even have to do anything haha. She was busy last week and couldn't make it but said she is planning on coming this next week so I'm sure there will be more to say about that soon! Well, turns out 4 computers, 10 missionaries, and p day plans make for some bad computer scheduling and my time is cut short this week. I'll be sure to add a good message next time! Love you all and thanks for the love and support! Wells Shimai