Many, Many Pictures

Baptisms, Birthdays and Busy, Busy, Busy

This past week was super busy. Sister Nagamine got transferred to Sasebo which is actually in Nagasaki Ken and pretty close to my last area! It was really sad to see her go after 3 transfers together but I think we both knew it was coming to an end soon.

My new companion is named Sister Jeffery and she:s from the exotic land of Provo Utah! Funny thing is that we had the same trainer! So we're mission `sisters`. She's super outgoing, half Japanese, and adjusting pretty well to the craziness of the military area. I feel kind of bad because we literally have been ON THE GO the entire time she's been here so far. 

She arrived Thursday, and we promptly ate dinner, taught a lesson to Okamune San, and then had English Class.

Friday, we came to the church for crossfit with the relief society sisters, went home, had lunch, she unpacked while I just talked at her for like 2 hours about all the people in this area that she needs to know before I ditch out of here in 6 weeks, and then we had to leave for a lesson. 

Saturday we came to the church in the morning and helped clean it, then we ran and visited a less active that we needed to schedule with, then we had to come back to the church because 2 of the Elder's investigator was getting baptized! She is the most adorable 84 year old woman who is actually the mother of George, who got baptized here back in August. We get to come help her figure out her baptismal gown and help her change. We also had the privledge of figuring out what to do when we found out Elder Dolbin forgot to tell her to bring extra underwear... Long story short, we figured something out. :) Just don't ask too many questions haha. 

Anyway, she got to be baptized by her recent convert son, and it was actually a little bit scary because she's an 84 year old Japanese woman who was a little scared to actually go into the water all the way, but after some practice and a few tries, she did it! 

After that baptism, we ran home because we hadn't actually eaten anything since breakfast and it was now close to 3:00. After a pit stop at the apartment, we come back to the church for round 2! 

The other sisters that we live with also had a baptism on Saturday! Theirs was a young couple who are in the military stationed here in Okinawa named Sam and Johnathan. It was a wonderful service and a great way to start off a new transfer. 

Sunday was 7 hours of church, as usual, a Sunday night meal appointment with members, and then we went and visited the mom of our 9 year old investigator Britton so that we could fill out the baptismal record that they are going to take to Hawaii for when he gets baptized on November 8th! I'm seriously so sad I don't get to go to the actual service, but teaching him was SO much fun :) 

Today, we actually got to do companionship study for the first time since my new companion got here and we are going to have a super chill birthday for me. Except for the fact that we're actually taking a plane and flying up to mainland tonight for the missionary leadership conference at the mission home. The madness never ends! We literally haven:t stopped moving in the past week haha. And this week will be full of trainings and halloweens parties and birthday celebrations so its not stopping any time soon! 

Shout out to all the birthday wishes! Thanks for remembering! I've already gotten donuts, a cake, a muffin, and cookies for my birthday so it sounds like my plans to get fit before I go home might be a little hindered haha. 

Anyway, love you and thanks for the love and support! See you in 6!

Pictures - Sister Wells Sings in a Talent Show

 

Talents, Tires and Transfer Calls

Another Busy week! I kind of don't remember what we did, so I'll probably just do a flip through my planner today and mention the highlights.  Monday for Pday we all just hung out at the church, and prepared some stuff for the Talent Show that was Thursday. It was a nice relaxing Pday. At night, we went to our 9 year old investigators home for dinner with the family and ate ribs. It was delicious! And we finished his lessons so that he can get baptized in Hawaii when they go there to meet his biological dad and grandpa in a couple of weeks! Then we had our weekly Family Home Evening that we missionaries hold for our recent converts or investigators or anyone that wants to come. It's always a good time :) Tuesday, we had district meeting, did some studies, some finding, had some cancelled lessons, and... yep. That was Tuesday haha.  Wednesday we had a chunk of time, so we decided to go to a somewhat far away place and do some finding! We also wanted to stop by a Less Active that lived by a red bridge and we had only ever been there by car, so we were on the lookout for a shortcut by bike to get there. We reached a path that ran along the river that would lead us to the red bridge and decided to take it. After about 2 minutes along the path, we passed some construction workers, and as we went by them one of them yelled and said the path doesn't go through. Now, I'm not really sure why, but for some reason, my companion and I both decided that we wanted to keep going anyway. After about another 5 minutes of biking, sure enough, the path ended. However, we could see the red bridge not too far off in the distance! At the end of the path, there were also some stairs that led up probably back to the main road. Rather than backtrack, we decided we should just carry our bikes up the stairs and figure things out from there. After a few minutes of hassle, we finally reached the top of the stairs with our bikes in tow. We started biking down a road that looked promising. Not 2 minutes later, did I realize something was wrong with my bike. For the first time in my entire mission, my tire had gotten punked! Moral of the story, LISTEN TO THE WARNING VOICES. When people tell you not to go down a certain path, you should probably listen to them and not just ignore them. That was the lesson I learned that day.  Thursday we went to lunch with one of our investigators, taught a lesson, and had the Talent Show after our English Class! We had quite a few English Class students willing to share their talents, and it turned out to be a ton of fun! One of the Elders and I sang an acapella/ beat box duet to "Secret Prayer" (In case you didn't assume this, he was the beat boxer, not me. I'm not THAT cool yet. I just sang haha.) Anyway, it turned out to be a very fun night.  Friday we biked to another far part of our area, did some finding, visited a Less Active, visited a Recent Convert, and then get signed onto Base and had American Pizza for dinner with some of the American Members. It was a good day :) Saturday, we went onto base in the morning and helped with a service project that consisted of preparing hot dog lunches for the homeless. Then we did some good old finding, visiting of peeps, and then came home for dinner, and then watched the General Womens Broadcast! All in all, a very good day. Sunday, was pretty typical for a Sunday here in Okinawa, 9 hours of church because we had 2 ward councils to attend, starving missionaries because there's no time for lunch, and headaches in the evening because we've been trying to talk to any members we need to talk to for the one chance a week that we get to see them! Then we went and had a picnic at a park for dinner with the other sisters and one of our investigators. Another good day.  Yesterday was our not pday Monday because it's transfer week, which makes pday become Tuesday, so we went to visit a recent convert, who is the cutest little old 80 year old woman who kindly informed me that my skin is oily and has acne and that I should probably do something about it, and then she informed my companion that the yakisoba that she made for her had raw carrots and that she needs to learn how to cook. She also told us about how her 2 random women from the relief society asked her if they could come visit her sometime (her visiting teachers of course) and she was so confused, and didn't really know them, so she just said no thank you. We then explained to her what visiting teachers do. I love 80 year old women :)  That brings us to today! The transfer call day! No one is safe. I have no predictions. But I'll try to save some email time and sneak back on after we get our calls and let you all know the scoop!  Thanks for the love and support! Love you all! Sister Wells
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Hawaiian Japan

Typhoons, Talent and TCORR1

This past week was crazy. Haha I feel like I write something like that at the beginning of all of my posts lately. But for real. 

First of all, we had put SO MUCH TIME AND EFFORT into coordinating members, performances, food, and decorations for the luau and ALL WEEK LONG we all just had to watch the weather forecast to see if we'd get blown over by a typhoon. 

Friday morning, the day of the luau rolls around, and we wake up to gray skies. The military has codes for typhoons and on Thursday we were at TCORR4, and even though I don't really know what that means, I DO know that TCORR1 means that everyone has to go to their homes, NOT LEAVE, and they don't let anyone on or off base until the typhoon passes. 

Anyway, Friday morning comes, and it's looking pretty sketchy. It's super windy, they sky is all one big gray mass, and members are asking left and right whether or not we're still doing thing. Sister Crosby, one of the senior missionaries, boldly posted onto the Okinawa LDS FB page that we would still have the luau despite the wind and the rain unless it reached a TCORR1 status because we missionaries had worked way too hard to let it go to waste. 

The day went by with little change in the weather as we checked sound systems, put up decorations, cooked rice, cut up fruit, and cleaned the church to make it look nice for the open house tours that we would be running during the first dinner hour. 

Now, I'll admit, I was getting a little discouraged. We had had quite a few people tell us that they weren't going to come due to the sketchy weather, and I started to get really worried about the turnout. We had planned for around 300 people to come, and had tables and chairs set up for quite a few along with enough food to feed an army. What in the world would we do if no one showed up?

So dinner and tours were to start at 5:30, and the show was to start at 6:30. Around 5:00, we gathered as missionaries, said a very humble prayer to our Father in Heaven pleading for the night to be a success if it should be His will, and then we waited. 

No later than 5:15 did we already have at least 50 people walk through the door bringing the side dishes that they had signed up for, as well as their friends and neighbors who had never been to the church before. By 5:25 we had enough non members there to start a tour of the church! My companion and I took the second group which started around 5:35. I was SO impressed with the members that we had asked to display each of the organizations in the church and how informative and spiritual our tour was. Everything was going exactly as we had wanted it to, and by the time we finished our tour and brought our group to get their food and find a table, EVERY TABLE HAD BEEN FILLED! Never in a million years did I expect that kind of problem to occur. We literally had too many people show up! It all worked out as people fit more chairs around the edges of the gym, and children sat on the floor near the stage. 

Then we began the entertainment part of the evening, which my companion and I had been in charge of coordinating, and aside from like two small music errors, we were able to enjoy the talents of the young men doing the haka, the young women doing a hula, various talented members doing maori poi balls, tahitian dancing, and singing in hawaiian. It was AWESOME. However, the most exciting part of the night came when everyone in the room started getting alerts on their phones saying that we had reached TCORR1 typhoon status and we needed everyone to get home NOW. The scene then turned into something I would say is comparable to the scene in titanic when the ship is sinking and the orchestra is playing "nearer my God to thee" except that people were simply trying to clean up as quickly as possible and the background music was Elder Ho's Ukelele and Brother Green's soft voice singing "somewhere over the rainbow" as our final number. 

Let me just testify to you, that Heavenly Father is in charge, the members of the church can be one of the most supportive families we have, and we don't ever need to be concerned because as long as we are trying our hardest, God will take care of what needs to happen. That night was truly a night of miracles. 

We then spent the next 48 hours on lockdown, unable to leave our apartment. Luckily, we had managed to download all of the audio for general conference beforehand, and basically just spend the weekend being spiritually nourished. It was a nice break :) 

Time has run short, but I just want you all to know that the organizations and the members of the church can be one of the biggest support systems we have here on this earth. We should never take our beloved brothers and sisters for granted and take every opportunity to express our love to others. Thank you all for the love and support!

Sister Wells

Training, Tahitian and Typhoons

This past week was kind of Cray. 

Monday was Naha Zone Pday which was tons o fun. Tuesday we did a companion exchange with two of the Sisters down there and then we ended up coming back to our area earlier than we expected because of the way our ride situation worked out and had this chunk of time at night with no plans. Oops. So we ate dinner, and said a prayer, and still had no plans. We decided we needed to go type something up on the computer for a lesson, and went to the church, not knowing quite what else to do. Usually, yes we would just go knock some doors, but for some reason that just didn't seem like a good idea. About 5 minutes after we arrived at the church, we get a call from one of our investigators who had been SUPER hard to meet with lately, and she asked us if we happened to be at the church. We were able to meet with her and have an awesome lesson about repentance! Miracles. 

Wednesday, was slightly uneventful until about 8:30 at night when we got a call from the APs. So last week Thursday, our mission president scheduled a training for all of us missionaries on the island to attend. The APs told us all that it would be in Okinawa, our area, at our building. We had called a bunch of the Relief Society sisters to bake lasagnas for the lunch too. However, at 8:30 Wednesday night, we recieve a call telling us the training was NOT in our area, it was down at the Naha builiding, which is like an hour and half bus ride away. We then ran around to 6 different ATMs trying to take out enough money for bus fares, and called a bunch of Relief Society sisters asking them if they could deliver the lasagnas to the church earlier so that the senior couple could then drive them down to Naha. In the end, it all worked out, but it was a little bit of a shock. 

Thursday, we woke up at 5:45 to make it to Naha by 9:30 and had a wonderful training by our mission president. We then had to hurry back to our own area to make it to a lesson that we had scheduled for 5:30. Then at 6:30, we started English Class and at the end of me welcoming everyone and asking for announcements, one of the Elders says "Today is the last day that Elder Horstmeier will be with us. He is transferring to Naha tomorrow! Be sure to say goodbye!" Apparently one of the Elders down in Naha tore up his ankle playing kickball, and was going home. And because we have a trio in this area, they decided they would just take one of our Elders and replace the Elder in Naha. So Elder Horstmeir got emergency transferred to Naha! It was SOO sad :( We hardly even got to say bye to him because it happened so fast!

Then to top everything off, we got a call from the Elders that night, telling us that Elder Wynn, our zone leader who had attended the missionary conference earlier and had been hugging and shaking hands with everyone there, had just gone to the doctor and got diagnosed with the CHICKEN POX. So far, no one else seems to have gotten it, but that was quite the shocker as well haha. 

All in all, it was an awesome week. We also learned how to tahitian dance for our luau next week, and the Japanese Ward had another Karaoke party that we got to go to with a bunch of investigators and English Class Students. Apparently, however, there is supposed to be a typhoon coming in this weekend possibly, which is exactly when our huge luau is scheduled to be. Please pray for it to be good weather because we have spent a lot of time and energy on planning this luau. 

Thank you all for your love and support! Hope conference was wonderful! We'll get to see it this weekend. Peace and Love!

Sister Wells