September 27, 2015

Hello everyone!!

Well this week was crazyyyyyyyy. We finished off the week, trying to pack and get as many lessons in as possible in Ishigaki. Which was a wonderful experience of being able to share my last testimony with many of the wonderful investigators that I have gotten so close to over the past four months on that beautiful island. I am grateful for everything that I was able to learn there and for all the amazing experiences I was able to have there. But also bummed as I left right as it was starting to cool down a little bit :( 

On thursday morning I flew to Naha, then I flew to Fukuoka, then I got to ride a bullet train down to sendai, it was WAY cool. Ridiculously fast and way smooth it was a neat experience. I got down to sendai finally and met my new companion Elder Malone, he is a 2nd transfer missionary who is fluent at Japanese because he is half! #Blessings the Lord knew I would need some help. I am excited to work down here in this wonderful area of Sendai! The ward here is amazing, and loves the missionaries, we hardly have to shop they give us so much stuff. It is beautiful. And they give us a lot of help with missionary work and helping us teach lessons and other things like that, they are really great and really helpful. 

We have some really great investigators that they have been working with for a while and just have a couple problems before baptism but we should be able to help them receive baptism soon! And I am wanting to focus on just getting TONS of new people to teach, to work on teaching as many people as possible through lots of knocking doors and working with members to ask for referrals! I am excited to see this area explode and help the people in Sendai receive the true gospel of Jesus Christ! 

The apartment I am in is easily the youngest in the mission, a full mission is 16 transfers. And all of ours added up is 15. We have a first transfer new missionary straight from America, Elder Murdock. Then my companion Elder Malone who is still a second transfer. Then me and one of my friends from the MTC that I came to Japan with Elder Scheunmen (probably spelled it wrong) But we have been having a lot of fun, and are excited to see this mission see a lot of success and this area.

A gospel topic I have been focusing and thinking about a lot lately is the law of the harvest. That we truly reap what we sow. We have to go out there and give it everything that we have not holding anything back and the Lord can`t help but bless us out the wazzooo. I am grateful for that promise as it motivates me and gives me the hope to work as hard as possible, even when it gets hard sometimes.

I love you all so much, and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Krebs

September 23, 2015

Hello Everyone!!

Leaving Ishigaki :(((((((((((((( Super bummed, I absolutely love everything about this area and about the members and investigators but know that the Lord wants me in Sendai working there. If any one knows Japan geography it is not the sendai super far up north. There is one on Kyushu as well! It is a great area that I have been able to go to the area a couple times and stayed the night. Plus Elder Lucas served there for a long time as well, so I have heard all kinds of good things. I am SO excited! I get to to return to my zone from when I was a greenie as well! 

In Sendai I will be a getting a little baby at my nine month mark. I will be training a newer missionary, I am pretty stinking scared because...Japanese is hard but I am also so excited for the opportunity!!

This week was the beeeeest! We were able to see so many miracles and meet with so many new people we taught all kinds of first lessons. it has been amazing to see the Lord continually bless this area! I feel very blessed to have been here in this time and help the work progress here! 

We saw an amazing miracle on Wednesday, there is a member in the ward who has a husband that is not a member. He loves the teachings but thinks he is too old to join and has bad eye sight so that hinders him as well. But this week the spirit hit him full force. He was having a terrible time, and was pretty depressed and wasn't eating or anything, then he said he prayed and the spirit just came over him and when we visited on Wednesday he was a different person! It was amazing to see how much this gospel truly changes lives. He was not the same person, he was so happy so excited to see us and just was raving about how amazing he felt and how much he wanted to join the church. The other two elders who have been teaching him were so excited, the Lord truly worked a huge miracle in the heart of Kazuo san this week in Ishigaki.

Feeling so grateful for everything that the Lord has given me here and how much I have been able to grow as well. I pray that I was able to do everything that I was meant to do here in Ishigaki and hope to continue to do what needs to be done as I move on to Sendai on thursday! I love the Lord!!

This is the true church of Jesus Christ on this earth, I know that with all of my heart. Hope everyone is doing well and is safe! Pray for all of you often!

Love,

Elder Krebs

September 14, 2015

This week was faster than a typhoon...

This week was a lot of knocking on doors and we saw soooo many miracles! It was crazy how many people were prepared to hear this message and we have all the appointments with them this week so we are going to be very busy. I can`t even put into words how much the Lord blessed us last week as Elder Quinn and I both made a concentrated effort to improve ourselves. The Lord definitely noticed us putting in that little bit of extra work. We were able to make 18 return appointments which should definitely keep us nice and busy, I am so grateful for this work and for the Lord for preparing these peoples hearts!

We had one great experience on thursday as we were going around we remembered a family that we had met about 3 weeks ago, who said we could come back when it was September so we decided to swing by. It was the greatest moment ever, the mom opened the door and was super happy to see us and wanted us to come back to teach the kids and the parents. We have a family home evening activity planned to do with the two parents and 4 kids tonight. It was such a crazy miracle to see how willing she was to just let us into her home and to learn about this wonderful gospel!

Friday we got to have splits, I went with Elder Allen who is a 15 transfer missionary (realy old) and it was a good time, he is absolutely hilarious and we were able to find a lot of people who were willing to have us come back and teach some more. #TooManyMiracles

Saturday we got to see Yudai play some basketball, his middle school team played an adult team and were beating them pretty good. Couldnt have made the adults feel very good about themselves. ;) Then we had an eikaiwa with some kids, it is so great to see them gain interest in learning english, more kids come every single week from this area of apartments and they all love learning. So much different from American kids, I cant imagine ever taking an hour and a half out of my saturday to go listen to people speak japanese...

Sunday we had an amazing lesson with Shimabukuro she has been an investigator for a while, the lesson yesterday was really special and spiritual. We were all feeling the spirit very strongly and were all being influenced by it for sure it was helping Elder Quinn and I testify more boldly, we brought a member who was crying pretty hard the whole time as we testified of the truthfulness of the restoration and the prophet Joseph Smith it made me so grateful for everything I have been able to learn and know as I grew up about these things. I love this gospel so much, and I am grateful for the opportunity to share it with everyone!

I just want to leave you with one of my favorite scriptures

Jacob 6:12 - be wise, what more can I say

boom

Love you all so much,

Elder Krebs

September 6, 2015

This week was really great and we saw TONS of miracles! The first part of the week went really fast, we had a lot of random things that needed to get done around the area as well as this kind of volunteer missionary couple that has been helping us out here moved back to Sapporo this week :( Those first three days shot by so fast and then we hopped on a plane to go up to Naha for a conference with Elder Choir of the seventy. It was so fun to get to meet so many missionaries and get to know them after being with just the four elders here on Ishigaki for a while now! I had a lot of fun especially being with people who have been in Japan around the same time as me, since my apartments have been almost mainly older missionaries!

The conference was AMAZING! I can`t put into words, I went in with a lot of questions and ideas for how I can improve and it seemed like Elder Choi talked about every single one of them. He really helped me and I felt the whisperings of the spirit throughout and I truly felt enlightened from his council and from his words. He spoke a lot about elevating our thoughts and putting them as close to God`s as possible. How we can work our hardest and start with our thoughts which moves to actions, habits, characteristics, destiny. AKA Mrs. Holmes thing that she taught me all the time as a kid. It was fun to see that come back and how much it affected me at that time. Everything comes from our thoughts. We have to make our thoughts higher and more in line with the Lords and we can accomplish all things.

We got back late on friday night, and then saturday was pretty ridiculous! We taught five lessons! And we met with Yudai after what had been a while of not meeting, it turns out that since school has started he hasnt been able to get home until 8:30 at night and that schedule goes until the end of this month. Japanese school is absolutely ridiculous, they put those kids through so much.But he was way pumped to get to see us, we also got to teach the Yabukis who have a baptismal date on the fourth of october. AND THEY CAME TO CHURCH! In ishigaki one of the hardest things is church attendance and they both showed up fifteen minutes early! It was great to see them there, she even dressed up for it! It was also fun to see the Lords timing, as Elder Quinn got two flat tires that day and we were still able to meet with everyone somehow, as well as teach more lessons than we had planned for. I also ate raw fish that had been caught from the ocean an hour before, it was DELICIOUS! Japanese people are way nice and good at sharing their raw fish ;)

Sunday was great with the Yabukis coming to church, we also had a couple lessons and a lot of time to talk to people and make a few return appointments, it was a great experience for me to just continually see how much the Lord is blessing this area. I know that as we continue to work that the Lord will bless this area even more and slowly but surely many baptisms will come and many people will want to hear this message. But it has to come through us doing all of the small and simple things right now to bring that great thing to pass.

I love this work, and I love you all more than the new couch and washing machine we are getting today! Keep your thoughts elevated and enjoy life!

Love,

Elder Krebs

August 31, 2015

Friends and Fam,

WHAT A WEEK! We had all kinds of stuff going on, once typhoon clean up was over we got back to the grind. It was a holiday called o-Bon (pronounced oh-bone) this week, which is comparative to Christmas in America. Families get together for 3 days and eat at the ginormous graves here in Ishigaki, they believe the spirits of their ancestors come and eat with them, it was cool to experience as well as see more of the Japanese culture. Ancestors are very important here, and it made missionary work very fun as we were able to relate everything back to ancestors and eternal families, a lot of people thought it was a good idea but since it was o-Bon they just said come back after so hopefully we will get to meet with them soon!

Wednesday was a good day of dendo(missionary work), we were supposed to have a lesson in the afternoon but it cancelled because o-Bon started that day which was a bummer, she is a lady named Catherine she is Japanese, speaks English, and catholic! She has been taught the lessons before, but we were able to meet another one of her friends from the Catholic Church while knocking doors, who just so happens to be the grandma of some of the kids we play basketball with a lot, so all kinds of neat connections there, and that grandma really wanted to study with us and with Catherine! But we are meeting on Tuesday so hakuna Matata! Then English class that night, fun as always! We had a cool miracle when a less active from Tokyo came to our English class, he had served in the Fukuoka mission 10 years ago, and was just visiting Okinawa for fun, it was a neat experience to hear about his mission I hope we were able to help him grow some desires to return to church again.

Thursday was a fun weekly planning, I really enjoy working with Elder Quinn and am grateful to be able to learn more again from an older missionary! We were able to plan effectively for next week and are really getting the vibe for Ishigaki. #Vibe #Radical then we dendoed all night long! It was way cool, way cool.

Friday we got to go to a legit festival type thing for o-Bon with a member, it was fun and really interesting... I will try to send videos later Japan has a pretty rocking culture, I love it. We were also able to meet hitomi, aka super prepared awesome nice grandma. She already has almost all of the same beliefs as us and when she hears the lessons she accepts it all. But entering into the church through baptism is hard for her because she has had bad experiences in the past with churches. But we are working to help her overcome that as she feels and learns from the spirit more!

Saturday was splits with my main man elder Haoka we have gone together a few times before so it is fun to get to work more with him. As a Japanese person his Japanese is pretty dang good so it was fun to learn a lot there and refine a lot of the things we say a lot, so that it sounds more natural. We were able to see a lot of miracles, and find a few new people for him and Elder Allen to teach! We ate at A&W for dinner which is always delish, in Japan no restaurants have free refills, not even McDonald's...which is really hard for me. But A&W has all you can drink root beer, so I usually use it to my advantage and drink a lot...🏻️it is cool to have seen Elder Haoka change a lot over these last 3 transfers, we came in to Ishigaki together and he was a brand new missionary and he is a completely different person now. He has so much confidence and is just happier! I hope I have been able to change that much, I needed it a lot more than he did when he started his mission.

Sunday was stake conference! Whooooooooooooooot! We were able to teach a lesson with our branch president before church to an investigator named Yuki. Dude is a stud. 30, super talented at music and drawing, just an all around awesome guy, we taught the restoration and he seemed to really like it and was excited about the idea of prayer. Our branch president said it was a great lesson so that was really good to hear from him. Elder Quinn and I are starting to really get in a rhythm of teaching. #Blessings we had all kinds of other lessons and were way busy with those. At the end of the night one lesson fell through and we had a little extra time, we felt like we should go visit a couple people who had said we could come back In a nearby apartment, and met with one! An awesome lady from Indonesia, she is catholic but has stopped going, she really wants to strengthen her relationship with God so she took the Book of Mormon and wants to meet again soon! #Miracles

I feel so blessed to be in such an amazing area! The Lords hand is in everything, I have recently been thinking about how much we have to truly rely on the Lord in every aspect of our lives. There is no way people would agree to meet with us unless the Lord was touching their hearts, I often think about what I would do if two Asians showed up at my door in America and in broken English told me they want to teach me more about God and Jesus Christ. First I laugh, but then I realize that that is exactly what it is like for these people, and they say YES. There is a power in this message and it is only as we rely on the savior that this work can truly roll forth. I love the Lord. I have enjoyed psalm 23 this week about the Lord being our Shepherd. It has given me a lot of comfort that he will guide us, especially when life gets harder.

I love you all so much!

Elder Krebs

August 25, 2015 TYPHOON

THIS WEEK WAS Crazy! We had a ginormous typhoon hit us on Sunday. It is the biggest this area has seen in 50 years the city got pretty destroyed so we were out all yesterday doing service so I am emailing a day later. I will send some pictures and videos later, it was pretty dangerous! Water started coming into our apartment and I had to get up every 30 minutes from 10:30 to 2:00 am to wring out towels and replace them. I was pretty pooped the next day but the apartment was safe so I feel blessed, and we had power all night which was way rare here almost no one did. We had a cool experience when the power went out for like 10 minutes we decided to pray that it would come back so we didn't sweat to death that night, we prayed and it came back like 10 seconds later and didn't go out again after it had been flickering all night before that. Lord truly knows us all and answers prayers even over a small thing like that. We had a mini sacrament meeting on the apartment since we couldn't go to church and it was a really great experience.

Clean up was crazy, the church got flooded, and it got flooded again today as well... But we got to go to a ton of investigators and members to help them!

Other than that though we had an amazing week, Yudai should be getting baptized next week! And we were able to meet with a man and his wife twice this week and made a baptismal date for 10/4 with them, the yabukis! They are amazing, he had received a Book of Mormon like 10 years ago but left it in his hometown, after we met once he had his family ship it down and he started reading it by himself and so did his wife, they have some amazing questions, and are really prepared to hear this message! They are so amazing, I am excited to help them progress and learn more about Christ, a missionaries calling is so amazing!! I am so blessed!

On Saturday we didn't know whether the typhoon would be coming so we planned a lot of proselyting time, so we were out for 7 hours knocking doors! It felt soooo good we haven't had much time to do that lately and it was a great experience! People in Japan are all so kind. I am grateful to be here! On Tuesday we were able to teach a lot of lessons! The lord blesses us as we keep working hard here and he really wants to see Ishigaki see success, so we will keep on pushing!

Love you all so much!

Love,

Elder Krebs

August 16, 2015

I am still in beautiful Ishigaki! Loving every second, it is fun to see a new companion adjusting to the heat down here ;) He is doing great though! His name is Elder Quinn an Elder from California, an awesome guy and really kind. He is older and only has 3 months left on his mission, which further teaches me that the Lord knows I need a lot of help! I am grateful for the older missionaries I have been able to work with here and learn so much from. We are excited to continue to help Ishigaki grow and progress!

This week was pretty stressful with transfers and getting everything ready for Elder Lucas to leave we got to visit and meet with a lot of the members and investigators though! One of the members gave us Japanese KFC, that was pretty fun to try it out! More like chik-fil-a to be honest. We got to see a lot of our investigators and Elder Lucas was able to testify and they were all really receptive so I am excited to continue to help this area grow and continue where we left off with Elder Quinn. So whoot for missionary work in Ishigaki! 

It is fun doing missionary work with a new companion, and learning how they teach, how they talk to people and things such as that! Adjusting is a good thing, and it has helped me learn a lot. We have been able to teach quite a few lessons together already which is a blessing and I am grateful for the opportunity. We met one new investigator our first night together named Yabuki who is AWESOME! He knows a lot about Christian churches, and has been wanting to learn more, he has some interesting questions such as can his cats go to heaven with him, because he LOVES his cats. He is just an awesome 35 year old man who works on a boat all day, I am excited to teach him more!

We had a cool experience yesterday, we were knocking an apartment and we looked down and the other two elders were riding their bikes past us. We asked them where they were going and they said to a less active, and I felt pretty strongly that we should join so we ran down and rode to the less actives house with them. They were just going to get the address of his son so they could try to meet with him, but he let us in, and he had served a mission and I felt like we should try to bring that up. So I started asking him questions about his mission, and we were able to talk with him for about an hour about his mission and he was getting pretty teary thinking about the experiences he had and seemed like he was going to put a lot more effort into finding a new job so that he can come to church again! It was a great experience and just shows that the Lord always has a plan in mind and to see all the little things that happen that made it possible for us to go and meet with him on his one day off in like a month. 

I love Ishigaki, I love Elder Quinn, and I love the gospel! I hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy!

Love you all,

Elder Krebs