Dear Everyone,
I CAN ALMOST TASTE JAPAN! It gets so much closer with every P-day, the weeks go by so fast here I can't believe I have already been here for this long!! It is mind blowing!! I love every second and feel so much closer to the Lord now!
We had a good week of learning, I feel as if with every day I understand how I work more and I understand the importance of this work and the responsibility I have as a missionary! It was nice as well to have my companion all healthy again! We were able to teach all of our lessons and I feel as if they went well! We are really getting connected with our investigators and I feel really close to them, even though they are just our teachers!
We had a two great devotionals this week one from a 70 named Elder Kechar that was probably my favorite since I have been here. He talked on how we get to choose what kind of missionary we can be. Will we be lazy and complain all the time? Will we work hard and serve the Lord? Or will we consecrate all of our time to the Lord and truly serve him with all our heart might mind and strength. He made an amazing point on being obedient during our mission, saying that if we are obedient it not only shows our mission president and companions that they can trust us, it shows the Lord that he can trust us. It really made me think that I never want the Lord to not trust me with helping one of his children, I want him to be able to rely on me and know that I will always be there for him! It really strengthened my resolve to be perfectly obedient and be the best missionary that I could be. No slacking off!
Everything is going great here at the MTC, I had a great experience on Tuesday where my Companion and I went to the pharmacy to get the medicine and who did I see but Rachel Hancock. It was so nice to get to see her and it was a tender mercy of the Lord. I haven't seen her in almost 2 years so it was great to see her again!
I love this work, and I know that this church is true. The Book of Mormon is God's word and if we follow his commandments we will be blessed!
Love,
Elder Krebs
Hey everyone!!
This week has been fantastic!! I have loved every second, I feel like I have progressed so much both in knowledge of the gospel and knowing my purpose as a missionary but also in the language! I have seen the Lord's hand blessing me every day and helping me grow to become a better person with everything I do! I love feeling the love of the Lord continually and feeling the companionship of the spirit more often!
So this week was pretty busy and has gotten kind of crazy these last few days! My companion is feeling all better again which is awesome! It is very helpful to be able to get back to class every day and be learning from our teacher! We have great teachers who not only teach Nihongo well but they also teach the gospel principles and how to improve ourselves as missionaries well! This week I have really started to realize the true importance of my calling as a missionary of the Lord Jesus Christ! How blessed I am to be a servant of the Lord, this time that I have is short only two years and I want to make every day count! I have really set many goals and a resolve to work as hard as I can every day so that I don't regret anything from my mission! I will have a long time to think about my mission and I don't want to have any regrets.
This week we had Elder Ballard come and talk to us! He gave a great talk with 10 points of how to become a better missionary! I think some of my favorite advice that he gave was whenever we feel sad or depressed think of Joseph Smith in liberty jail, and think of the trials that he went through and how hard it was for him. And that will humble us and make our sadness turn to gratitude to the Lord for everything we have. He also emphasized letting the spirit teach the investigators, we can teach them but when we bear testimony that is when we let the Holy Ghost do it's work!
So on Tuesday we got a group of 8 Nihonjin (native Japanese) and I got to pick them up with my companion! They are all so amazing, almost all of them speak perfect English and perfect Japanese! There are 7 sisters and 1 Elder, Elder Skinner, so my companion and I get to be the Elders companion and he is moving into our room!! We are excited to have someone new, he is an awesome elder! He went to BYU the last 3 semesters and was raised in Tokyo! It is so great to get to know him and welcome him to the MTC! We did a meeting last night with all the new Nihonjin and they told us to do it all in Japanese...it went pretty well, we were able to talk about their schedule and their purpose as missionaries! As well as that we were able to bear our testimonies to them at the end which went really well!
We have seen a lot of blessings this week, especially yesterday! My companion and I taught probably our best lesson, both language and having the spirit present, and we realized that it was because we prepared and got ready for the lesson exactly as we had been taught. We used our personal, companion, and language study the way we were supposed to so that we could be as prepared as possible for the lesson. And the Lord truly blessed us to teach clearly and get the points across that we wanted to!
I love this work so much and I am so grateful to be a missionary of the Lord! How blessed I am to serve the Lord! I know that this church is true, I have prayed frequently and the spirit has told me that it is true. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and is a perfect book, it blesses the lives of whoever read it! I know that through Jesus Christ we can receive a remission of our sins! How amazing it is that he has given us the atonement to be forgiven and to repent of our sins!
I love you all and hope you are all well!
Love,
Elder Krebs
Wowzers! Can you believe it has been a month already???? Cause I can't! It has been such a great month, and I have grown so much! The MTC is gr8!
So remember how all the older Japanese in our zone left? So we were supposed to get 2 new districts of little baby Japanese students? Well we didn't get any!! So our zone is just our district for the next 2 weeks! 8 of us in our whole zone hahahahaha sacrament meeting is gonna be barren!
This week was unique! My poor companion has been sick all week :( so we spent a lot of time in the residency! It was a good time to study by myself and work on things with the language I was struggling on as well as do a lot of scripture study! But it was so hard just sitting around not doing much, feeling like I wasn't accomplishing a lot! He seems to be doing a lot better with just a sore throat now! (Mom if you wanna send your secret medicine go on ahead ;))
Elder Nelson came and spoke to us! He gave a great talk about just mission tips mainly! It was intriguing! He gave a lot of great scriptures to us to help us and to guide us through missionary assignments! It was awesome to hear him again and feel of his amazing spirit, he has a strong testimony of the gospel! His wife gave a talk that I really loved, she spoke about always being desperate on our mission. Desperate to find the next investigator, desperate to help our investigators find the truth for themselves. She said the word desperate about 300 times in 5 minutes I think :)
P-days are so much fun I love getting emails from everyone and reading about everyone's lives! Plus we get to go to the temple on P-days!!
My companion and I's lessons get better every time, the MTC is so helpful for teaching us the gospel principles and applying them in our teaching. It is weird that even though I know that the people we are teaching are our teachers it still feels like they are real investigators and I truly want them to understand what we are teaching in our broken Japanese, it is stressful but helpful! I just need to be more desperate for them to understand!
Hope everyone is doing well! I love you so much!
Elder Krebs
Konichiwa!
Iesu Kirisuto no fukuin shinjitsu da to shitte imasu. inori o toshite heian o kanjiru koto go dekiru to akashi shimasu.
I am loving this work!! I have truly started to love learning Japanese and love being able to study and learn new vocab and grammar structures! I am working as hard as I can to learn the language, and I know that if I put in 100% to learn the language the Lord will put in 100% to help me learn the language as well! I know that I could not have learned as much as I have without the Lord's help.
Last week was amazing, I learned a lot. There was a lot of trials and some rough lessons but I think I learned a lot from them and was able to grow because of them. We had Sister Oscarson come and talk to us (president of young women) and she talked a lot about sometimes the Lord gives us trials because he knows that it will help us, even if at that time we don't think that it could possibly benefit us.
I am loving my companion and working with him! During one of our lessons this week (we teach our teachers, and they pretend to be people they taught on their mission) I was saying a closing prayer, and I said "Please bless kuwahara (his name) and in the middle of the prayer after I said that he just said "arigato gozaimasu" or "thankyou very much" and my companion just started busting out laughing halfway through the prayer. It took all the resolve I had just to finish the prayer hahahahaha.
So this week I knew that Elder Samuel Bolton Halterman was coming into the MTC, and my district was randomly picked to be hosts to the new elders and sisters coming into the MTC! So I was praying that I would get to be his host and be the first person he would see at the MTC. And who was in the first car to pull up to me to host but Elder Halterman! It was a tender mercy of the Lord and sooo much fun to be able to talk with him again! He's such an amazing person!!
This week I got made a zone leader, which is really weird right now because the senpai, or older missionaries going to Japan, are still here until Monday. It is very unique interviewing those District Leaders because it is mainly me asking them for advice and learning from them. I am going to miss all our senpai so much! They have been so much fun and we have grown really close! Luckily most of them are going to Fukuoka as well so I should see them pretty often! We get a new district of 10 or 12 missionaries next Wednesday though!! So it will be awesome to be able to help them and get to know them!
I hope everyone is doing well! I love getting everyone's emails and reading them! So good to know UK Basketball is still number one!
Hope all is well!
Love,
Elder Krebs
Happy new year to everyone!!! This week has been phenomenal in the MTC, I have learned a lot both spiritually and in Japanese plus we had some amazing devotionals!!
On Christmas Day Elder Nelson came and talked to the missionaries which was so amazing! He spoke on the doctrine of Christ for most of the time and the different aspects of how he taught and why his doctrine is true! It really strengthened my testimony on the gospel of Jesus Christ and how it truly is the perfect gospel his plan for us is so beautiful and so simple yet it covers all things. His wife gave a beautiful talk on making every day Christmas by turning our lives towards Christ and finding that Joy every day! What an amazing blessing it is to know of this and to be able to go teach others about it for the next two years!
Christmas in the MTC was pretty amazing, I truly felt the spirit the whole day and it put a whole new feeling to Christmas. It truly is about Christ, and that is something that was very obvious to me as I went throughout the day. I did miss getting to see my family and open presents and spend time with everyone, but I still ate an orange that morning albeit a chocolate one... ;)
That next sunday was an especially amazing one, we learned about the gift of the Holy Ghost all throughout church, and I was able to really learn many aspects of how the Holy Ghost (seirei) affects us. Then that night we had a devotional with DAVID ARCHULETA! He came and sang to all the missionaries with the organist for motab playing as well, it was so amazing. He has such a beautiful voice, and you could really feel his testimony as he sang.
I read Alma 5 the other day in class and I couldn't stop humming the song of Cumorah all day, and then I ran into Sam and Julia Cox in the MTC cafeteria (they work there) and it was such a good experience to see them and remember those amazing memories of the pageant experiences!
I am feeling solid on the language, as solid as two weeks of learning will allow at least! Each lesson that we teach is better and we are able to get away from the books of nihongo to us actually saying what we want to say! I am feeling just great, most everyone in my district got sick but I was able to stay healthy somehow! Speaking of my district, we are getting a new member tomorrow! There was a shimai (sister) who came into the MTC yesterday and was placed in a district of Nihonjin (native japanese) accidentally so she will be joining our district. I feel bad for her because she will be two weeks behind but I know that she will be able to catch up and do well!
My favorite time of the day here is personal study! I love being able to study the scriptures and try to find things for my investigator that will help him progress. I have been spending a lot of time studying Jesus the Christ and it has grown my testimony on the savior so much! My goal is to finish it today so we will see how I do!! Everyone in my district is going to Fukuoka on the same day as me! And most of the older Elders in our zone our going to Fukuoka as well!
Hope you all had an amazing new year!
Ai shite imasu,
Elder Krebs
