June 22, 2015

First off happy Father's Day to the greatest dad in the whole entire world!! He is the best example I ever could have had in my life! And I love him a ton, he is a great matcher of clothes, a hard worker, and also speaks a really cool language!

This week has been really great! It is transfers, this was a five week transfer because President Gustafson goes home and president Egan comes in this week! It is going to be a fun change for the mission and will be an interesting adjustment for the whole mission!

This week we saw miracles on miracles on miracles. And Elder Lucas and I are further learning about the Lord having a plan that is a lot better than ours. We have had a lot of appointments set up this week that people dropped or cancelled and so we had to go find new investigators or visit other investigators and from that we have seen some amazing things. We were able to find 12 new investigators, and were able to teach 10 lessons! It is amazing to see the Lord bless this area. We met with one investigator this week her name is Hayashi, she is 23 and has been baptized in another church, but doesn't remember anything about that church hahaha which is pretty normal here. She really wants to learn about Christ and why he was important. So we decided to teach her about Christ and why He is important, it went great to say the least. She accepted a baptismal date and is really excited to learn more! Blessings.

Elder Lucas and I are getting along great! We are not huge lovers of the heat, but the Lord blesses us most in the hardest times. Yesterday we were able to go visit a less active couple here In Ishigaki who own a mango farm. We went to see their farm and see if we could help, and we were able to sit and eat mangos that had just been picked. They were the most delicious things in the world. Holy cow. Background info, mangos in Japan are 10 dollars for one mango.. No joke. So we each ate one there plus some mini mangos, and then they gave us about five more and some more mini mangos. About 100 dollars worth of mangos in total. It was amazing. I loved every second and I am sure my mom is proud of me for eating fruit. I really am growing up here ;)

I love this work and I know this church is true! I love you all a ton! And hope you all are doing well. Shout out to my friends in the MTC right now! The Lord is hastening this work!

Love you all more than fresh mangos,

Elder Krebs

June 14, 2015

OHIO GOZAIMASU

This week was way great! We didnt have as much time to dendo (missionary work) as usual since we went to the real okinawa to have interviews with President Gustafson, it is the last time I will ever see him as he goes home in two weeks. Our new president President Egan comes and takes over then, I am excited for the change! Interviews were great, President Gustafson is an amazing man who taught me a lot in just a little time about ways that I can improve!

We flew to Naha and got back all in less than 24 hours! It was pretty crazy! Way fun though, good to see other missionaries, I was able to see a couple from my MTC district who I havent seen since I got here! 

This week we had an amazing miracle! We were dendoing in one area that we had chosen the night before, and both felt inspired to go to. And as we were knocking on doors over there one lady opened her door and started talking to us, she was about 35 and we were having a normal contact when she just said "I have been baptized" hahahahah we both just looked at each other and were like whaaat. She had been baptized in Naha 8 years ago, and then went less active. her name is Oshiro, she is amazing! We were able to meet with her again, she is really kind and has a great family! We are excited to help her find and understand again the things that she learned about before!

This week we were also able to see another huge miracle of being able to meet with the Taira family. He is the 15 year old who is way good at basketball! We met with him and his mom and were able to teach the lesson and just testify about how much this gospel has helped our lives. We then talked about the reasons why we are here, to help them find the happiness that we have been able to recieve in our lives. We were able to make baptismal dates with both of them, and they were both excited and said yes immediately! The Lord has truly touched their hearts, the spirit was so strong in the lesson and I am so grateful for the Lord and the blessings he is giving this wonderful area!

We also ate a TOWER BURGER this week, it is as awesome as it sounds! all capitals doesn't even do it justice...We went to a restaurant in Naha that advertised american food and they did not disappoint. It was delicious and huge and beautiful. I will send pictures later. 

I love this area and this work. I know this Church is true and my testimony is strengthened every single day as I feel the love of the Lord for all the people in this beautiful area. I am so blessed to be a missionary of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ in these days and I pray every single day that I can find the people that He wants me to find!

Love you all,

Elder Krebs

I had a cool experience this week of learning more about Levi Ward Hancock and zions camp, could you send me some more information on him. It really piqued my interest on learning about him, and how grateful I am for him and his hard work. It is because of him that a lot of our family is still members. My companion has a cool card about everyone that was called on missions at the same time as him. And out of the around 50 called, he is one of 10 who stayed faithful i am grateful for him!

June 7, 2015

First off thank you to the Tates Creek youth for the letter! It was awesome, I hope everyone in Kentucky is doing well! And not going too crazy over the triple crown, which once again proves my theory that all a horse needs is a way cool name to be good at horse racing...I mean American Pharaoh. Come on...how was he not gonna win the triple crown. I also can not wait to drive down American Pharaoh ave. in Kentucky in 2 years ;)

As me and my companion say at least 16 times each day, it is hotter than hades down here! But it is amazing for the work because when it gets hot people literally just leave their doors open so they have no choice but to talk to the two white guys walking around their neighbor hood it is either that or sweat to death! #blessings

But that also leads to us talking to about 10 guys in just underwear and no shirt every single day. As long as they are prepared by the Lord I couldn`t care less! This week we saw so many miracles in the form of people starting to truly progress closer to the Lord, since we have gotten here it has the feel of a white washed area, but the Lord has blessed us with so many people to talk to and people who have truly been prepared by him to hear this gospel, so we have finally been able to get a lot of those people who we found these past few weeks to begin to really get into the lessons and see the blessings they can receive from it. The lessons have really been guided by the spirit, and we feel so grateful to have had all the opportunities to teach! We were able to have 13 lessons last week, the Lord has blessed us more than I can imagine.

So this week the Lord taught Elder Lucas and I a lesson on faith! So we had an appointment a way iffy appointment that we set up at 10 AM on saturday because that is the only time he could meet, neither of us thought he would really be there because he was really weird during the contact so we did not know if we would be going since it was right in the middle of study time and far away. But we did decide to go and we prepared for the lesson and rode over there, and he was AMAZING! He had so much interest and soaked everything we said up, and he practically set up the return appointment, we said sorry for coming so suddenly cause we figured he didnt remember the appointment we had set up a week ago, and he just said "I made an appointment" I just love this guy Hazama! He is such a stud and has a good family with 3 little kids! AND his brother who lives next door and has 2 kids is also taking the lessons and progressing! We met them within 5 minutes of each other! THE LORD IS DOING AMAZING THINGS IN JAPAN! These people have all been so prepared for this gospel. I feel so blessed!

We have a couple of mottos in our companionship, buckle up is our first one, because we feel like this area is about to explode so we have to buckle up and go along for the ride and do all we can! Thank you Brian Regan. And our other one that we quote about 20 times a day is bear with patience all thine afflictions and the Lord will give unto us success. Because the heat seems like a pretty large affliction sometimes, but we know that we have to keep working harder and the Lord will bless us. And he has, it has been amazing to see him bless us! I am so grateful!

This week we have interviews with Gustafson Kaicho, probably the last time I will see him before he goes home :( he goes back to America this transfer and will be replaced by Presidant Egan. I am really grateful for Gus Kaicho but I am also excited for a new mission president it will be an exciting change for the mission!

This week we were able to go to a basketball tournament for one of our investigators I think I have talked about him before, he is a 15 year old and him and his mom are both investigators he is about 6' 2" and wayyyy good at basketball His team is by far the best here on Ishigaki they won the first game 101-15 it was pretty fun to watch basketball again! Makes me realize how bad I am when I watch kids like that play hahahahaha

I love this work and am so grateful for all of the examples I have had in my life, and for all the miracles the Lord allows me to see every single day, I pray for everyones health and safety every day and hope you all know how much I love you!

Many of my friends are in the MTC or going into it this week I am so proud of every single one of them and know that they are making the greatest choice of their life! I love you all so much!

Love,

Elder Krebs

May 31, 2015

ISHIGAKI JIMA!

What a wonderful sound. This is the land of miracles, and humidity, and lots of men in underwear!

First we start with miracles because that is always the most important! Elder Lucas and I have been so blessed here with being able to find people to teach, this area has really struggled lately, it is a small island with not that many people, but God always has people prepared to recieve this message. Since I got here a week and a half ago we have found 14 new investigators! 14!! I didn`t get that many in the whole transfer in Miyazaki! Yesterday alone we found four amazing people including some young families! It has been such a blessing from the Lord! I really love this area.

So ishigaki is what some may call very hot and very humid. It is about 90 degrees with humidity that is just like home in the summer! Lots of sweat! But I love it. I have never sweated this much in my life, but I know that it is all for the Lord so it is all worth it! The work is so amazing, and the ward is awesome! It is a smaller ward but there are some really great young families and it is awesome! so so so kind. they are all really loving and help me a lot!

We had a great experience of being able to have one of the kids in the ward getting baptized on saturday and since we are on an island we do BEACH BAPTISMS! It was soooo gorgeous! I loved every single second!

Elder Lucas is an awesome missionary from the big old Kaysville Utah! He is an amazing missionary, the Lord is definitely blessing me with great companions, he knows that I need all of the help I can get, and I am so grateful for that help from the Lord! He has a great thing that we do every night where we list the miracles we saw every single day, and it is amazing to write out all the amazing blessings we recieved from the Lord that day. It really helps us bring the spirit into the room before planning and helps us give the lord thanks for everything he has given us in this area!

So we have two Japanese elders in our apartment which is great for my language! but they always get mad because for some reason us being white guys who are sweating a lot and knocking on their doors, people give us food ALL the time! it is wonderful! But the Japanese elders get mad all the time because people never give them anything hahahahahahaha this week we got a bag of chocolate, Ishigaki pineapples which are the greatest things I have ever eaten, and the guy gave us about 30 dollars worth of them. And a lot of other random stuff from people. The Japanese people are the nicest people in the whole entire world!

I am so grateful for this area, my companion, and for the Lord allowing me to come here and experience this, it is going to help me grow a lot and I am feeling really blessed!! I LOVE THIS WORK!

Elder Krebs

May 25, 2015

Well.....

I got transferred from Miyazaki but I got transferred to ISHIGAKI! It is a tiny island as far south as you can go in Japan with a population of around 60,000! It is HOT here! Hahahaha and way humid but I am really excited to serve here and give it my all! There is still so much I have to get better at as a missionary and I hope to do that here and continually improve! My companion is elder Lucas he is a stud, before this area he was a zone leader, and he is just an all around great missionary and person! I am really going to be able to learn a lot from Him!

The travel here was crazy I had to take a bus to Fukuoka with three missionaries that were going home at the end of their missions and they were all crying the whole way then I had a flight down to Okinawa and apparently in Japan carry ons are smaller...so I had to take out a lot of weight to get the price down. Then from Okinawa I flew to ishigaki! It was a busy day and I was excited to get there! It was rainy and hot when I arrived! On the plane I was reading in the Book of Mormon about trials by fire and things such as that and I figured it was a good sign for what it would be like down here in Ishigaki so my motto here is #TrialByFire

Elder Lucas and I have already seen so much success and miracles here! We were able to find 6 new investigators and a lot of Potential investigators! It has been amazing to see the work already progressing so much here. Before me in this area was my MTC companion elder. VanAlfen him and elder Lucas did great and so I came into a really good position here! The branch here is smaller but still really great we have a few young families which is really a blessing and it has a lot of potential to grow a lot :)

It is rainy season here, and that means rainy it has rained hard every day since I have arrived here! And I wouldn't want anything else, it has been a great experience and a lot of fun to do missionary work in! I really love this area and am so excited and feel so blessed to be serving here! I can't wait to see what the Lord has in store for the island of Ishigaki!!

Love you all,

Elder Krebs

May 19, 2015

So I am transferring to ISHIGAKI! It is as far south as you can go so it is going to be RIDICULOUSLY HOT. So tomorrow I am going to need to go shopping for some warm weather clothes like short sleeve shirts and things such as that. So I will probably take out like 100 dollars or so tomorrow if that is okay! Sorry!! We only bought long sleeve shirts hahahahaha wasn't the smartest ;)

I am so excited to hit up the islands! My companion was just a zone leader! I am sooo sad to leave this area so much the members are
AMAZING I am going to miss it sooo much!

I love you!!!

Elder Krebs

May 18, 2015

This week was wayyyyy fun! We had a crazy fun p-day after emails!! We have this really nice man in our building who we always talk to he is really funny and has been everywhere in the world! To be 100 percent honest I don't know his name ha hahahahahaha none us us really do. But he offered to take us to this huge suspension bridge! It was soooo beautiful!! I will send the pictures but it was a blast and a half :)

The rest of the week was pretty normal!! Just going out and working hard we found a few really great solid new investigators to begin to teach including one named yoshinaga!! He is so amazing and has so much interest in wanting to learn about Christ and his church!!

So here is the first huge miracle! So on Tuesday we went to lunch with the other elders investigator and we got separated from them on the way there and we were at a street corner and these two like 25 year old kids walked up to us, and in perfect English [score] one of them said "hey are you Mormons??" We of course replied yes and he said "I am too!" We both were just shocked hahahahaha apparently he had gone to school in Idaho for a while and joined the church then came back to Miyazaki 3 years ago and never knew were the church was cause he was far away down south but is now living up here with his twin brother! Who we do not think is a member!! Like what????????? How amazing is that?? I feel so blessed that the Lord put us in his path and we pray every day that he will start having that interest and coming back to church!!

The second is that we finally had the word of wisdom lesson with Tsuda! He committed to quit smoking and then we went back to check the next day to see how he was doing with it and he had started smoking again *frowny face* so we made a plan for him to use two less every single day. And we were feeling way good about it, we went to check up two days later cause he was busy the next day we get there and asked him how he was doing with his goal, and he said he hadn't smoked since we left!!!!

On Saturday we had a great experience of being able to do service for a 94 year old man in our ward! He lives about an hour away and we were cleaning up his garden! It was way fun! It was pretty overgrown! But it was good to do some manual labor! And build some good relationships with the ward members!

On Sunday we had a BAPTISM! Kind of, the sisters in the area over from us have an investigator who's mom would only let her get baptized and attend church in Miyazaki because he mom doesn't like the members in their ward. So she got baptized here on Sunday! It was a really great experience we were able to have two of our investigators attend and they had a great experience the spirit felt at baptismal services are so amazing I love seeing someone change their lives like that! What an amazing opportunity to come closer and return to the Lord!

I love this church!!! I have seen so many miracles here. And I I feel so blessed every single day!

I am so grateful for my Mom, and for all the moms out there!!

I love you all so much,

Elder Krebs