January 10, 2016

WOW WAS THIS WEEK AMAZING! Let me tell you!

So during weekly planning last week we decided that for this week 1/4-1/10 we wanted to have a lesson every day and we were going to consecrate ourselves to accomplish it and we changed a lot of things and really studied consecration to the Lord and giving our will 100 percent to the Lord and going out and working hard! And holy cow did he deliver! We taught so many lessons this week, this area has been on the struggle bus the last couple weeks really not going anywhere. And this week we were able to teach a lesson or more every single day! And there were two days when we had none planned and RIDICULOUSLY PREPARED PEOPLE literally asked us to to teach them. They asked us, to teach them....like what??? I was flipping out! One of them is a dad with 9 children...yes 9. Which is ridiculous like more than ridiculous. If you have 3 children in Japan you have a lot. He wanted to know why there were so many Christian churches and we said we have the answer and he said "okay then teach me right now" and wants to learn more! Then we met this awesome 19 year old guy, he is in college right now and he was way excited to talk with two white guys and said he had time and asked if we would teach him about our church right there on the street. So we prayed on the street with him while all these college students are walking by and after we said amen he just looked up at me and said, "the air is different, something just changed, there is such a good feeling in the air right now" but in Japanese so it sounded a lot more Asian when he said it but STILL! And then after we taught about God, which he loved, he asked if we could meet today! So we will be teaching Hirata San today and hopefully making a baptismal date so please pray hard for him!

We also got to meet with the filipino ladies that we met a week ago! They were so awesome, super open to learn but it was hard because they are both pretty involved in the Catholic Church so they want to learn more and are willing to try but it is hard not treading on some of their beliefs! Aka just weird to be teaching people with a Christian background...

Elder Rawlinson is still amazing! We love knocking doors all day! And seeing crazy miracles and improving together! Elder TAKAYA and I have been experimenting on cooking becoming more fancy and more Asian, and my skills are improving. We have been making some delicious food lately. So everybody get ready for the chef elder Krebs in 2 years! We have also been doing some New Years deep cleaning of the apartment which has been a blast. Super grateful for saturday jobs and a mom who made me clean! #blessings

Loving the work here in Yamaguchi! Can't wait to keep seeing miracles and going crazy! We love the Lord and we love giving him 100 percent! I had a really moving study this week as I studied charity, and I noticed a commitment that Moroni gives us in Moroni 7:48 where he invites us to pray to the Lord for that love and charity, and so I have been doing that and felt a difference in my life. With my love for those I work with here in Japan! So please pray to the Lord this week for more love and more charity and he will give it to you!

Love you all,

Elder Krebs!

January 3, 2015

Well...howdy,

I feel like I just emailed! Not much to talk about had a fun New Year's Day ate some yummy food with a member!!

We saw a crazy miracle on New Year's Day. It was way hard talking to people that night, no one was home and if they were they got mad at us for interrupting their parties, so we were on the way home and had a little bit of extra time. And we passed this apartment that had one light on in it. And I felt pretty strongly that we should go knock that one door. So we flipped around real quick and went back, and we knocked on the one door and these two Filipino ladies opened the door! They were so excited, they were asking questions about the church and said they wanted to learn more! So we set up a return appointment with them and are SO pumped to see them get baptized soon!!

Other than that not much happened! I never know what to write in here so if you have a question or things you want to hear about more let me know...

Just a commitment, as a mission we are studying faith this month as a mission and it is amazing to see it blessing our mission. And I know it can have the same effect as a family if you all have your faith centered on the same thing it will unify you! So as a family or individually I would invite you to study faith, from the PMG, and strengthen your faith this month!!

Love you all so much,

Elder Krebs!

December 31, 2015

First off, it was SO amazing to get to see the Krazy Krebs family on Christmas! I can't put into words how grateful I am for all of my family, and everything they do for me! As well as for the amazing Christmas presents. I swear I can still taste the Ale8... But it was so good to talk and hear about how everyone is doing. My family is the strongest testimony to me that this gospel works. I have seen it in my life and in the lives of many others! How blessed I am to know the restored truths of this gospel! And to have it bless my life in so many ways!!

Second off our mission president let us watch frozen on Christmas. It was so happy. I love Disney. But I am refocused again on the mission so don't worry ;)

This morning we went to a way cool Japanese shrine! New Years is huge here! It is so fun to see all of the Japanese people relaxing, their culture is so busy and all work. And it just makes me happy to see them out as families, enjoying their lives and taking a break from the work!

This week has been really great, we have been just pushing super hard to talk to lots of people and to teach more to build our pool of investigators and man has the work payed off! We have found some super prepared people, which is a huge blessing for our area because two of our way solid investigators dropped off lost week, so we needed to work with others! The two investigators will be good this week after New Years so don't worry :)

But that has been this week pretty much, just lots of finding! Which is literally my favorite part of the mission! We also had interviews with President Egan yesterday! With trainings from the assistants and sister Egan. It was stupendous, the Egan's amaze me every single day with their dedication. Their love is so contagious and is blessing this mission in so many ways!! It was also great as always to see the whole zone, it is amazing how much love I can feel for the amazing people in our zone. But I just absolutely love getting to see them, and hear about their work, and get to know them better! We have a fantastic zone, and I feel so blessed to get to serve alongside with them!!

Hope everyone has a great new year!!
明けましておめでとう❗️

Love,

Elder Krebs

December 24, 2015

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I have been Santa 3 times now....so you could say I am feeling pretty jolly at the moment! I also just got off of skype with my amazing family so whoop. And I got Ale8 for christmas so my joy is at capacity level right now! :)

This week has been ridiculously busy. We haven't had a p day in forever it feels like, so I wont be able to include everything but it has been amazing to say the least. Christmas has been an awesome way to bring up the gospel with so many people!

Transfer week was pretty uneventful because we didn't change at all! It is nice to stay the same 4 people and just party it up. I love our apartment so it is exciting to get to stay another transfer in the Yamagucci zone! WHOOOOT! 

We have been teaching a lot of people recently including this amazing man named Itou Kyoudai he is a less active but he wants to come back to church! We just housed right into him a little bit ago and have been able to meet with him and help him come closer again to the spirit through reading the book of mormon and praying every day. He is a little anxious about going to church again since it has been so long but we are going with a member tomorrow night which should be wayyyy awesome for him to feel the love of the members again! 

We also have been out of Yammaguchi a lot this week because at the beginning of transfers we have MLC in fukuoka so that took us out of town all day and then we had zone training meeting on thursday! Zone training was way fun, we chose a theme of Abide with Him, about coming closer to Christ through improving christ like attributes and doing all we can as well as frequently asking our savior Jesus Christ for how we can improve and become better as people. It was really great, the Sister Training Leaders gave an amazing training nothing better than feeling the spirit that strongly!

We had a lot of fun christmas parties one for our ward and one for our english class and they were both a blast! It has been a lot of fun working with the ward on christmas stuff and getting closer with them. 

This paragraph is a shout out to my PERFECT MOTHER AND FATHER! Holy cow, christmas this morning felt like I was in America. I was blessed to have them in Japan where shipping is RIDICULOUSLY cheap. So they loved me enough to send an amazing 60 pound package to their favorite son! I will not need to buy candy for the rest of my mission! So thankyou so much to them!

I just am so grateful for the gospel at this time of year for all it brings to my life and the enormous sacrifice of the savior on my behalf. What an amazing blessing to always receive help and guidance from our Savior. It makes me grateful beyond all things to think that he descended below all things so that we could receive a forgiveness and a freedom from our mistakes. His love is deeper than we can imagine. And I hope to comprehend that love more and more every day!!

I love you all so much!

Merry Christmas!!!

Elder Krebs

December 20, 2015

But It is almost 100 percent sure that I am staying so don't you even worry!

What an amazing time to be doing the Lords work! This Christmas season is so amazing, I have already made cookies thrice, and egg nog twice. So I am staying fat and happy. :)

I just want to tell everyone about a pretty amazing miracles we saw this week, so this week I went down to Yanai on splits and we saw some great miracles. Elder spencer and I made a lot of goals for ourselves, and we kept following up throughout the day and it was amazing to see is accomplishing them and from that finding the Lords elect. A funny experience- Our last contact of the day, we were talking to this man and there was a little awning in front of his door, and then out of nowhere this bird just starts going crazy inside and it and flying all around our heads, elder spencer and I started freaking out and all that jazz, and the dude just stood there cool as a cucumber saying nothing...like he didn't even notice the bird, it finally left and he was nice enough to make a return appointment! And they met with him yesterday and he is way excited to learn more!!!

But the one true miracle of this week..........

I went on an American military base! And ate American food!! It was like heaven, I went for breakfast with some sisters and a couple elders from the zone and a missionary couple that is in charge of military relations there, and oh man did it change my life. I will include a picture, I walked on base and it was like I had walked into America, there were white people...everywhere. I just didn't know how to react...miracles, am I right?

We also were going around knocking doors this week and we knocked into a less active! Like what??? And not only that he holds the Melchizedek priesthood, but has been to the temple, and wants to come back to church!! The lord was definitely guiding everything we did this week. We had hard times and then he shows us huge miracles. I love the law of the harvest! :)

I have been so grateful for this Christmas season and seeing so many miracles, people in Japan are obviously usually not Christian, BUT, they know Christmas, they usually give their kids a present and eat a cake as a family. So it has been fun to see people freak out when we tell them that Christmas's true meaning is the celebration of Christs birth. It has opened up a lot of teaching opportunities!!

I am grateful this Christmas season for my family, and all that they do for me. As well as for all of my friends and teachers and leaders who have made me who I am. I am far from perfect, but because of others I have been able to change myself a lot. I am grateful for the mission and for everything that it means and everything that Christ did for us, from the most humble of births he became the savior of the world, King of kings and lord of lords, and because of him we can be free from our sins and sadness. Seeing that effect in my life and in the lives of those I teach is what truly brings me happiness, and is the true meaning of Christmas, and Christs teachings. I hope everyone has an amazing Christmas!! Drink lots of real eggnog for me (mine is good but it isn't REAL eggnog)

Love you all,

Elder Krebs

December 6, 2015

Fastest week of my life!!

I am soooo tired. We went on splits twice this week so it involved a lot of traveling in the HUGE zone, and lots of knocking doors and partying it up with some awesome missionaries!! It was a blast! We saw some crazy miracles this week, and I wish I could write them all but I can't cause we don't have as much email time today cause we are going to the ZOO!!! WHOOT! Super pumped!

So elder Rawlinson and I realized at the beginning of this week that basically I would be gone from Monday to Friday! So we would have to go way hard Saturday and Sunday! And let me tell you those two days were crazy, we went out and kicked butt! We saw some awesome miracles, but the coolest one was probably what happened yesterday. So it starts four weeks ago, when I came to YammaGucci this lady on the bus with us was fluent in English and way cool, we got to know her well and she said she was living in Yamaguchi so I told her to come to English class and stuff but never saw her. But yesterday we ran into her on the street!! Like what !?!? And she was way excited to see us again, and she had gotten an email from one of the sisters that had been on the bus that week, and in the email she mentioned the true meaning of Christmas. And she wants to learn more! She wants to learn about Christ and why he is important, and she is taking her day off on Friday to come to English class and have a lesson beforehand on the true meaning of Christmas!! How crazy is that, after four weeks! The lord prepares people in such interesting ways!

We also met another fluent English speaker yesterday but he let us teach and talk to him for about 5 minutes before he told us he lived in New York until he was 10...like what the flip. After five minutes he just flipped into perfect English, it blew my mind a little bit hahahaha but we are meeting with him soon as well!

The Lord is preparing people left and right here in YammaGucci, I am grateful to be here for it all. The Lord truly blesses as we go out and work hard, elder Rawlinson and I decided we could always work harder, never be satisfied so we went out and put a big effort on riding faster, walking faster, talking to everyone and doing every little thing we could (including lots of prayer) and it worked, those two days were as miracle filled as I have seen on my mision!

The Christmas season is in full swing, John Schmidt's Christmas album is playing in our apartment always, we found Christmas lights hidden in a closet, just one little string but still...#blessings, I made Andes mint cookies the other day, and am going to try egg nog soon. Wish me luck, my love for Christmas is going kind of crazy but it is just too much fun.

I know the church is true, and this is a scripture that has given me comfort this week. It has helped me realize why I am doing this and what I should expect, it was never easy for the savior and so I shouldn't expect it to be easy for me either, he is my perfect leader and I will follow him any where no matter what the cost,

"The servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; of they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also." John 15:20

Love you so much,

Elder Krebs

November 25, 2015

Hope you all are doing amazing! I am sure there was a big stir because of no email from elder Krebs on Monday, but have no fear. President Egan switched p day to Thursday! So I am here with a nice report on what's going down in beautiful YammaGucci!

So this week was actually pretty awesome/difficult. On Tuesday of last week we got to go to Fukuoka for MLC, and got some amazing training from president Egan, and a fun announcement to elder TAKAYA and I that on Thursday they wanted us to train in a zone training meeting that president Egan and the assistants would be at. So we hurried back to the Gucci, tried to go out and work as much as possible while preparing this training, it was the most intense couple of days. Thursday came, we had an amazing training from president Egan on faith which really hit me. He is such an amazing example to us, and told us that if we just have the faith to baptize we will. He asked us the question "where is your faith?" Probably a thousand times. And it helped me focus my mind and work a lot. Elder TAKAYA and I had a fun training on contacting, and doing lessons simply with people on the street which was a blast! We absolutely love getting together with the
zone. They are AMAZING! And do so much, it is cool to see it all progressing.

So Saturday rolls around and elder Takaya and I wake up dead. Both super sick, we had to sleep from the morning till about 6 after dinner. And then we wanted to go out and work so we pushed through and got to meet some amazing people.

I just want a little paragraph to talk about how awesome my companion (Elder Rawlinson) is. He is crazy. Elder TAKAYA and I have to leave a lot for things and splits with elders and things like that. And he is always so ready, to go out and work and speak Japanese with another missionary who just got here 3 weeks ago, he will go out and do whatever is asked of him! Love the kid to death and I learn SO MUCH from him every single day!

We stayed up on medicine and stuff but the sickness lingered making it way hard to go out and work. We pushed through but it was hard, especially with p day moved to today. We saw some amazing miracles! I just want to share one!

So we have been focusing on planning with the spirit. And on Thursday for planning we felt like we would have a member present lesson, or we wanted one. So we planned, we planned the lesson. We didn't know who it would be with or how. But we planned it for after English class on Friday to teach with a member. We had a couple of people in mind for who we might teach. And so we had it in mind the whole day praying hard for that lesson. And then after English class I started talking
with this way cool 20 year old who comes every week named ryo. He is a stud! We started talking about the church, and he started saying how his English teacher at college teaches religion, and they were talking about how awesome our church is the other day. He basically asked us to meet again and for us to help him learn about Jesus Christ so we are meeting tomorrow night! Like WHAT! It wasn't exactly what we planned, but that was the Lords plan and I thoroughly believe that if we hadn't put in the work and planned so much for it that that experience would not have happened. We would not have found that prepared person who is literally sitting right in front of us every Friday! #Miracles

I want to just express my thanks to everyone on this wonderful turkey day for all of your kindness and for preparing me in all kinds of different ways to have the experience I am having right now! I have been trying to focus my prayers on gratitude and thanks to the Lord rather than a list of needs. It has helped me spiritually align myself, and realize how much I receive. I am grateful especially for the family the Lord has blessed me with, my amazing siblings who have pushed me (physically, mentally, and emotionally) to be better and to be the best I can be. I am grateful for my parents for the words of support and kindness, their always needed advice in times of hardship,
and their limitless love for me. I don't deserve any of this but the lord knew I would need the help I have received from my family and friends in life!


Alma 34:38 - take upon you the name of Christ; that ye humble yourselves even to the dust, and worship God, in whatsoever place ye may be in, in spirit and in truth; and that ye live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he doth bestow upon you.

EVERY DAY CAN BE THANKSGIVING! Now go out grab a football and have a flipping awesome turkey bowl for me! #WHOOT!

Elder Krebs