Pictures!

I have been studying The Book of Mormon for Selflessness and Love over the past eight months or so. I took an English copy we had, and read it from the beginning. This morning I read Moroni 8 and glanced over the rest of the it at all the notes I made. I was astounded to see what I had learned! When I went over those things I could hardly believe I was the one who had written those notes; they all seemed so new to me. As I read, the Spirit was really there. What a wonder of a book that is! I know The Book of Mormon is true!

Anyways I don`t have a lot of time! 

This Week we had a way awesome lesson with the son-in-law of one of the members here and on Saturday we had a Halloween party where we met another referral and I talked with him all night! What cool miracles and a cool introduction to the Kumamoto Nagamine Ward!

Back in Nago:

Elder Jameson

 Leaving Nago 

  Nago From the Plane

  On the bus coming to Kumamoto 

My desk....

Its made out of wooden poles and rope from the 100Yen store.

Its just part of being a three-man. :) 

 Elder KirkhamElder Lee 

Transfer Calls and Bike Wrecks

A ton happened this week (including getting hit by a car :), don't worry I'm fine) so, I'm not sure I will have time to write all that I want to write but regardless, this week was awesome! From last Monday until now we have seen a lot of good things. This is the letter that I wrote to President Gustafson this week

Kaicho,
This week was awesome! Lots of good work, and lots of miracles. Mostly just finding, but inspired finding.
We worked with the Spirit and found many prepared people. The one example that sticks out to me now is a new investigator we found on Saturday. We had fifteen minutes before we had to head home and so we decided on visiting one of three different apartments through prayer. The first door we came to was a very prepared mother named Nishikawa. We met again last night before the crash and it was a great lesson.
We are also teaching families that were found in the recent weeks. One of those families is named Kobashigawa. We met them on Sunday, and, although we both felt our teaching could have been much better, Elder Jameson and I were really impressed with the family. I have no doubt that they are prepared to hear the gospel.
I just finished personal study. I read from the beginning of Moroni 7 and one of the things that I noticed was how Mormon gave credit to the grace of God the Father and Jesus Christ, and to the "gift of his calling" for the opportunity to teach.
What a lesson to me! What a blessing it is to be able to serve God! What a blessing!
I am so grateful for the chance I have been given to serve God in this work. I hope that His grace will continue to abide with me.
I'm glad I got to talk to you this morning. Thank you for always working with such zeal for us!
Truly, Elder Bevan

The crash happened last night at about 8:55, on our way to the apartment. Somebody just didn't see me and drove out form a street and hit me. It wasn't fast or anything and I feel like I really was really protected. I only have a couple of scratches on my leg, and that is it. My tires are pretty bent up though so I am going to have to replace them. The lady was way nice and way worried, and Elder Jameson and I both invited her to our Halloween Party. What a cool way to meet the missionaries right! :) I hope she gets baptized. 

This morning we read over the rules that our mission has about wrecks and realized we needed to call President, so I called him and he took things very smoothly and kindly, and since today is the day we hear if we are transferring or not, he also gave me my transfer call. I am transferring to Kumamoto into a trio companionship!
Yesterday was also splits with the district leader Elder French and that helped me to feel good about leaving Nago in other missionaries hands. I love this work! I am so glad I got to work here in Nago!

Finally I wanted to answer this letter from Grandpa Ashby:

Hi Elder,       We had a very nice Sabbath day today.  Your grandma gave a great lesson on honesty in our gospel principles class and sacrament meeting was just what we needed.   The speaker quoted the following:  "Help thy brother to bring his boat across the water and lo thy own boat has arrived at the shore."    What a great and true statement. "         The Savior said it this way, "He that findeth his life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life for my sake and the gospel shall find it."                    So?   How much have you lost? 

I think that I have a lost a lot. Not in any way enough, but a lot. Over my time in Nago I have lost pride and blinding misconceptions or excuses that I put on myself. I have lost face in front of people I really care about, and esteem in front I people I would have wanted to impress. I have lost a lot of faith in myself, and I have gained the world instead. I have gained strength in place of disabling excuses, and faith in the Savior in place of Faith in myself. I love the Savior. I am so glad to serve Him.

I love you all!

Love, Elder Bevan

From Elder Jameson's blog:

After, they had to go home early, we went to visit N. Man that lesson was epic. But what was pure revelation was the prep and what happened before the lesson. Elder Bevan knew so well what to teach her. We got there and she wasn't there. We were so sad. We prayed to know what to do next. We were standing there. and I prayed 3 more times. I wasn't getting anything. I turned to Elder Bevan and said, "I don't know. I don't feel like we should anything around here." So we waited and were about to pray again when she pulled up. She got out and we talked. A great lesson. A really heart felt lesson. All about purifying hearts because she said that is what she likes the most. She said in the lesson, "we teach the same thing. When I read the scripture (Moroni 7:45) we teach the same thing." Then later she said "your faces are glowing and I can see that your hearts are pure" We said to that "it is because of the message. We promise you if you apply this message to your life, you will receive this too." A little while later the husband came out and yelled at us to leave because it was late, but she told us to come again and wanted to learn more.

On the way back last night Elder Bevan was hit by a car. Complete change of story, yeah I know.  But the lady didn't see him. He is okay but his bike needs new tires because they are warped. She was freaking out but Elder Bevan was so loving. She said "you people are good people." I said "to show we have no bad feelings, we want you to come to our Halloween party!" She accepted and said she would come to our party. Who knows? Maybe she needed to hit Elder Bevan to be introduced to the gospel?

Elder Jameson's version of our week and Typhoon VongFong

Elder Jameson wrote:

Tuesday was a weird day. We had district meeting and afterwards we met with E, who is doing great, and another member who's name is Miyagi. They are both awesome and doing well.
We didn't eat dinner at 5 but went to do service with this lady named W. Elder Bevan is good with working his way to gospel topics during things. I'm just blunt and go straight to it. Last week he asked her if she wanted to study the Book Of Mormon. She said sure. Huge miracle because she said she would never study. The Spirit works with people. We had a great lesson but when we showed her the pictures of the prophet, she was upset saying there were no girls. That was super hard to explain in Japanese. It was good at the end.

Monday night we had a good miracle happen during planning. I asked Elder Bevan who we should visit. At that moment I had a feeling to visit a person that we haven't visited in a while. Elder Bevan said that it wasn't a good idea because he isn't home all the time. I looked at him and said "lets pray about it" so we prayed. After the prayer he said we can visit him but on the way back home. Again I had a pressing feeling to visit him but with a exact time of 7 pm. I told him and we made a schedule around that. We went at 7 to visit him. He said he just had returned home.  We talked about general conference and he said he would come to priesthood. (Which was cancelled because of the typhoon but still awesome.) After we left we said a prayer of thanks. He came walking by about 3 minutes later saying he was going on a walk. If we had visited him at a different time, we wouldn't have met him. After that we prayed again to see where to go and we met this couple from Hong Kong. We found out the hard way how to speak to them. They look Japanese so we spoke Japanese back but they spoke broken Japanese with a hard accent. Then we asked in English if they spoke English. They did and fluently. It was super cool and we invited them to visit mormon.org to see how this message can help their life.

Wednesday was crazy. We went out early to dendo because we had a late lunch appointment, which also pushed dinner back and it became a weird day.

But we visited this lady named N. She is basically fluent in English but she has some past mistake that haunts her so she doesn't come to church. She was active for a long time. We are trying to think of ways to help her. We went to eat afterwards and we dendoed around. Things were sparse. We did meet a mom that was concerned for her life after this one. Maybe things will progress with that. We eventually were able to meet the high school student from the other week, M. We met outside McDonalds. He thought hard about the question of a perfect world. He said, "if I kill someone and get a good lesson from that, is that okay?" Not quite. We taught him about repentance and the Book of Mormon. Repentance through the Book of Mormon actually, and the Godhead. He is such a great kid and he is the top student and president of his class. A really smart kid. He invited us to an activity he is planning for the 25th. Maybe this will be good :).

Thursday was filled with weekly planning and visiting E. She has changed so much. It fills me with so much joy to see her changing. She even keeps a daily journal for the things she prays for. How many of us members do that?

Friday, stuck inside planning for things. Then the typhoon started. It wasn't raining and the winds weren't that strong so we got some work done, some return appointments. Yeah! If we don't die in the typhoon!!

Saturday and Sunday were spent in the apartment. A lot of time with Elder Bevan. A lot. It turned out well. Our relationship is great. We worked on the area book and less active book to organize it in a way to be helpful for other missionaries coming through this area.
Honestly being in a concrete apartment is awesome. The storm didn't do anything to us. Completely safe inside. The power went out for like an hour but that was at night.
That was our week. We need to still watch general conference. I'm still looking forward to it!

Typhoons and Things

Hello Everyone!

This here is my companion and Nago's giant pig statue. Unlike the rest of Japan (I'm am fairly sure) pork is part of the traditional Okinawan food. I could be wrong about that though so don't kill me if you find out I'm wrong. :) Below that is a picture of me and Nago's famous Brother Miyagi. He is a way awesome convert of a little over a year ago and we all love him. He overcame a lot to join the church and if I know anything about it he is an awesome example of how the Atonement changes people. He has a little bit of a mental problem, but he is just a ton of fun to be around. He meets us about every week to study from the scriptures and every once in a while we go out to eat together. I love to hear his prayers. You can tell that he is talking to the Father. 

The last picture is this way awesome kid we found a while back. He is just seventeen, but he really thinks deeply about things and is a way hard worker. He is completely determined to become the top of the business world and has thought a lot about what kinds of things he will need to do to get there. He is the top of his school and I think that he is  ahead a grade... anyways he way cool! Hopefully he starts progressing!

 

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​At the end of this week a big typhoon came again. It got here on Friday night and went all day Saturday and yesterday. That wasn't any fun because we were inside the whole time, and didn't get to see general conference. We worked on organizing our records and area book a bit though, and that was good.

I love working with the people here. I love to work with the members and the people we meet on the street! We did some calling while we were stuck inside and I think just about every time I got off the phone I felt great! I don't really know why I love to talk with these people so much but I think it is one of my favorite parts of the mission. I love their voices and their language. I love this mission!

I love the Lord. I know that this is the true and only church of God. I love this church and the gospel that it declares. I am so grateful for the confidence and peace it affords. I love my Savior Jesus Christ.

My love to all,

Elder Bevan

TYPHOON VONGFONG

Dear Parents of the Japan Fukuoka Mission Missionaries,

As you may have heard, there is a Typhoon of considerable size coming to Japan. The Japan Fukuoka Mission has an Emergency Plan and we made sure each area and companionship had a 72-hour emergency kit with water, food and flashlights with extra batteries. They were instructed to stay indoors and we will keep them updated daily if needed. All the emergency precautions took place and all the missionaries are safe. We will notify you again when the Typhoon is past. We appreciate your son/daughter work in the mission and pray for their protection. Thank you for your concern and prayers.

Japan Fukuoka Mission.

日本福岡伝道部で働いている宣教師の御両親へ、

もうお聞きになったと思いますが、かなり大規模の台風が日本へ向かっています。日本福岡伝道部では緊急対策があり、各同僚組みが７２時間緊急キット（水、食料、懐中電灯と電池）を持っている事を確認致しました。宣教師達はアパート内に残り、必要ならば私達が彼らに必要な情報を提供します。必要な準備は全て出来ており、宣教師は皆安全です。台風が去った後、又お知らせ致します。皆さんの愛する息子・娘達の伝道部での働きに感謝し、彼らの安全を祈っています。

皆さんの懸念と祈りに感謝しています。

日本福岡伝道部

pill boxes

From Nate's companion, Elder Jameson's Blog:

We spent some time though to think about our investigators and to better help them. We thought of two families who we can barely meet. "How can they feel the spirit without us being there?" We thought of one of those daily pill boxes for morning, lunch, and dinner pills. We put candy in some and scriptures in others. That way they can have incentive and a way to pray and read the scriptures as a family.

We were able to give them out on Sunday. But that's all the time we had to give. Hopefully we will be able to see some results from daily prayer and scripture study.

Leaders

"Junkai" (splits) in beautiful Nago. The elder below is the Zone leader Elder Jolly.

I'm sorry I don't have a ton of time. I was catching up on conference stuff and the like. We will be watching General Conference next week, because Japan time is ahead of America's. We are all excited for it. 

I hope you all had fun!

This week was good. We had a special training in Naha from President and the Assistants. I got to spend the night with the AP's before we went down there and it was so good. I know both of them and I think that they are wonderful examples. I love to follow inspired leaders and to learn by the spirit. I know that the callings we receive are inspired, and that when a leader is inspired to say something, or to speak on a certain topic, the Spirit can speak through them. I Love to hear the Words that the Spirit directs and never fail to find solace in them.

This morning for personal study I read from Ether 12 about selflessness. (I have been studying the Book of Mormon about selflessness for most of my mission and am almost finished with it). One of the things that I noticed this time was that the Lord, in His ultimate selfless love, will offer us individually comfort when we need it. When Moroni was worried about his weakness the Lord spoke to him the words that would bring him comfort (I'll let you find the specific words I'm thinking about). I hope that I can follow that example in the way I love others.  

I love you all. I love this work!

I love seeing the Lord's work role out. 

love,

Elder Bevan