Dante's Heaven

Dear Everyone! 

Hello!! How are you all? I know you are all thousands of miles away, but I thank you for your love and your prayers. They really do help me on the days that I struggle. 

This week has been filled with miracles! Especially with our investigator Te and his girlfriend named Dawn. 

Te is a chinese student about 24 years old. He is a kind of big guy, with really really good japanese (way better than ours). He has a warm heart and is really hilarious. He has a huge desire to learn about God and come closer to him. He loves the Book of Mormon

Dawn is a sweet 26 year old Chinese girl. She is kind of quiet, but really nice and sweet. She is also really smart. She is working on a PHD here. She is so great.

Te and Dawn both came to church last Sunday which was so wonderful! And then we got to teach them on Thursday this week. We weren't really sure where Dawn was at and how interested she was, but we taught on Thursday about God and the plan of salvation and prayer and it was so amazing!

We really focused on how much Heavenly Father loves her, and how sometimes we feel like we aren't important, but in reality to Him we are so so important. We testified how much He loved her as His precious daughter. When we said this to her, it really entered into her heart. Her face lighted up with joy.

As we explained to her that she could actually pray to Heavenly Father she was so excited. 

"That's amazing!" she said.

We asked her to pray at the end, and even though it was in chinese and I didn't really understand what she said. I felt exactly what kind of things she was saying to this loving Heavenly Father she just came to know.

During that prayer I thought about where I was and how amazing it was. I just felt so good and so so happy and so full of light and joy seeing how this changed her life. The spirit was so strong and it was one of the happiest moments in my life!

This gospel really is such a precious and amazing thing. I'm so sad for all the people like Dawn (before she met us) who don't know how much God loves them. I love having this chance to share it with them. We can lift so many people's lives as we share these simple truths with them.

I know it is true!

Love you all!

Elder Walton

Nagasaki Japan 

Not with a voice of thunder, but a still small voice

This week rather mysteriously almost all the american missionaries got sick in the same week without any contact with each other. I got sick on Wednesday and then had to teach Zone Training on Thursday, and woke up the next day without a voice. 

Now I teach like the spirit, not with a voice of thunder or a tumultuous voice, but with a still small whisper. Ha!

Anyways It was a pretty crazy week. Tuesday we got up at 5:30 to take a train to Fukuoka where they have Mission Leadership Council for all the zone leaders and sister training leaders. It was way good! On the train ride back me and my companion just jumped straight into talking about how this will help our zone, and how we would teach them. 

We had been feeling that we need to help our zone have a vision of where there area can go and then work with faith towards that. So we prepared for that, but we felt like we needed a really fun game to really drive the principle home. 

So we made the Country Maam Mission! Elder Redd was the mission president with a redneck hat and aviator glasses and we had different companionships come up and do challenges promising great rewards to them. Like singing a hymn with ears plugged, doing pushups for 30 seconds and eating Nato, a gross fermented bean paste they sell here. Each time we gave them lower rewards. A small cookie, a piece of bread a candy wrapper, finally on the last one we said again, "There is a great reward!" Then asked them what they thought it was.

"Nothing!" The missionary exclaimed. 

Then we brought it out and it was tons upon tons of black thunders (delicious chocolate) that poured out and surprised everyone. 

And then we brought it home and switched from the funny to the spiritual and talked about how sometimes we look at things in the past and use that to determine our expectations. I saw that was so true in Saijo. For 20 years there was only like 1 baptism, but once the vision was seen and the Lord's plan believed in it took off and so many miracles happened. It blows my mind what happened there. And it wasn't because the place changed, but the faith and the expectations did. 

I know that through faith, God can work miracles! I've seen that so many times! We just have to believe that the future is going to be brighter than the past and trust in his vision and his plan and work to accomplish it.

I love being a missionary! It is so great!

Love you all!

Elder Walton

Nagasaki Japan

Oh! And also me and my companion have been feeling like we need to teach families, so we have been striving to find and teach them! 

We started teaching the girlfriend of our strong investigator Te san and working to start teaching that family with the mummy. 

They are called the Tagawa's, some friends of members, they are so adorable! The littlest girl at the halloween party grabbed my hand to come and pulled me over to help wrap their dad in toilet paper. It was so so fun. 

We have tons of ramen so me and my companion made suits and were "Ramen Rangers." Ha!

New People Now, Naze

So my companion transferred off to a little island on Naze. He is pretty excited, but I think also sad. My new companion is named Elder Redd. He is from a family of 15 children. All of them in the military. He was in the air force, but he had to drop out to serve a mission and hope he could reapply and get back in. He is way cool! 

This week we had district conference (like stake conference) where a Japanese member of the seventy, Elder Kusume came and spoke to us. It was so amazing because there were members from Nagasaki and from Sasebo and from Saga that I knew, I felt like Nagasaki district was just one big family I was apart of. As I sat there near the front looking at all these members I had come to love, some I did a baptismal interview for, others I loved and served.

There were also those that had loved and served me so much when I was a new struggling missionary in my first area. Including the little 9 year girl named Yumiko who ran after my bus when I left my first area waving good bye, and causing me to tear up for the love I felt. Here she was again a foot taller, but still the same girl. 

I feel so grateful to be a servant to all these people, these saints are few compared to the millions of people around them. But they have a light that burns within them. You can truly tell they are devoted disciples of Christ. I love them with all my heart. 

Love,

Elder Walton

Nagasaki Japan

Pictures:

-P day adventures

-Me with beloved members in Nagasaki Province

-Me and my new companion