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!