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

Fastest Six Weeks Ever!

This week there were so many events it is hard to keep track.

Yamashita san, an investigator I taught in Saijo got baptized! He overcame a huge tobacco problem in only 2 weeks!

We got to go on splits with the Mission President's Assistants. It was so great! I learned so much about finding by the spirit and having fun while doing it. Also there was a great moment where I went with Elder Coehlo and our ward mission leader to a huge lookout point of nagasaki and Elder Coehlo pulls out a map of area and then tells me they want to split our area and are going to send me and Elder Willis down the the south part of Nagasaki and find us a new apartment.....So I guess we're opening a new area!

General Conference was amazing! We had 3 investigators come! Two of them we hadn't even taught yet, but we had them right questions for their life and they both got answers it was awesome!

And then yesterday was a typhoon. We had to stay inside all day (presidents orders) so we had tons of time to study, call, clean and share our testimonies with each other It was actually way awesome!

I was thinking the other day about how sometimes I say that my life has been "fluffy bunnies and clouds" because I feel like I have had so many blessings and so few trials in my life. But then I realized the other day, that's actually not true! I have had some of the hardest trials in my whole life the past several months, ones where I wept on the balcony of our apartment because of the pain of them. There were extreme times of stress or anxiety, blaming myself, lack of success fears worries rejection. Sometimes I had to deal with huge problems worries in the lives of others, things I never would have expected a 19 year old kid to deal with and yet...

Even though the wagon and burden I was pulling was filled with heavy rocks at times, looking back it feels like it was so lgight, so much that I could say it felt like "fluffy bunnies and clouds" And I know that's because I wasn't pulling alone it alone. I remembered this scripture

"28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavyladen, and I will give you rest.

 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I ammeek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest untoyour souls.

 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." -Matt 11:30

I know that despite those trials and afflictions the whole time the Savior has been along side me. Taking those burdens those trials upon him and making me whole. He has truly made my burden light. And I am so grateful for His atonement and gift to me of that. I know it is a REAL power in our lives. 

Love you all! 

Elder Walton

Pictures: 
-Me and my companion and our golden investigator Udomoto, mongolian. At his birthday dinner

-Nagasaki at night

-us with the assistants (the two in white shirts in the back) 

Temple and General Conference

Dear Everyone!

This week I rode in a big 15 seater van to Fukuoka driven by a 50 year old Japanese man who plays eagles music in his band every friday night wearing a way cool headband. No I was not getting kidnapped because of Elder Murphy's much desired singing ability. But I was going to the temple! (Our driver is the 1st counselor to the branch president named Ogawauchi Kyodai He is hilarious!)

It was so wonderful being able to be there and just feel so at peace. I love the temple! Also miraculously there were members from every area I served. I got to talk to Bishop Saito from Hiroshima who was going the next day to Saijo (my last area) to interview Yamashita san, the investigator I taught who got baptized right after I left for the priesthood. I'm so happy for Yamashita san and how the lord helped him to quit smoking, repent and be baptized and have that joy. 

This week we had some amazing experiences teaching the first lesson. In a lot of my mission I have kind of struggled sometimes with helping the first lesson be spiritual. Especially for non Christians sometimes it is hard for them to understand why should be so special. But thanks to advice from my best friend Elder Jeppesen I learned how to really make the sharing of the first vision really special, to have them close their eyes and imagine it. We did this yesterday with a chinese investigator named Tei san. He closed his eyes and listened imagining he was really there. 

Afterwards we asked, "How did you feel?"

"Amazing" He replied. 

"You too can know this is true through the book of mormon" We said, teaching him about the book of Mormon. 

Then finally we asked "When you know these things are true will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone with his authority?"

 He answered nodding his head, "Yes, yes I will."

The spirit was so so strong. The spirit truly testified to him that It was true and his heart was changed. 

Then also last general conference Elder Anderson challenged youth to record the first vision in their own voice then listen to it. I did that and I felt so much peace and assurance from the spirit as I listened to it in my own voice, I really felt that it was true. 

We did this with a less active too, had him listen to it in his own voice. Afterwards we asked him how he felt. He said, "I felt like I wanted to cry, my whole body felt warm" 

He was just so amazed and had such a fire to want to learn more, he committed to bear his testimony of Joseph Smith at the next testimony meeting. 

I'm so grateful for the counsel of modern day prophets, everyone should all try Elder Anderson's counsel! It is amazing! A testimony is one of the most worthwhile things in the world. I know Joseph Smith really truly was God's prophets. His simple sincere prayer brought more blessings in my life then I can ever explain. And one day in Heaven I will shake his hand and say "Thank you, thank you brother Joseph."

Love you all!

Elder Walton

Nagasaki Japan

Pictures:

-Nagasaki Dry Docks, SOO COOOL!

-Captain Moroni on the temple in bountiful, which little did we know was made out of ramen packets we got from a member. 

A Blast to the Past

This week I got to go on splits with the elders from my very first area.

I felt so nostalgic walking the streets that I had been walking exactly 1 year earlier. Many things were similar, but it also felt different. Like just like me it had moved on to others things, but it was an amazing moment I had to reflect on my life, on how much I had changed in this 1 year.

I really have changed so much from this work, I have become so much more filled with faith, so much more loving, and patient, especially with myself. I see so many things so much clearer than I did before.

I'm so grateful for so much of what this mission blesses me with, but especially for this change. Change to become more like my Savior Jesus Christ. Nothing is of more value to me.

I love him and I love this work!

Elder Walton
Nagasaki Japan

Pictures:

-Nagasaki Sunset

-Me overlooking the same castle I saw everyday 1 year ago

-Me and a member family that had given me so much love when I had needed it so much.

Interview and Sacrifice

Dear Everyone!


There are so many hills in Nagasaki....so so many hills. Hopefully my brakes survive...I think one of them is already shot though. But as whenever I have struggles, I like to realize I'm not just struggling in bad rain, or up hills or mud or whatever,

I'm struggling for Christ!

So it's worth it.


This week I did my first baptismal interview. We went down to Saga after training from President and I interviewed their investigator Imamura san. At first I could tell how nervous she was. She was really nervous about what it was and if she would pass. But as we talked and she shared all the spiritual experiences she had had it was truly amazing to see how converted and changed she was. She knew it all really was true and had such a strong testimony and light in her eyes from the gospel. After she passed she threw her hands in the air punching the sky and shouted for joy!

And I was so humbled "Wow I am just this 20 year old kid, in Japan representing Christ doing a interview for someone to make one of the most important promises they can ever make in eternity" The trust God could have in someone like me is unbelievable. I only hope I can live up to that trust.

Then this Sunday Udomoto, our mongolian college student, came to church again. He was so happy and smiling that you would never even realize, that he hadn't slept at all the previous night, he had worked from 5pm the previous night to 8am in the morning with only a hour or two of break.

That's 15 hours.

15 hours of work and no sleep, and then he comes to church? When I realized that I was so blown away. "How is he even walking?" I thought. But he was as happy as ever to be there. As I watched I was so amazed at the sacrifice he was making for Christ. And how important Christ had become in his life. I was truly inspired.

Love you all,

Elder Walton



Pictures:

-Me and Elder Willis on Splits in Saga

-Aiko san, an investigator the sisters taught in Nagasaki at her baptism this saturday with her cute little girl. Aren't they happy?