A week of Miracles and Blessings!

Hello hello family and friends!!! How is everybody doing?! I hope all is going well for you because I couldn`t be doing any better right now :) It`s been another week full of miracles and blessings. I have been able to see the hand of the Lord in so many things and that it one of the greatest joys of missionary work!



First of all, I have some really exciting news!! Kawamura Rika and her son Yugo did make it to church yesterday. But it gets better! That was the first time we had been able to meet up with Rika as she had been in the hospital a couple weeks before and was recovering at home this past week. So it was definitely good to get with her and her cute little 2 year old girl again :) Ha. We met with them after the church meetings and as we followed up with her we learned that she has been praying and reading the Book of Mormon everyday. She is in Alma!! And her 10 year old son Yugo is on page like 98! Haha they are doing so good. We asked them about their baptism and Rika was down to do it whenever. When we asked Yugo he was down as well and even caught his mom a little off guard by saying he wanted to be baptized! (Haha I thought they had already talked about that before). They were both happy and we were able to make a date for this upcoming Saturday. Yaaaayyyy!!! I had been praying everyday that Heavenly Father would watch over and protect them, especially Rika, during the time we weren`t able to meet and I know he did. She has been keeping the commandments and is ready to be baptized!! We are very excited for them. After our lesson we headed downstairs and ate lunch with the branch. It was a good meal and a good opportunity for the other 4 investigators to associate with the members :)


We were also able to make another baptismal date with a kid named Onodera Migaku :) He`s a 1st year college student and is a fun kid. He is a fairly new investigator as we have only had a couple lessons with him. He loves music and even invited us to a couple concerts this past week haha. Unfortunatley we had to tell him that we can`t go but one of the concerts was at a nearby mall so Elder Shinno and I thought it wouldn`t be a bad idea to go meet up with him afterwards and do a lesson. We were able to do so and yes I did see the singer. She was a young girl, supposively quite famous here in Japan, but what surprised me even more was the shirt she was wearing- an Iowa Hawkeyes t-shirt haha. Of course I thought of you Mitch ;) Hope everything`s going well for you.

Our investigator from Madagascar, Fred, is still here and I love him. He is still the most humble, kind person I know. He comes to church every week and I translate for him and Brother Bassett, an American here teaching English. Fred is studying Japanese but it is still a little hard for him. Especially church words. As for now, that is his biggest fear. He wants to be baptized but is nervous about doing it here in Japan. He wants to do it in his own country, with his family. I love teaching him though. We recently taught him the Plan of Salvation and it was so special to see that knowlegde flow into him. He has studied the Bible before and is a really smart man, so he was a little confused about why he had not heard of this before. It is because a lot of those things aren`t written directly in the Bible. Because of the Restoration and through the prophet Joseph Smith we have been blessed to learn about things like the Plan of Salvation. The Restoration is so important in our lives!! I am grateful for it and the Book of Mormon.

It is sad to have President Tateoka leave. He has worked hard for the past 3 years. He is an awesome mission president and I will be eternally grateful for the things I have learned from him. It is also exciting to have a new one coming in!! His name is President Rasumussen. I don`t know much about him but I do know that he has been called of God! We are excited to see what the future has in store. He arrives here tomorrow evening. I love you all and thank you for all your love and support. I have the best family and friends in the world!! Hope you have an awesome week. Take Care.

Elder Ovard