Happy New Year 2015

5 January 2015

Dear Mum and Dad,

Thanks for your letters this week. Sounds like you had a good New

Years. I hope grandma is ok. And dad I got your second email. The

first one I couldn't see because it takes me to a blocked site.

This week went really well particularly yesterday. had a really good

fast Sunday. I specifically fasted that I would be able to find a

family and more priesthood holders for the ward I'm working in. After

church we met a family from the Philippines that used to be really

good friends with some missionaries here. They invited us to eat adobo

together sometime soon. And then after we met them we met a young man

who's a dance instructor, we set up a time to go each lunch with him

and his girlfriend sometime soon this week. I really felt that was an

answer to my fast. I hope I get the chance to teach these people.

I also got to go on splits this week with my district leader. It was a

really good experience, we went and visited the bishop to talk about

goals for the new year. It was nice to go on splits I got to learn a

lot, really felt like a day led by the spirit.

New Years was an interesting time to proselyte. We talked to a lot of

people about prayer, because most likely it'll be their one time this

year that they'll say a prayer. It's interesting how many people go

and pray and don't expect anything to happen. But it was a good time

to testify to people that prayer works and that they have a hope of it

working otherwise they wouldn't go. I did meet one man who was a

little interesting. We pulled up to a cross walk on our bikes to wait

to cross the street and the guy next to me with his family looks at me

and says "are you Mormons" I smile and say "yes". I can then just

quickly summarize by saying he doesn't like churches. He told me he

was "inter his last name here" kyo, kyo meaning religion or church.

It's a very common belief in Japan to believe in yourself over God.

It's almost like they think if you believe in God you can't believe in

yourself. But we smiled and thanked him for his time and watched him

walk with his family into the temple to go say their New Years

prayers. I don't know why, but I thought it weird that the man who I

could tell was professing he didn't believe in God was about to go ask

for His help.

I just want to finish by saying, I know prayer works. I know God

listens to his children, even when we only have a particle of faith.

I'm thankful for all your prayers and support.

Love,

Elder Davies

Back to the blog…two good letters, and you need to read them both.

Readers: Brad asked us not to do the blog for a while, but now has asked to start it up again. Here are his last two letters. You need to read the first one to understand the context of the second one, so I've posted them both here. I'm sure he'd love to hear from you!

24 November 2014

Hey mum and dad,

Well another week has past in Shonan. This past week I had an

interview with President Wada. It was really interesting. Half way

through he just looks at me and says, "Do you know what you need Elder Davies....a mikan gari"

"A mikan gari?"

"Yes, a mikan gari. Are you telling me you don't know what a mikan gari is?"

"I know what a mikan is."

"A mikan gari is orange harvesting, here enjoy the fruit of our labor."

He then goes and grabs two mikans from behind his bag and hands me one, and starts peeling his. I'm kinda sitting there confused with a

mikan in my hand. And he continues, "Go on and eat, they're just a

little tart. It's actually the perfect season for mikans right now."

He then pulls out some pictures of him, his wife, our area seventy and

his wife picking mikans. And tells me how fun it was and how it would

be a great activity to do with the ward and our investigators. At the

end he said "well I may not have broken bread with you, but it was

great to break mikan with you Elder Davies. I'll close us with a

prayer." Weird how inspiration comes to some people. But you don't

ignore advice from your mission president so I've started organizing a

mikan gari, hope it turns out well.

After that we still don't have any investigators so we haven't done

much teaching. We found a referral for the sisters this week who wants

to hear the first lesson. Her name’s Miki and is the same age as the

sisters so I think that's gonna work out really well. We also found 2

high schoolers that we had a really good conversation about how the

Book of Mormon can help us in our day to day lives that we might be

able to meet again.

I did have one really cool experience this week. I met a really hard

core atheist from America and for the most part we had a nice

conversation. He didn't understand how I could consider myself a

scientist and believe in religion. But we did get to a point were he

was bringing up a lot of unfair things. And for the most part I didn't

really care about the things he brought up because it all had to do

with a lack of faith. But he did say one thing that kind of bothered

me and after our conversation was over. And it was just kinda sitting

inside of me really bothering me. And the next day during language

study, I was studying random scriptures and explains the context of

them. And the first one I did when I went and read the rest of the

scripture so I could explain context, explained the very thing the man

brought up. And this was about slavery in the Old Testament, not a

very general topic. And the answer was very specific. To me this was

an example of God taking care of his servants, he knew I didn't need

that moop on my mind and provided just what I needed.

Love you tons,

Elder Davies

1 December 2014

Hey Mum and Dad!!!

Just got my transfer calls. I'm staying with Elder Pettit in Shonan! This will be my second companion that's lasted longer than one transfer. I also got the Halloween package today. That's a really long story about why I'm only getting it now. But let's just say getting it from my old area to my new area was a challenge. But thanks so much for the package. I'm just running out of stuff from the last box, so came just in time.

Christmas is just around the corner! I love Christmas. It's a really good opportunity especially in Japan because no one know the Christmas

story. I think Elder Pettit and I are going to try and make a short 10 minute presentation to be able to share with people with pictures and songs. If you have any suggested pictures or hymns let me know or send them to me.

And speaking of Hymns. I would love to hear dads project. I don't know if you can find a way that I can just open it in my mail app. I think that's gonna be the best way.

This week wasn't super eventful. Highlights were we did a small service project for one of our English students. He moved to a new house recently and needed some landscaping done. Mostly transplanting some bushes. So after being delayed by the rain for a bit we got out and did the job in like two hours. Moved 7 bushes I think, it was fun.

Then to prepare for the mikan gari we bought 2 mikans for every family in the ward. Then we made a little slip of paper on each. On one, the members that shared Lehi’s experience so the members invite their friends. The other an invitation for a friend. I think it went overreally well.

Love you two,

Elder Davies

latest update

Hey everyone

So I didn't get a letter off last week, but unfortunately that doesn't
mean double letter. But I did have some pretty cool things in the last
two weeks. One, as some of you might have seen, is I can use Facebook
now. It's something that they have been slowly integrating into our
mission and has finally been oked  for all the missionaries to use. If
I remember correctly we are the first mission over seas to start using
Facebook.
The other really cool thing was Elder Cook (one of the 12 apostles of
our church) came and gave a talk to the missionaries here. He talked
about how we can become better missionaries and how we should look at
missionary work as building wards and branches. It was really cool to
listen to him speak.
Also got to go to a music concert at one of the close churches. It was
really good. They had one guy called Jet Edwards come and sing a few
songs. He's a base player and singer. He was accompanied my other
missionaries playing drums, piano, guitar, and sax. There was also a
recent convert who was trained in college to sing opera, she sang Ave
Maria. It was fantastic. There was a really good turn out with a
couple hundred people.
Other than that there isn't much going on. My companion and I are just
doing our best to talk with as manny people we can a day.

Love

Elder Davies

Getting going in the new area

It was my first full week in Yamato, and we spent most of it exploring and meeting people. Right now we don't have any solid investigators and both me and my companion don't have a huge understanding of our area. We don't really know where we can find a lot of people so we did a lot of exploring. We tried going to a new park and unfortunately we didn't find anybody, we did find though a secrecy path that led to a farm with Easter island hedges. I'll send a picture. We also met a man this week with some fairly interesting beliefs. We couldn't completely understand what he was saying but to sum it up he might think himself to be some kind of prophet. We also found close to the house a future Pday activity. We have at a park close to our house a place that let's you go fish in stocked pools. There's a variety of different fish but the biggest is probably carp. We might go do that one day in the future. Well, that's all about happened this week. I think next week I'll have more to write about. 

Love, 

Elder Davies