Starting to learn a little more Japanese

This week was pretty crazy but awesome. I'm starting to learn a little more Japanese and now I'm starting to try and learn the alphabet so maybe I'll be able to read it a little bit. We finally got a car again which was awesome but then two days later the engine over heated so we had it towed and then we had to get it fixed so we went back to biking. The same day that we were supposed to get our car back we also got told that we would be getting a third companion, Elder Brown who was also in our MTC district, because of some crazy stuff that happened in the other zone.

 We had some awesome miracles though, we picked up a new investigator who has some pretty awesome potential; all because we accidentally called him and he actually picked up the phone and then we were able to talk to Greg's wife and we found out that she loves the help we have been for Greg and that pretty soon she would like to start meeting with us a well! It just goes to show that when you pray with faith miracles can happen.

Being able to celebrate Easter on the mission was pretty cool, just like at Christmas my focus was on Christ and wanting to share the love and blessing of the Atonement. It made it a whole different experience and honestly made it a lot better than any Easter I have ever had in my life because I wasn't focused on the trivial things of the holiday but on the real reason and the hope that comes from the Savior's resurrection and Atonement. I love working with Elder Summers and Elder Brown, the Lake Forest ward, the Japanese people, and our many investigators. I am definitely here for a reason whether its to learn from others or to help them as well. All these people are good, and I need to be with them. 

Love

Elder Cheever

 

We had a surprise party for our zone leaders after a rough week, we squeezed 12 elders in a small bedroom

Summers and I got to play with super cute puppies at Greg's house

Some less-actives let me take a picture with their parrot, it was weird to have it so close to my ear

 

Be like the elephant

This week was super awesome and full of miracles! The week went kind of slow at first but ended up being amazing by Sunday. We had to stay inside on Wednesday because Elder Summers got sick and could barely move out of bed which was unfortunate but it gave me a chance to catch up on some needed sleep and to read some good Ensigns. On Friday we ended up helping with a service project that we thought would only take an hour or so to finish but it ended up taking 6 hours! It was actually pretty fun to help out, especially since we were still in proselyting clothes, and hopefully did a lot of good since the people we were helping were non-members. Hopefully they now know a little better who members of the church really are and maybe someday they will be ready to listen to other missionaries. On Saturday we realized we needed to get our bikes from the home of a member so we started walking expecting it to take about two hours to get there when out of nowhere somebody offered to give us a ride. He was a Muslim man from Egypt who was super friendly, while we rode with him we talked with him about God and religion so when we left we were able to leave a copy of the Book of Mormon with him so hopefully he will read it and want to learn more. I don't think that it was a coincidence that he pulled over, there was probably a prompting of some sort that motivated him to do so.  That afternoon we did a window and had a couple awesome miracles. Our dinner had cancelled on us because they were involved with the roadshow happening in the stake so after the window we were wondering what we were going to do for dinner when a member from the Korean branch saw us and told us to come over to the barbecue that the branch was having at the same park we had just done our window at. It was super good food and as we talked with the Korean elders we were able to get some advice on how to do the Japanese work better which was super helpful. The Lord really does provide for His missionaries when they do what they are supposed to and don't focus on their temporal needs, I guess the scriptures are true, who woulda thought of that;)
Sunday was the most miracle filled day though. At church there were five Japanese girls who are staying with some of the members of our ward who were all interested in church so that made Elder Summers excited to have even more people to teach and then a sort of less-active lady who was sitting behind us asked us if we would be able to teach her 11 year old daughter the lessons so that she can get baptized! All of this happened before sacrament meeting even started! After church we discovered that Greg, one of the less-actives we have been working with a lot, met with our bishop and got his limited use temple recommend so that he can do baptisms and be able to get baptized for his father and grandfather and then during our ward mission correlation meeting we found out that a former member had been at church today and that because of some humbling things that have happened in his life he is going to start coming back to church so there is potential there for us to start re-teaching him. The rest of the day we were able to meet with everybody that we tried to visit and we had a lot of good lessons with our investigators, less-actives, and members. We met with Greg and discussed doing family history work with him so he can do the baptisms for his dad and grandpa and then we talked about how once we do that we can begin preparing him to go through the temple to get endowed. Before we left he prayed and gave thanks for getting a recommend and asked for help to get the Melchizedek priesthood and to be able to make it to the temple and it was the coolest thing ever because that truly is what missionary work is about is getting people to the temple. 

Here is the other cool experience from the window. We talked with an elderly man from India named Sing (which means Lion in India). He was full of good advice about life and we actually took something he said and have been using it as a lesson with members and I'm gonna use it for my advice to y'all as well, we call it "The Parable of the Elephant". He told us that in India there are elephants that walk around and when they go down the streets the wild dogs will bark at them and run around their feet but that the elephants just keep walking and ignore the little dogs because the elephants know that they are bigger and stronger than the dogs. He related that to us because he said we don't need to worry about what the people will say to us when we try to share the gospel with them because we know what we have is good. We have changed it a little bit and use it to say that the dogs can be all sorts of things in life like temptations from Satan and his forces or people around us telling us that what we are doing is wrong but that when we have faith in the Savior and our Heavenly Father we can be like the elephants and know that we are stronger than these "dogs" and that we can walk through the streets of life with our heads held high and ignore their "barking." So as you go through your week look for opportunities to share gospel regardless of what people will tell you and if temptation comes your way stand tall and be like the elephants! I love this area and this gospel, the people here are good and I need to be with them.

Love,

Elder Cheever

 

 This is me and one of my zone leaders, Elder King

I'm back on a bike

We are spoiled here in the California Irvine Mission to have lots of cars so now that Salt Lake has decided to take a lot of them away it causes problems. We didn't get ours taken away for dumb things or accidents, we just hit 50,000 miles (the point at which the church sells the cars again) on it because we have to drive around so much so we had to park it and now we are car-less. It has been a big pain in the butt for us and our zone. We have a huge zone and now we only have 3 cars to try and transport 16 elders around and on our side we have to bike everywhere we go. We live in Irvine at the very edge of our area and to get to the main part is a long ride up and down rolling hills and then to do Japanese work we also have to bike to Irvine and especially UCI, which, when we will have to do it, will probably take up the majority of our day. It sucks because it has really limited the amount of work we can do for both English stuff and Japanese stuff. All things considered we still had a decent week. When we talked with Brianna about baptism she was really excited still and was ready to do it even though immersion was the only way but as soon as we told her about the possibility of proxy she got super opposed and said she didn't want to be baptized anymore which makes our job a lot more stressful but hopefully when we meet with her again we can get her back on track. The rest of our week was spent mainly biking and stuff. We have a less-active who has been progressing a lot and now wants to be able to attend the temple so that he can do baptisms for the dead for his father and grandfather, which is awesome. We were able to get some good news though, one of the youth in the ward named Jack has been bringing his friend, Brock, to church for the last three weeks so we have been talking to Jack about the possibility of teaching Brock and yesterday Jack told us that when he approached Brock about taking the lessons Brock said he would like to do it, which is awesome. Member missionary work is real and is a huge strength! The other investigator related miracle is that there is a 10 year old girl named Ryland whose mother is less-active and her father isn't a member so she was never baptized. Ryland has been attending activity days for a while and recently came to church and told her mother that she wants to start going to church. Our hope is that with some help from the primary president, who is super awesome, we can begin teaching Ryland as well and see if that can be a way to get her mom back to church and maybe even teach her father.

A big focus in our zone has been on looking for the good in everything and finding the small miracles that we have each day so that the Lord can trust us with the bigger miracles that we really want. We have a "tree" on our wall and each night we call our district and we all talk about the miracles that we saw and we write them on sticky notes and put them on the tree as "leaves" Its pretty amazing to see how after doing this for two weeks we have tons of miracles, some bigger, some smaller, some more serious, some more silly (we are still just 19 and 20 year old kids) but they are all things that have helped us see how much the Lord is blessing us. I would encourage all of you to do the same sort of thing, each night think about what happened in the day that can be considered a miracle in some way and find some way to record it, you can make a miracle tree like us, or just write it down in a journal or on a note in your phone and then remember to thank our Heavenly Father for these. I know that through continued faith and gratitude the Lord is more and more willing to bless us with the things we stand in need of. I know we are all children of God and that He loves us very much. Even though biking sucks I know its for a reason and that we will be able to help somebody in some way because of it and I know that these people are good and I need to be with them.
Love

Elder Cheever

Us and Yuuske and Minoru (Japanese students)

It was our ward mission leaders birthday so we got him a balloon

And this was us after playing soccer last week

Every one of us is a son or daughter of God

This week was another busy and good one. We have continued to meet with Brianna every day to be able to prepare her for baptism and to ensure that she is really ready for it. We came upon a speed bump, however, due to her being paraplegic and overweight. Because of this baptizing her conventionally is out of the question so we have been trying to think of ways that we can go about doing it that are still approved, we asked President Lutz (one of the counselors to President Orgill) for ideas and then one night while discussing it before we fell asleep we started wondering if we would be able to baptize her by proxy even though she is still alive. We asked President Lutz if he could look into it for us and amazingly it is actually allowed! We have to make sure that she is super ready and that she truly desires to be baptized for the right reasons, then we have to get a doctors note saying that it is the best way, and then somebody from the mission presidency has to interview her, and then all that will be sent to the First Presidency for their approval. It's a lot of work but will be totally worth it and to quote President Lutz "It will be something cool to write in our journals" Our other investigators are doing good as well, Greg is progressing more than he has in a long time and now he is at the point where he wants to be baptized so he can have the Holy Ghost with him and so he can feel better but the only thing holding him back is the possibility of his wife leaving him if he does so. Because of that we have been praying a lot that her heart can be softened to allow him to be baptized so it would be awesome if y'all could help out too. On Friday we played soccer at night with the zone some kids at the park who were playing there and from this we hope to start doing it more often and invite the youth to bring their friends and to invite all of our investigators and less-actives to come and join as a way to fellowship and to potentially learn more. It was super fun to do and so far a lot of the youth in our ward are excited for it, its cool to see how playing soccer with the missionaries at home helped me and how now by doing the same thing I can help people out here too. Gladys Knight is coming here in April and doing one of her big fireside things so now our big push is to invite members and investigator to invite people to it so that they can feel the Spirit and then to be given a much more casual way to begin learning about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

I love being out here so much. I have come so much closer to my Heavenly Father and I have come to know my Savior as the older brother and friend that He can be so much more than I ever have before. It has been amazing to see how perfectly the gospel can fit into our lives and how everything can be related to it. I know that each and every one of us is a son or daughter of God and that He loves all of us. The Plan of Salvation has been provided so that we can each learn and grow and someday return to live with Him again. These people are good and I know I need to be here serving them and my Heavenly Father. 

Love

Elder Cheever