We continued to see miracles and progression with our investigators

I don't think that I have had a week as busy as this one in a long time. We have a bunch of investigators (both in English and Japanese), less actives, missionary meetings, Japanese class, and of course member dinners that we have to do in a day that makes everyday jam packed with stuff. On Tuesday we go to an English class in the morning and help teach a bunch of Japanese moms with a member lady and then after that we teach a few of them even more on their own. Its super funny to listen to them try to pronounce and understand some of the words and the occasional slang that we use but then its not as funny when they all start talking in Japanese and I just sit there having no idea whats happening and hope that Elder Summers will translate for me. After we went to this we went to a park to teach a sort of less active lady in the ward and during the lesson she got up to take her dog to the bathroom and this grandma who was at the park with her granddaughter and great-granddaughter looked at us and asked us why we weren't in school so we told her about what we do and we ended up talking with her for a little bit and told her about the church and why it is that we are willing to give up two years of our life to share the gospel and she got super excited and told her granddaughter, Mariah, that she needed to come talk to us because we have an important message that she needed to hear. Mariah was really interested and wanted to learn more and then her grandma, Beth, asked where our church building was and we told her that it was just down the road,so she wanted to go see it so we all drove over to the building and ended up taking them on a tour of it which was super awesome. We tried all week to get Mariah to come to the institute classes and activities and she never responded so we started getting kind of bummed but then Saturday night when we invited her to the Stake Conference broadcast she finally responded and said that she would love to go, which was so good. 

The rest of the week we continued to see miracles and progression with our investigators who are all rather close to baptism which was amazing. Brianna calmed down a little bit and started making more sense, she has schizophrenia and some other issues so she tells us a lot of crazy stuff, and she even started reading the Book of Mormon and loves it and she came to the Stake Conference as well and really felt the Spirit and was uplifted by it. Greg D. committed to praying on his own for his wife's heart to be softened to allow him to be baptized and he committed to trying to get her to join him in prayer. Robert C. has caused us a ton of stress, however, at the beginning of the week he texted us and told us that he was ready to finally quit smoking and be baptized because he understands the importance of the Word of Wisdom and wants to obey his God and join the true church but then on Sunday afternoon he texted us again and told us that he was considering going back to his Catholic background which was a real bummer so now our plan is to talk to him and get him to understand the testimony that he has of the church and then bear testimony to him of the truthfulness of the gospel as well and hope that the Spirit can get to him. 

This area is a ton of fun and a ton of work, this week we were going nonstop from lesson to lesson which even though is a good thing because thats our job it was super exhausting and this coming week appears to be about the same but we know that as we wear out our lives, or at least our young minds, in the service of God and others we will be blessed. On Sunday we had a Stake Conference that was broadcast from Salt Lake to the western US and some of Canada that was amazing. Elder C. Scott Grow, Sister Bonnie Oscarson, Elder James J. Hamula, and Elder Dale G. Renlund all spoke and gave amazing talks. Elder Renlund talked about the importance of the Plan of Salvation and how when we come to realize that everything in life points to that Plan we will know more fully what we need to do in our lives to be better disciples. Hopefully his talk will be put on LDS.org so those of you not living on the west coast can read it and find strength in it. I love this work, I love this gospel, I love this area and the friends who I am serving with, and I love the people I am having the opportunity to help; they are good and I need to be with them.

Love

Elder Cheever