It Cooled Down

So like the title says, the last two days have been like 25C so that's crazy and I think God answered my prayers. But before that, this last week was a good, hot one with lots of walking still but we were able to meet some of our investigators we hadn't been able to previously!
We couldn't teach right then but we were able to meet them, including Kengo and his usual only wearing underwear. I love that guy. Just a reminder, he's like 28 and has three or four kids but he's really hard to meet but has lots of interest. Also, we made some return
appointments and they fell through so that's lame and sometimes stings a little bit. We made a baptismal date goal with our boy Akira, who is like 60 and comes to church every week. But we aren't sure how much he is really understanding and remembering though so the date is just a goal to work towards. We had to teach the restoration twice but hopefully he's getting it a little bit. If not that's okay because I don't think God will hold it against him if he can't understand. Now I made him sound like he's mentally handicapped but he's not. He's a
really simple construction worker that didn't have an education really I don't think. It's funny because I can understand just about everyone, except for him. He's way of speaking is mumbling and low and raspy and such so it's kind of hard, but we're working hard.

This last week I was thinking about the importance of missionary work and what our message is. Is our message the Book of Mormon? No. Is our message that there's a prophet today? No. Is our message that the church has been restored? No. Those are all PARTS of the message and complement it and definitely are necessary elements. So what is our
message? It's that we all fall short of the glory of God, therefore we need a Savior to allow and enable us to return back to God, our Father's presence. So where does the restoration of the gospel through Joseph smith fall into that? Because of the restoration, and the Book
of Mormon, and living prophets, we are led and guided to know the truth and be able to participate in necessary ordinances for salvation because the priesthood has been restored after centuries of having been God. Because of those things, we are able to understand the
atonement of Jesus Christ and be able to repent and change our nature. "No unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of God" and the only way we can become clean is through Jesus Christ. That is our message to the world. And that's what I'm here to teach. Sometimes I feel like we focus too much on the restoration and WHAT it is and not WHY it's important. So I encourage everyone to find out what the restoration and the atonement means to them and allow yourselves to be changed by it. If you do, you will know of a surety of God's love, the power of the atonement and reality of the restoration.

Love you all!

餡土龍 K. 赦輝長老
日本福岡伝道部

愛してるわ〜