Three Months and Counting. . .

Yes. . . It is true. . .Three months and counting until Elder Raia comes home! Can you believe how quickly time has gone by???

We talked to him on Christmas day (the day after Christmas for him.) It was fun to talk to him! He has a little bit of an accent. :) He told us that the end of his last transfer will be on March 31st, and that around the 1st of April he will probably be on a flight home! We are so excited! He of course, has mixed feelings. While he misses us all, he feels like his time there has been so short. I'm sure it will be hard for him to leave all the people that he has grown to love there.

But for now its back to work for him.

Well. . .He can't work ALL the time!

Looks like he may be a mean ping pong player by the time he gets back!

We are all so excited to see him, hear all his stories, hear him speak Japanese, have him make us some tasty Japanese food, and see how fast he can eat with chopsticks. :) But for the next three months he still has a lot of work still to do!

Merry Christmas!

Elder Raia is doing well. . . Working hard and keeping busy. We can't believe his two years are winding down, and we are SO excited to talk to him on Christmas!!!!

I’m doing great! This week we had Zone conference and it was really good! We have the best missionaries in this zone! And we just talked to President this morning and were changing the mission a lot. Everything is going to a monthly bases rather than a 6 week bases. That means monthly splits, monthly zone conferences, and monthly interviews. I think it will really help our mission. Right now we are 17 baptisms a way from doubling last years baptisms and next year we want to do the same thing. 180 baptisms. So in order to do that, we need a change like this and all the missionaries need to step it up in all the phases of the work.

Some missionaries teach investigators just because they are told to. They teach them the message of the restoration because it’s in Preach my Gospel, which is a good thing, but not the best. Missionaries need to be teaching for the right purposes. They need to be teaching to the needs of their investigators. They need to be teaching because they want their investigators to come to Jesus Christ and to become happy. It sounds obvious but sometimes they become "robot missionaries".

I love this picture! Make sure you look closely to see his reflection! Ha Ha!

メリークリスマス, 楽しいクリスマスをお過ごし下さい, クリスマスに交わされる挨拶

(Merry Christmas!)

Prayers For Investigators

Elder Raia is doing great. . . working hard as always.

Their area just got two new senior couple missionaries. They are going to be starting up the Out Reach program in the area. It is a place for youth ages 18-29 to go hang out. "Its supposed to help members of that age stay active and to get less active members active again. Apparently Elder L. Tom Perry started this up when he was a mission president in Europe, its taking a lot of planning and support."

They are working with some investigators and would like us to pray for them. One sister is working on the word of wisdom and one brother is praying for an answer about if the Book of Mormon is true.

"This week I did something interesting in my scripture study. I read Joseph Smith history
and Mormon 9 at the same time. I would read 4-6 verses of one and then switch to
the other. I was really good because they are related in some sense and it made
me feel closer to the prophets that wrote the Book of Mormon and also to Joseph Smith who saw the "God of miracles". "

Here are some fun pics of Elder Raia. . . Enjoy