Exact Obedience Brings Miracles

What do these symbols mean?

I don't hate a lot of things.  I am usually a really happy person, but right now I could kill our laundry machine.  It's covered in Kanji (Japanese characters).  It better shape up or it's going head first over our balcony.  It took us two days to get 1 load of laundry done because it wouldn't drain.  I think Sister Watanabe must have put it on some sort of timer before she left.  Sister Capener and I have done a lot of laughing lately.  Our method:  push as many buttons are you can, push start and then when that doesn't work, try again!  It's been pretty amusing.  Finally we gave up and just took everything out, wrung it out in the bathroom and hung it up inside with tons of fans.  It looked like our kitchen had been hit by a tornado of bed sheets :)  

So just some random things:  A member told us that the 2020 Olympics will be in Tokyo!  Exciting!  :)  I wish you could see Sister Capener and I use the phone:  We put it on speaker so that both of us can try to decipher the Japanese.  Oh and speaking of the phone we just barely (after a week and a half) figured out how to listen to our 7 voice mails.  Oops...  We had a zone meeting and the zone leaders told us that over half of the missionaries in our mission are 4 transfers and younger.  We have a very young mission.  We accidentally texted the wrong scripture to an investigator.... after she sent us a text back a little confused we sent the correct scripture and looked up the scripture we sent.  A very interesting verse about the reign of the judges :0  We now triple check text messages before we send them.  

We are working really really hard.  Time is flying by!  It's already p-day.  We cover 3 massive congregations (wards) (I don't count the military branches as branches because they're bigger than our Okinawa ward).  There are so many families that we're visiting.  Especially the military families, because we really need their help.  You can't proselyte on base.  We have to take our name tags off before we enter.  That means we have a hard time finding new investigators for these wards so we try to encourage them to invited family and neighbors over when we teach Family Home Evening.  It's been working out pretty well so far.  These families are so strong and they are great missionaries.  It's a wonderful privilege to work along side them. 

The addresses here are completely different than they are in the states.  It's pretty confusing.  I took a picture of an investigator's address in our area book and on our way there that night we stopped an older grandma and asked her for help finding the address.  I showed her the picture on my camera.  She exclaimed that it was really far away, it would probably take us an hour and a half or maybe two and at this time of night it wasn't a good idea to go there.  We though we were just a couple minutes away and figured she was confused.   When we got back to our apartment that night I realized I accidentally showed her the wrong address.  The address I showed her was all the way across the island.  No wonder she was so worried about us!  :) Embarrassing! 

We taught our first full lesson in Japanese by ourselves to an investigator.  Akasaki San is a mom of four girls.  The elders found her while they were "housing" and they passed her off to us.  She is wonderful!   We taught about Joseph Smith and the restoration.  It was difficult to only rely on Sister Capener and my Japanese to explain things so we kept it simple, used scriptures to help explain and testified.  I think it went pretty well.  She said we could come back.  Next time we will try harder to find a member to come with us.  It will help with our explanation and hopeful Akasaki San with be able to find a new friend.  

Caught in the rain without my rain gear!

Tsunami warning level :)

We had the opportunity to go to Kadena the other day to visit a family.  It's a super long hour bike ride but we arrived and we were able to share a great message about families and Heavenly Father's commandments.  I have recognized more as a missionary that obedience brings blessings.  They keep us safe, and they don't restrict us.  In the MTC (Missionary Training Center) the mission presidency had the saying that "obedience brings blessings but exact obedience brings miracles."   And I need a miracle :)  

I know this is God's work.  I really do.  Before my mission I forgot that missionaries are real people too.  I just assumed that they automatically knew how to teach, what to teach and how to find people.  But that is not the case!  There is a huge learning curve.  I was really worried when Sister Watanbe left.  We have lots of investigators and they rely on us to teach, to explain and to guide!  I love these people.  I pray for them, I study for them and I think about how we can help them constantly.   But how on earth was I supposed to do that in broken Japanese?!?  But especially this week I've realized that as long as you're trying your best and you're doing what you're suppose to do, good things happen.  Heavenly Father is not going to allow someone to fall away because we can't speak the language perfectly.  We just try our hardest and He makes up the rest and more.  The more I am a missionary the more I am certain that this church is true.  No one in their right mind lets a whole bunch of 18, 19 and 20 year olds lead your missionary force.  If this work rested solely on our abilities it would have ended a long time ago.  But it's not us and it's not our talents that convert.  It's the spirit and it's the truthfulness of this message.  That is extremely comforting as a missionary.  

A sweet treat!

In Music town!

I love you guys!  I pray for you all the time :)  

Have a wonderful week!

Love,

Sister Hawkins