Trip to Okinawa!

Hey everyone! This past week we went down to Okinawa and it was a
blast! I decided to attach the photos to my main email as well instead
of sending multiple emails. I forgot to send some pictures from the
previous week but this is us at the temple with Yano shimai! It was so
awesome! The plane ride down and some pictures from the conference and the exchange we went on later that day! It was a good time!

As far as my week goes it was busy like usual! We had companion
exchanges with the Fukuoka Zone Leaders in the beginning of the week
and I went out with one of the missions most hardworking elders, Elder
Walbeck! Nothing beats going out and just hitting the streets all day
long and talking to people. Especially here in Fukuoka where the
people are everywhere, I love it! After our exchange we went down to
Okinawa, had our Zone Conference and then stayed the night to go on
exchange the next day with the Zone Leaders down there. It was way fun
and since it was my previous area I took Elder Ishizu to a bunch of my
old investigators homes and visited them so he could pick them up
again and begin teaching them. On top of that I was able to meet lots
of members I used to know so it was a ton of fun. I got a little burnt
from the sun (since I'm inside often haha) but it always feels nice to
get outside, sweat and put some work in!

After the exchange we came back up to Fukuoka and sure enough after
another day I'm writing another email again haha. The weeks are
definitely going by a little too fast. I'm loving every last minute of
it though and I'm excited for this next week because there will be
almost no office work and just straight dendo as we go on two
companion exchanges with the Hiroshima and Kumamoto Zone Leaders.
There will be lots of pictures and miracles to follow in next weeks
email so be on the look out! I hope you all have a great week. Love
you!

Elder Sherrill

Trainings and the Temple

Ruka's Baptism 09/09/17

What a busy busy week! To start it all off we had our Mission Leadership Council on Tuesday and that went really well! The training that Elder Sorensen and I had prepared really fit in well with our mission president talking about setting goals. We talked about the different Key Indicators missionaries focus on and how we can break those down into smaller goals such as contacts, return appointments, Book of Mormons, etc. Then with the smaller goals we strive to achieve as much as we can by re-evaluating our goals and continue to set goals that push and stretch us. 

President Egan has taught me many things on my mission but probably one of the most important things he has continued to stress the importance of is to set goals and make specific plans to achieve them. Not even just in missionary work but in every aspect of my life whether it be in regards to the gospel, work, school, family, and really anything. That is one thing that I'm really grateful to have learned because even though I felt like I had always worked hard before for certain things I desired, making goals and plans help you achieve much more than you thought you could. It's like making a budget for your money. You either say, "okay this month I will try to buy less stuff and spend less money". You may try hard the whole month and end up saving some money but if you have the goal to save money, set specific plans (in this case a specific budget plan) then you will have something more concrete to follow and hold you accountable. Then in the end you end up saving more money. 

In a book called "Preach My Gospel" that we as missionaries use to help become better teachers and more spiritually mature it has a section that talks about goals as well. In that section I really love a quote from Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles that says, “I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.” Learning to set goals and make specific plans is just one of the many things I have come to understand the importance of as a missionary. Hopefully I'll continue to implement that throughout my life haha.

Anyways, thats what we mainly taught on at MLC and then the next 3 days in a row we had 3 separate Zone Conferences. The first one was in Kumamoto, then Fukuoka, and lastly Hiroshima. Needless to say it was pretty busy and fun! All the trainings were a great time and I learned a lot from all the other missionaries. We will be having our last Zone Conference down in Okinawa this next week but we are hoping we will be able to make it down there with the upcoming typhoon. Nobody in our mission is going to church this week since the typhoon is supposed to hit us right on Sunday morning. We will see what ends up happening though. 

This morning we had the opportunity to go to the temple with that recent convert I mentioned in my last weeks email. Going with her was such an amazing experience! After we had the endowment session we had a sealing session in which I acted as proxy for her son so she could have her son sealed to her as well. The blessings of the temple are unlike anything else. Having the knowledge that you can be with your family together forever even after this life is the hope that this message contains. It was a very tender and special experience that I felt blessed to be apart of. It really strengthened my faith that we really can go out and find people that are prepared to hear and fully accept the gospel in their lives. It was just about a year and 4 months ago that my companion and I knocked on her door in Hiroshima. She was shortly thereafter baptized and thanks to the wonderful members in Kure that continued to love her and help her she was able to come to the temple and be sealed to her husband and son who had passed away when she was younger. It truly was a miracle that I was so happy to be able to play a small part in. 

Anyways, that was my week! It was fun and this next week I'm sure will be great as well. :) I'll talk to you all then! Love ya!

Elder Sherrill 

Stress and Success

Elder Strickland (left) on his last day!

Elder Sherrill's Desk

Hello Everyone! So first off I would like to apologize for not sending a general email last week. Week 5 of the transfer in the mission home is mainly just making travel plans and organizing everything to get ready for transfers. So my email probably would have been boring anyways haha. But anyways, this last week was way good! Tons of stress, probably more than I have very felt on my mission before but is definitely helping me learn some important life principles.

We have started another transfer! It's hard to believe that we have already gone six weeks from the previous set of transfers. I feel like I talk about the same thing in my emails ever week because they just come around so often haha. Anyways, at the beginning of the week we started to finish up the travel plans for all the transfers which ended up not actually being all to difficult. The biggest challenge we faced was with the trainers and their new missionaries. There were 19 new missionaries and 19 new trainers that had to be called to train them. The challenge was getting them up to the mission home a day early while realizing that they all had companions that needed a companion for the day. Then on top of that a few of the trainers were from the islands so we had to transfer other missionaries even earlier in the week to make sure everyone had a companion at all times. I don't think I've had a chance to be so organized in my life. It took us hours upon hours of getting very detailed travel plans with arrangements for every missionary in the mission to have a companion at all times. With all those plans in place it ended up making quite a few transfer a day before the normal transfer day (Wednesday).

Throughout the transfer week probably the most hectic day would have to be Wednesday. The night previous we had just gone and picked up all the new missionaries and that is always a ton of fun. We had 19 way solid elders and sisters come into the mission. On Wednesday we begin with new missionary orientation along with setting plans for them to have new missionary dendo out on the streets of Fukuoka. So that's another 19 people we need to find and plan to have in Fukuoka that day to help us out with them. After the orientation and during the time the new missionaries are proselyting we are scrambling around to make sure the church is prepared to our Trainers Training Meeting where we gather and train the trainers. It probably doesn't sound to difficult but with so much going on it's easy to slip up and make a mistake and we did, and that's where the stress comes in haha. 

There were quite a few mistakes but I would say probably one of the best ones is when we started our trainers training meeting. During that meeting the new missionaries meet their trainer for the first time and they get this cool little paper that has their name on it and who their trainer will be. During interviews with new missionaries earlier that day Kaicho felt a flip flop need to be made with some trainers and their new missionaries so we got two new papers and stuck em in the van. With all that was going on I totally forgot about it until the training had begun and I see Kaicho mouth to me, "where are the new papers??" He probably laughed a little inside when he saw my eyes go wide and I mouth back, "one second" and slip out of the meeting to go to the van. So we get to the van and the papers are gone. My fears are confirmed and there's no way to get a new paper unless we went back to the mission home to print off new ones, which we unfortunately couldn't do because we obviously needed to be in the meeting giving our training. So we figured it out, had a couple other elders run back print it off for us and it all ended up working out. That's just one small example of another little mistake that happens here and there and causes stress. 

I had more stress this last week than I had ever before experienced on my mission, with little and big things going wrong here and there. One thing I have been trying to learn is how to deal with my stress positively and calmly. A great example at that is my mission president, president Egan. But I assume he has a pretty good tolerance for stress because he has to work with two knucklehead assistants all the time that make lots of mistakes haha. No matter what happens he always stays very calm and positive. I really learned a lot about that this week and since I was feeling so much stress had a lot of opportunities to try it out! Haha. But it all ended up working out in the end like it always does. I continue to be amazed with how many opportunities you have to learn things on your mission that will benefit you for the rest of your life. Whenever I am going through a trial or experiencing a difficulty it seems a lot easier to recognize and understand it is for my benefit to become better and improve. Understanding that not only makes me more positive when facing hardships and stress but it helps me remember that these missions (and our lives) are just preparing us to become more perfect as we have been commanded to be. 

The title of this email is stress which I feel like I have talked a great deal about but I also want to talk about the success! First off being that we survived transfer week and everyone made it back to their areas safely and there were no major problems. The main success points I found out through the week though are two main things. The first one is today we are going to a baptismal service and I will have the privilege of performing the baptism! The sisters in a nearby area have a 13 year old investigator they have been working with and asked me this last week if I would be willing to perform it for their investigator Ruka Chan. So I'm super excited for that today! There will be pictures to come this next week. The next point of success I saw or I guess heard was I got a call earlier this week from a recent convert of mine. It was Sister Yano, the sister we taught and baptized in Kure over a year ago. She called me and told me she was going through the temple to receive her endowments next Saturday and invited me to go along and act as a proxy for her son! I was thrilled! Then after the session we are going to do a sealing session as well and I will again act as proxy for her son as she is sealed to her family. It will be an amazing opportunity.

But that about wraps it up for this week! It's kind of long but I had to make up for last week haha. I love you all! I know this work is true and I know the Savior Jesus Christ lives. He is always there to help us in our times of need if we turn to Him. I will talk to you next week, take care! 

Love, 

Elder Sherrill 

Pictures!

(elder) Lundberg came to visit the mission! He was my first district

leader in the mission.

The new office staff! We have a new office couple and a new office elder!

Comp Unity

Some kids from Yamaguchi came to visit the temple and mission home!

This is what happens to Elder Sherrill when his brain is fried. He

goes and sleeps on the couch.