Happy 4th of July! 🎉🎊🇺🇸

It is July 4th here in Japan so Happy 4th of July everyone! Today we
won't be doing much to celebrate it, they do have lots of little
fireworks at stores for different summer festivals that Japan has but
as missionaries we can't use fireworks so looks like we'll have to
keep all of our American pride bottled up this year.

Before I jump into this week, last P-Day at Miyajima I bought a
sword!! I will be sending pictures of it later, I got a little carried
away and took a lot of funny pictures with it. But, on to this week!
There were quite a few awesome things that happened. First off, we had
3 investigators come to church yesterday! It was the most people at
church Elder Ratzlaff and I have seen since we've been here. The
mission is focusing on investigators attending sacrament meeting so
they urged us to invite pretty much everyone in our phone book and
sure enough 2 former investigators showed up! It was way awesome to
see the church filled with so many people.

This week we also had a specialized training from our mission
president and the assistants to the president. It was an amazing
training, I think one of my favorite things as a missionary are all
the trainings we get. During the trainings the spirit is always so
strongly there and I feel like I walk away each time with new things
learned. This past training I learned a lot about utilizing the spirit
more as I dendo and I'm excited to see the different results it will
bring.

To end I'd like to share a quick scripture I read this morning that
really stuck out to me.  Recently as a mission we have all been
reading the Book of Mormon daily (5 pages a day). That way in a few
months we will all complete the Book of Mormon together as a mission.
Right now we are in the middle of the Book of Alma and I am loving the
change to read everyday! It is my most looked forward to study of the
morning. Anyways, the scripture is Alma 26:27, it reads, "Now when our
hearts were depressed, and we were about to turn back, behold, the
Lord comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy brethren, the Lamanites,
and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto you
success." During this scripture the sons of Mosiah are talking to
their brethren. When the sons of Mosiah wanted to go preach to the
wicked Lamanites their brethren mocked them and said they should just
kill them because of their wickedness. But the sons of Mosiah had
patience and just like stated above in the scripture were comforted by
the lord, and as they went to teach the Lamanites they did see much
success because of their patience and their love towards their fallen
brethren. I don't know why that particular scripture stuck out to me
but as I read it I felt a great peace of comfort myself and I wanted
to share that.

I know this message of the restored gospel really is for anyone and
everyone, no matter how wicked or far from God someone may seem. They
truly are a son or daughter of God and we should see them just as the
sons of Mosiah did, with potential to become cleansed through the
atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I love this Gospel and the love,
peace, and joy it brings to those we share it with. I hope we can all
find more people to invite to enjoy this sweet gospel with us! I love
you all, have a great week!

シェリル長老より

PS- Next week is transfer week so I will be emailing a day later than
usual (on Tuesday morning instead of Monday morning).