Week 41!

     This last week was an awesome week! This is my favorite area, Ward, and apartment yet. It has been so fun. I have been fighting to eat healthy, work out, and go running together, but the other Elders were just not feeling it. 

     But then..Zone conference came...President Nagano spoke and led the first training of the meeting and then... Sister Nagano went up and it was just straight fire. She said she wanted to talk about health and I thought, "ok, here we go. Note taking time!" She went through nutrition, exercise, and eating healthy. The whole time I just kept looking over at the other Elders and guilt tripped a little bit you know. Then Sister Nagano finished strong. "Elders and Sisters, when you accepted your call to be a missionary you gave your body to the Lord. It is not yours anymore. You gave yourself to the Lord. This is the Lord's time. Don't waste his time." Game.. Set.. Match! All I am going to say is that the other Elders and I all have a diet plan, we work out from 6 am for an hour, and starting next week we are running three days a week! Miracles come in so many ways! So many ways! 

     Also, if you have not all wished my big brother Tanner Happy Birthday you better do it soon ok. That is some important stuff! I love my brother so much and he is such an example to me so please wish him the best!
     Now, a little about the work. I will tell you what we are doing in my area right now. When I came here, our area book was pretty small because they just added 2 more Elders here recently and there was not any activities. Now, we are working with the youth and have an activity and a spiritual message every week which is so awesome to see their testimonies grow. We are doing Mogi lessons (practice lessons) with members where they play the part of an investigator and we teach them, then we pray together for the investigator, ask them to pray for the investigator in their personal prayers, and we follow up with them with our miracle the following week. That has been awesome. One thing I make me and my companion do in every area is go to the city hall and ask where the nearest service building is and we go ask for service opportunities. We will go join an English class and teach next week which is so exciting too. Also, our main finding efforts is what we call Kinjin dendo. (Golden investigator proselyting). We just stop people and we state our purpose right at the beginning so that there is no confusion and we teach a short principle and invite them to learn within a minute or so. We are just focusing on finding the elect, but that is what it is like for me!
     The spiritual thing I learned this last week came from something President Nagano said in his conference that I have not heard for a while. He was talking about his son and how it takes a village to raise a young man. Almost as if I could hear the words the scripture for 2 Kings 6 came to my mind.
16 And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more thanthey that be with them.
17 And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.     
     I was raised, protected, and guided by so much more than a village. You have all guided my life and given me direction. I cannot imagine my life now if it were not for all of you. And if our eyes could be opened we truly would see chariots of Fire
round about us as far as the eye could see standing ready at our side, fearlessly looking to guide us home. We are and never will be alone in this fight. I was filled with such peace this last week because there will ALWAYS be more with us than they that be with them!! We have endless Concourse of brothers and sisters fighting alongside us on the other side of the veil, and villages and villages to raise us up in this life. Never give up! To Zion!! To Zion!! Onward and onward to the victory! 
     I love you all so much. I miss you all and I am excited for the day when I will see you again, but until then, please let us have eyes to see and ears to hear the chariots coming to our aid. I love you all so much! Have the best week ever!
Love,
Elder Trevor Aiken

Week 40

Is she cute or what?  Find her name below.

     How is everyone doing? I transferred to Adachi this last week! It was a huge surprise and it was so hard to leave the people in Takasaki, but I love this new area already. There are some amazing people here! We were able to set up a wedding reception at the church as missionaries and then we were able to go. It was so awesome! It is so cool to see a couple take that step to go get married in the Temple in Japan. That is not something you see it a lot. I loved it. 
     We have some awesome investigators. All of them are foreign so they speak English! It is so weird to have all my lessons in English right now. But so many foreigners live in Tokyo. Including the other Elder's investigator who is from Amsterdam. He is a 6 foot 7 ex-pro kick boxer. He is the coolest guy ever. He knows more about the gospel than I do I think. He is basically a member he is just working so hard to quit smoking, but he gave a talk in church a few weeks ago because he knows so much!

     But anyway, the transfer was still hard for me. It was hard to leave a young man we had helped come back to church and were helping prepare for a mission. Sometimes this work is so hard and I wish the Lord could just finish it! Do it for me haha. This feeling does not come all the time, but there are always those frustrating times that come, but my eyes were opened and I was very humbled this week by this quote from President Monson. "God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gives to man the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that man might know the joys and glories of creation." I had never thought of it that way. God rested the 7th day and gave that time to us to work. For us to work with His creations to become like Him. I wonder if that is why they say that thousands of years for us is like a day in heaven, because it is the 7th day. I was just thinking out loud, but I love this quote.
     This is our time to work our skill, to give our all, and to try
ourselves so we can finish the unfinished earth he left for us. It is the time for us to grow. I have definitely come to know little by little, more and more, the joys and glories of the creation. I hope in times of trial and hardship we can remember that the Lord left this work for us to do. It is yet unfinished. Whenever we question why, just remember where it says it dozens of times, "for a wise purpose." He knows everything. He has His purpose. He just wants us to return to Him and this is how we can. 

     I love you all so much and I hope you have an amazing week! Go out and finish the unfinished, sing the unsung, solve the unsolved! This is our last time in the vineyard! Go out and give everything you have! Then leave the rest to Him. Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Trevor Aiken

By the way...have you ever seen a cuter little girl than Miaichan? No. No you have not. (They call little kids chan after their name in Japan. Here real name is Miai.)

Twice as good...

Lunch with my companion Elder Adachi! 

   Ok here is the joke for the week. Who is the greatest doctor of the Bible? It is a toss up. Job had the most patience, but Moses delivered all of the children of Israel... Sorry that was such a Larry Aiken joke right there!

Can you tell we like to eat?

     But anyway, our p-day was messed up because we had splits with the assistants in Tokyo on Monday and Tuesday so here we are. It is funny though when you have splits, your attitude towards it is completely based on your relationship with your companion. If you are in a good companionship you do not want to leave. If you have a bad one you treasure the day away - haha. My companion and I are just killing it though! We are doing so well. We just figured everything out and are working well together. It is just crazy that the transfer is already coming to an end again this week. Time flies so fast. If he transfers, the odds are I will become senior companion because at this point 80% of this mission in my transfer are younger... and I am only transfer 5. So young. 

     But I thought about how I have learned from my companion this last transfer and how our companionship progressed and I held onto a quote he told me. He told me that, "A good relationship is when the good times are twice as good and the bad times are half as bad." That is how it ended up this transfer. Everything we did that was fun was twice as fun. All of the miracles we witnessed held twice the joy. We found joy in each others successes and goals. Then when the hard times hit, we each took half the burden and took it together. It made it twice as easy. I thought about how true that statement was when he said it and how opposite it is when we are not having a good relationship. 

     I thought about my relationships before my mission and how I treated others and was treated by them as well. How are our relationships in our family and with our friends? Are we twice as happy in the good times and are we rejoicing in each others successes? Are we happier around them and feel like burdens are lifted? But, most importantly, how is our relationship with God? This relationship is different because we just have to do our part and the Lord will always be there and do his. Are you twice as happy when you are following the Lord? Are you giving yourself to Him? Are you feeling like your burdens are lifted every day from Him? Take the step. Make the relationship. Make it stronger! He made us. I think we can make time for Him. 

     That was just a thought I wanted to share with you this week. Sometimes we get so angry or flustered because of how our friends sometimes treat us poorly, or even family members, but are we doing the same to the Lord? He gives us everything. He saved us. Yet, sometimes we do not even take the time to talk to Him for a five minutes in the morning or the evening. He is dying to have a relationship with us. Let us strive to play our part. I love you all so much and have the best week ever! 

Love,

Elder Trevor Aiken

Blog 38

     Hello everyone!  I am loving my area and I am loving this mission! I love my Savior Jesus Christ and I love this gospel.

     This week was so awesome! We got to go to a Japanese King's tomb from 300 AD which never hurts to see! So cool. The week finished off perfect when we got a text at 10:28 Saturday night from the assistants saying that because of a legal issue with the company making our name tags we are not allowed to wear those name tags anymore because they are illegal. So we can only wear our MTC name tags until we get new ones. Sooo weird. We even had to change our profile pictures on Facebook because we had illegal name tags in them. But that is ok. It is things like that that make you grateful for all of the things you have legally you know? 

     So this week I thought about all I have been given and all of the responsibility I have to live up to what I have been given. I have been given so much and I know God expects me to give all I've got because of all He has given me. But how can we really determine how much we need to give compared to how much we have been given? Well I read and Philippians 3:16 because it says the same thing. I pondered on it and I thought I got a pretty good idea.  Verse 16: Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing.

     Basically it tells us live up to all that we have attained and we have literally obtained everything through the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the Restoration of the Church! Everything! We have been given the chance to obtain everything that the kingdom of God has to offer! How can go about in our lives and given anything less than 100%, our all, everything, when we have been given all?  I have no right to go out everyday of this mission and give anything less than all that I have. I know all that I have is nothing close to enough, but the Lord has promised that if I have everything he will give the rest. We have been given every single thing we could ever need to return to our Father and Heaven and overcome every single trial until the day comes that we get there. We need to remember who we are and live up to our name. Sons and daughters of God. Our Heavenly Father. We need to go out and give it all we have and He will repay us a million fold. Just hold on press forward and lean into the storm. He will bless us with the spiritual strength to continue. Increased spiritual strength is a gift from God which He can give when we push in His service to our limits. Remember that the Lord will shape the back to bear the burden placed upon it. He will be with us all the way and He will never leave us. 

     Hold strong to the faith! I love each and every one of you and I know you can overcome anything. You are my brothers and sisters and I know you can. I hope you have the best week ever and never forget who you really are and what you have been given. Then.. Give it back. 

Love,

Elder Trevor Aiken