Leaving Adachi

     This week was an awesome week! Full of miracles! We went finding this week and found a young man named Akagi and asked if he wanted to learn about Jesus Christ and he said "yes" and wanted to meet that Thursday. We taught him in the middle of this park and taught about who God is and about prayer. We taught him that God loves him and wants to hear from him. We told him that he can pray to him any time and told him how God answers our prayers by touching our heart through happiness and peace. We asked him how he felt right then and he said he felt happiness and felt peace. We asked him why he thought he felt that way. He said he did not know but was so excited to hear the answer. We told him that was God's way of touching his heart through the spirit to tell him this was true. He was overcome and was so excited to think that God was speaking to him right then. He said he wanted to know that this was true and he really wanted to pray. He said he was going to pray and strive to receive his answer and that he wanted to meet again next Thursday! Such an awesome miracle! A miracle that the other elders will follow up with because finally I am transferring! I will miss my "family" in Adachi!  I love them all so much.

    I am going to Kawagoe in Saitama Ken. I am so excited to go there!  My new companion is Elder Rhea and we are exact opposites, but I am excited. There are something like 22 new Elders coming in after this next transfer. It is not Tokyo but still pretty big. It has about 100 members and a decent amount are pretty good at English.  I am officially transfer 10! Double digits! What happened!!?? The time is just gone. I mean for heaven sakes BYU Football is back in business. That doesn't make any sense. So crazy. 

     Today I wanted to talk about a spiritual thought that has been on my mind this past week as we have been working with some less actives and investigators.  I wanted to talk about putting on our spiritual armor of God. I have seen such a difference in my life when it has been on and off, and I have seen it ten times moreso in my mission with people I have met here and it breaks my heart to see it. When I write these blogs I am not writing it to a "congregation" so to speak. I am not writing these to a group. But rather I write these to assembled ones. I write these to individuals praying to touch one heart or help one person as I write these by the spirit, so I pray that I can! 

    When I talk about the armor of God I am specifically talking about reading and praying. We need to put on and keep on the armor of God and read and pray every day. When we take that armor off we leave ourselves vulnerable to the attacks of the adversary. But sometimes we feel like the armor is so heavy or that we just want to take it off for one day, it's fine. Or not even that we want to take it off but that we are just "too busy" or "too tired" to do it. But when we take off that armor and the adversary sends his fiery darts it is so much easier than we think to get injured. Sometimes when we get injured deeply through sin or trial, it is really hard to put that heavy armor back on because it hurts to put it on top of those wounds. I write this as a plea to those who have their armor on to keep it on, but even moreso to those who took it off and may have received wounds and it seems as though it is too painful to put the armor back on. It is painful to put it back on a fresh wound, it is is for everyone. But, Christ knows the wounds are painful, he knows that feeling perfectly. That is what the Atonement is there for. To heal those wounds. Not to repair us, but to restore us to our natural form. There are no remaining scars. Christ took those. He took the scars for us. Let Him heal you. Let Him restore you. He has restored me in a way that I cannot put into words. He continues to restore me. It humbles me to the depths of my soul EVERY DAY. I have come to see Him as He is. He is there. He will heal us. Every day. Never take off that armor! Put it on and please keep it on. Strive to get to the temple. Strive to always be worthy to partake of the Sacrament. Read and pray!

     Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Aiken