Yes. As you can see by the subject of this email it is finally in the heart of Monsoon/Typhoon season and yes, rain in 90 degees with humidity IS like a luke warm, uncomfortable shower in dress clothes. It`s the best! It was the craziest thing this morning while we were studying. I looked out the window and the sky was just looking gray and boring and literally five minutes later, I look out again and it`s coming down like I`ve never seen rain before! And what`s even better is that another five minutes, or so, later, it stopped! Life on a little island I guess!
This week we got to have a special conference on the fourth of July to meet our new Mission President. It was awesome! No fireworks, which was a bummer, but I`m so excited about President W. Him and his wife are hilarious. They`re fantastic people and have a great sense of humor. Also, by way of announcement, they informed us that we would be getting our own Ipad Mini`s by the end of this year! I`m so excited about that! With the Ipads we will also have the chance to use Facebook which will do wonders for the work over here in Japan where everyone is on social media, all the time. Along with being incredible people, President and Sister W have such amazing testimonies of the Gospel. It truly is such an honor to be serving under such a great President and Mission `Mom`.
This week we really turned things around. I`m finding that by simply trying to focus on the Spirit, I`m being a led a lot more in this work. We just went out and worked and were able to lock down four new investigators for the week! The first one was actually last Monday where we found a kid that loved Americans and English and agreed to come to the church right there. We played a little bit of basketball and then were able to share a short message with him! The next three were a little later in the week during our weekly planning session. We got a call from one of our Brazilian friends and he told us to come over to his place right then for a BBQ. We went over there and were able to answer a lot of questions about the church and share our testimonies about Prophets and the truthfulness of our message. It was great because they were like, `we don`t want to hear something your church told you guys to say, we want to know whats in your hearts,` and they sat down right there and heard what we had to say. We now have quite an international teaching pool with three Japanese, two Brazilians, and one Filipino investigator! Oh, by the way, we shared an awesome lesson on the Restoration with our Filipino investigator and he became a Progressor! He`s been so prepared and its awesome to see how well he accepts everything. I was thinking to myself after his lesson that the missionaries in the Philippines are so lucky to get to teach such awesome people!
I had a pretty amazing experience when I had the chance to give my companion a blessing of comfort and counsel last week. He was just having a little bit of a rough day and came to me asking for a Priesthood Blessing. I`ve given a lot of blessing on my mission, but never one quite like the one I was able to give my companion. It was truly as if I were just reciting what the Lord was telling me to say in my head. I would hear it, and I would just say what I heard. I`ve never felt guided like that before. It was amazing! It was a really cool experience and I was very humbled at the chance to exercise the power of the Priesthood.
Well we have interviews this week with President W and I`m really really excited to get to talk to him for a little bit one on one. It was really cool because I was able to grab him for a second after Zone Conference last week and tell him that his uncle gave me my Patriarchal Blessing and was a Bishop in my home ward. He almost teared up telling me that Patriarch W is like a father to him. It was so cool!
I hope you all have a great week! I know I will because I`ll be turning the big 2-0 on Saturday! I`m pretty excited but completely blown away that I`m twenty now. I swear I just got my drivers license and started high school... Amazing how time flies. I love you all!
Elder Jeffrey Maxwell Giles
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