June 12, 2017: いわき さらば 上杉へ

Well the calls came and I am going to spend my last bit of time of the mission in the place that I've spent over a year.  I am transferring to the biggest city in the mission, Sendai.  There I will be comps with Elder Free.  He and I lived in Miyako when he was a first transfer elder.  Way excited! On top of that, I get to go back to Izumi and Furukawa.

 As far as this week goes, it was a lot of planning.  We are prepping for an explosion of miracles in Iwaki.  We divided the map, visited a lot of member who have fallen away, and getting rides to far places to go house as a district.  It's been really fun!  With the huge Filipino community and sisters in Onahama and new sister missionaries (one Filipino) coming to Iwaki this place could be the next Africa.  In order to prep for all this, we increased the chapel size and added two rows of chairs.  Iwaki is blowing up!

 For the last time, I had interviews with President Smith in Koriyama.  As usual, it was awesome.  I love sitting down with him.  He has been my mission president for almost two years and I asked the typical question.

What can I do better?  Where do you think my improvement points are?

I was expecting a ground breaking answer, but what he told me was very simple and profound.  He said don't let there be a day that goes by that you forget to pray and start the day reading from the Book of Mormon.

The spirit is the most important thing in missionary work, don't let a prompting go by unnoticed.  Don't forget to repent and always strive to follow the commandments.  His recommendations might not carry the same meaning/power to all of you that it did to me but I found it was simply profound.  Every day read and pray, it's that easy!  Next time I'll be addressing you, I'll be in Kamisugi! Love you all!  God lives!

 Elder Halverson

ハルバソン長老~日本仙台伝道部