"The Lord Uses The Unlikey To Do The Impossible"

Well this week was a fantastic week in a lot of ways.  I'll give you the little things first!

This week Elder Hamada, one of our APs came to our Area and helped us out, then did some training! We really learned how to more effectively use our time and the Area Book! From here on out i think we'll be more effective in this Area It's hard when Elder Tauchi is busy as a district leader, but it's also a good thing. We're really working on using our time wisely. We have a lot because at the moment we don't have a lot of investigators or lessons, but we're building our pool of potential investigators and many seeds have been planted. This week will be a week full of miracles I think. Every week in the mission is.

I still can't get over Japan! There is so much to do here and to learn and to eat! I feel like I'm in an endless vault of information and I cannot possibly absorb it all. I mean I love learning, But I've never felt so defeated by the thought that I can't learn everything. It's strange. Did you know that every prefecture has it's own style of ramen? Like Kushuu ramen and Kanto Ramen and Sapporo Ramen etc.. There is like 100's of kinds!! I want to try them all!! And Japanese! Japanese is the coolest language! It's so incredibly hard! It definitely helps to have a japanese companion! I almost sound japanese again. The problem is the more i learn the language the more i realize I hardly know it.  At what point do you consider yourself fluent? It dunno it's all very new to me.   I'm used to learning at a much slower rate.  

The next awesome thing was on Saturday. We went to a gym with Shuho. He's the area's most recent convert and he's awesome!! He loves weight training and we've been tryng to do something with him forever! So we went to the Oasis Gym and it was crazy! Membership is 200 ish dollars a month!! They have this machine that sends a pulse through your body and uses a scale to take all these measurements, then tells you where your biggest muscle groups are and how much you have, Weight, height, BMI, water content and fat content etc... It was nuts!! And then we did a whole bunch of insane weight training with Shuho and oh man.. I hurt!! It was great though and after we went to a place called "Soul Foods" which is this little tiny restaurant and had steak curry rice. Seriously delicious!!!  All the best food is in the hard to find places!!  That was the second most exciting thing this week.

The Most exciting thing was.....Ready?....

......
A special mission conference with Elder Russel M Nelson!!!

We had the opportunity to shake his hand and then listen to him speak along with his wife and Elder Ringwood and his wife.
I learned a lot. More than I can throw into one e-mail but i can tell you about one thing he said.
"The Lord Uses the Unlikely to do The Impossible"  We all face challenges and difficulties and we all have times we want to quit. A lot of people feel "normal" that there is nothing special about them. It's those people that often are called to do great things. Being a missionary is a Wonderful Calling and I'm grateful for the opportunity.  Knowing how hard it was for me to go on a mission I empathise with those who can see this letter and are either preparing to leave or choosing not to go on missions.
It isn't easy. But it's what YOU have been called to do. You are the Unlikely and you have been called to do the impossible.

Thank you again everyone for your love and support.  Sorry for the grammatical and Spelling errors, there isn't often enough time to spell check before sending my e-mails!

I love you all
Elder Howard

Steak Curry Rice

 Shuho

 Elder Tauchi in Soul Foods