Elder Scheidt in Sapporo, Japan: No worries!

May 29, 2016

Sorry I didn't send out an email last week. I was putting pictures onto a memory chip and it basically took all of my email time for the week. I'm fine though, so don't worry about it.

I feel like I need to make my emails more funny (like my personality) but today will probably be more of a serious one because of the specific thing I want to right about.

This week was one of the best spiritual weeks I've had on my mission.

We had the privilege of having Elder Quentin L. Cook, Elder Stevenson,and Elder Gong (of the 70) come and talk to us. Yep, you read that right! On Thursday all of the missionaries in this mission (one of the smaller missions in the world, ranging from around 100-130 missionaries) went to a church in Sapporo and got to hear from these 3 wonderful speakers, as well as their lovely wives. We also had the privilege of walking in a line and shaking the hands of those 6 spiritual beasts! The power of shaking the hand of not just one, but 2 apostles was amazing. Those men are totally called of God.

They talked a lot about preach my gospel and how we can use it for after the mission too, and how we need to be taking it more seriously. I've begun to read and study that thing like never before. Really desiring to become a better missionary for the 2nd half of my mission. I want to grow a lot more than I have, and to do that I need to be showing a lot more faith and a lot more effort.

Elder Cook's final testimony was by far the most powerful spiritual experience I have ever experienced in my life. I want to share a little bit about what he said right before he closed.

He was talking a lot about the savior and why he is important and then he says something along the lines of the following: "I want to bear my special witness to all of you here today. Without breaking any kind of rule or anything like that, i want all of you to know that I KNOW THE SAVIOR'S VOICE, I KNOW THE SAVIOR'S FACE, I KNOW THE SAVIOR LIVES" the room was literally dead silent as he said those few sentences. It was also amazing to see how much his countenance changed just from the normal speaking to his final testimony. Truly powerful!

I talked with some missionaries about everything after and we talked about how there is literally no greater witness than what he just told us. There is no other way to interpret what he said other than the fact that he has seen our savior and redeemer Jesus Christ. Of course he can't just tell us that because then there would be no way for us to show as much faith as we need to and the whole purpose of having faith would just diminish. That was literally the #1 best spiritual experience of my life.

I am forever grateful for how much I felt the spirit that day. I hope from here on in my life, whenever I have something hard or any doubts about the church, I can think back to those words and remember his witness. This is god's true church and was restored through Joseph smith by the help of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

I am so grateful to be on a mission right now. This is the best experience of my life. I am learning to love the good times and really embrace the bad times. I have learned so much and am really trying to consecrate myself from the rest of the world and let a God shape me into the person he wants me to be.

I hope you all have a good week. I'm praying for you all! Love you

敬具 (sincerely yours)

ーシャイト長老 (Elder Scheidt)

[They had cheese nan, pumpkin nan, mixed fruit, regular nan, garlic nan, and chocolate nan, I love this place. We also gave the owner a flyer with our number and he wants to call us and talk about Jesus Christ. Hopefully his Japanese and/ or English is good enough to talk about church stuff.]