It Was A Sweet Experience

Elder Mckenzie (left) with unidentified sister and Elder Heaton

Written by Elder Mckenzie

Thanks for all your love and support in the Nagoya Mission.  I really appreciate your sacrifice to be here.

I wanted to tell you about Yamazaki Yuya.  He is 11 years old.  He is like a comedian, so funny.  I first met him on an exchange with Elder Heaton.  We talked to him on the street. Later on the sister missionaries met his dad, who is less active, housing.  Because of that, they both came to church.

From then on, we started teaching Yuya and we set a baptismal date.  Eventually it was time for him to get baptized, and we scheduled an interview on Saturday.  Because of circumstances we had to get Elder Tolman and Elder Tsutamori to come from Ueda.  But when the time for the interview came around, Yuya didn’t show up.  So we searched everywhere for him.  We went to his house, to the park where he plays soccer, the park where we taught him and the sisters even went to his school.  He was nowhere to be found.  This was on the Saturday before his baptismal date.

On Sunday morning, he came to church and he still wanted to be baptized.  So we got Elder Beal and Elder Sorenson to come from Suwa.  They did the interview.  Sister Wada and Sister Nakatsuka helped make the program, and we cleaned and filled the font.  With a lot of help from everyone, we got it all together.  

The best part was his dad got the Priesthood and got to baptize his son that very day.  It was a sweet experience.