Wednesday, January 15, 2014

E-mail 1/13/2014

Hello my dear wonderful family!

Wow, have I really been a missionary for 3 months and in Japan for a month? Amazing! I love it! This week I had many Nihon-poi experiences. :) Haha.

It all started with last Monday. We went to a sushiya! It was a really cool sushi place as a district that was like a buffet on a conveyer belt (or you could order specific items by bullet train conveyer belt). It was fun! We all enjoyed it and some people enjoyed participating in a wasabi challenge after the meal. Some people did not enjoy it. Others did not participate. Woohoo! :D

Tuesday was a crazy busy day with lots and lots of difficult Nihongo [Japanese]! But it was way good. :) We finished the White Handbook [the missionary rulebook, which companions study together] for my first time in the field in companion study. Pretty special. :) Then we had this great lesson with Aizawa shimai [Sister Aizawa]--the new ward missionary. She's awesome! We did the Plan of Salvation--which has lots and lots of difficult tango [words], but it went really well. (Aizawa shimai also made me a kanji name!) Then I called a bunch of people--all in Nihongo. Then I did the DCS progress record (in Japanese). It toook me a goooood long hour, haha. Then we had DCS and I did a good chunk of the reporting--in Nihongo. Seeing a theme here? It was hard! But also awesome practice. One thing that Ishizaki kyodai [Brother Ishizaki] (the ward mission leader) said in DCS that I loved was find the method that overcomes your fear and discomfort of talking to people and use it. Love is the number one thing we need in inviting, so before you invite people, imagine them in white, recieving baptism, entering into the Celestial Kingdom. Think about that and with that feeling in mind you will always be able to talk to them. You can use this throughout your life in all areas. Having perfect love for the people is success. :)

After morning study on Wednesday we left to try and visit a former investigator. We actually didn't get very far. Well, Orgill shimai [Sister Orgill] did, but I didn't. As soon as I got on my bike it was fishtailing all over and I hopped off to see what the problem was and by back tire was dead. So, we walked over to the biek [bike] shop near the church and they put on a new tire and fixed my brake in 20 minutes for 8 dollars. Woohoo!! After that we did a Mogi [roleplay] with Watanabe shimai [Sister Watanabe]. She said that even though my Japanese is bad she still wanted to listen to what I had to say, so suppose that means the mogi went well! Eikaiwa [English class] was awesome! So many new and kind people came. It was really fun to meet all of them.

Right now we aren't actually teaching any investigators and we're only teaching one less active. All of our investigators said they can't meet until Feburary. Please pray that we can find some people who we can teach! (Hopefully one will be Shizuka-chan [Shizuka, a woman]!)

Thursday we had Zone Training! It was all in Nihongo (suprise, suprise) but I got to wear the little earbuds for translation. :) There were about 30 missionaries there--including Berkley choro [Elder Berkley] and Canipari choro [Elder Canipari] from my doki [MTC training group?]! It was awesome to see them again! The thing I got out of Zone training is that the most important thing in this work is to know the will of the Lord. We need guidence to find people to teach and to know how to teach them. And if we have guidence we will find success. After Zone Training we went to Yamagi shimai's [Sister Yamagi’s] house and taught her some songs on the ukelele [ukulele] so we can do a musical activity with her and our PI (potential investigator). Then we went to a member's house for dinner and ate SO MUCH FOOD. (We've been told it's rude to not eat all the food members give you so we were not feeling very good after that dinner.)

The funny part was that the next day after that dinner we met up with the same member to visit Less Actives in Miagi-dai (you need a ride to get there) and she took us out to a buffet to start the activity off. (We still were feeling a little sick from eating so much but we managed to convince her that we loved it. haha, the food was really good but there was just SOO much of it!!) That was a really good dendo [proselyting] activity. We sang to everyone of the people we visited (except one who didn't want to talk to us) and I think they all felt the Spirit. It was really amazing.

One of the people who let us in was really touched by our music. But it made me so sad because one of the things that makes me so sad is that domestic violence is know[n] and unstopped and that culturally the husbands are allowed to control their wives'. And she and her family were in one of those situations. It made me want to cry.

A highlight of Saturday: I had 2 full-length conversations with strangers in Nihongo on the bus! One was an adorable 9-year-old who sat next to me and chatted my ear off (and I barely understood a thing) and the other was a super patient middle-aged woman who let me make lots of mistakes and still wanted to talk to me. :) It was awesome!

Sunday, I was on a split with the Nihongin because Orgill shimai went to a 20-year-old party and found us a PI. Woohoo!

This morning the ward had a mochi [rice cake] party and we all got to wack the rice into mochi with this giant wooden mallet. It was way fun! And one of our Qs came for a few minutes before she had to leave--Woohoo! (Tomita-san). It was way fun.

So, just doing normal missionary things and hoping we can find people to teach! I am starting to understand so much more every day. Thank you for all your emails and prays! I feel blessed by them everyday. :) 

Hope you feel better soon Mom! Where is Maria doing Les Mis? Congrats to Allison!! Mom, I want to see a picture of you with your Gardening textbook. :) What city are you going to in Febuary Dad? Congrats to Natalie and Chris!! Zach. Of course. But WHAT!!! BRILLIANT! Candice, I'm glad you kept up the family tradition of scaring TB needles into the corner. :)

I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love,

Your missionary,

Bellows shimai :)

P.S. There's a snail-mail coming your way! Mom, I explained in there about the cup activity so you can read all about it. :)
  
P.P.P.S. Can you send me the cousins and Michelle and Justine's mailing information?


P.P.P.P.S. What are everyone's goals?

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