Happy Halloween!

Oh, what a wonderful week in the beautiful country of Nihon! I love being a missionary. Japan is awesome and I love my area, my companion, everything!

We're five minutes from the beach!

This week was my first eikaiwa, or english class. It was so much fun teaching english! I could finally do something in my own language! It was awesome. We got to be dressed in Kimonos thanks to a ward member who owns like 100 of them. We also had a halloween party afterwards for the kids. It was so much fun!

 

 

 

Food: Holy yum japanese food is absolutely delicious..... haha it is bad! it is dangerous! I cannot get fat! haha but the breads and chocolates... oh yummy they are wonderful. My companion and I are already on a diet haha and I am trying to convince myself that Nato, the fermented beans, is good.... So this week I am going to try to eat it once a day! We will see if I throw up or not.. haha just kidding. I want to learn to like it, so I am committed! Also, my companion and I do 200 sit ups every night... so dont be shocked if I come home super ripped. Haha just kidding. Black thunders are the most amazing chocolate bar thing ever! I have only had one, but if any of you want any, they are so cheap haha and I would love to send you some. They are life changing. This week I tried tomato ramen which was so good! I also ate KaSuTeRa (aka my name in japanese) which is a sponge cake that they have here in japan. it was way good! I finally got to try the food that (literally) everyone here associates with my name.

 

It says my name.

Language: japanese is hard.... haha that is pretty much all there is to it. leaving the mtc, i felt pretty good about my japanese... to say I am "humbled" is an understatement haha. I feel like I know nothing most days! But that is okay. I just need to learn to speak up and such. I need to open my mouth and have faith that I can talk to these people. I know that I can, it is just so scary! I dont know why! haha but I am trying really hard and every day I get better. I understand a ton of what people say, I just have a really hard time speaking back to them. I gave my first real lesson yesterday and it went really well. I spoke several times, bore my testimony a few times, and shared a scripture from memory in japanese. that was awesome and definitely helped my confidence grow :)

 

Now for the good stuff! My investigators! It is amazing how much you love your investigators as a missionary. The brazilian family that we found last week is doing great. We taught them the whole restoration yesterday! That usually does not happen in Japan. Usually it is an entire lesson before they can even fathom that there is a God who loves them. But, the brazilian family has been prepared for us and completely understood everything that we told them. We gave them a pamphlet on the restoration and a book of mormon, both in portuguese. They said they are very excited to read it! they also said that the story about Joseph Smith completely makes sense. It was amazing. I felt like crying I was so happy haha and even though I didnt play a huge part in the lesson, my testimony grew so much in that 45 minutes. I know that God prepares people for us missionaries to teach. We just have to go out and find them! I was so happy and feel so blessed that we did find this wonderful family. They are perfect for this gospel, and the gospel will bring them so much happiness. I know it. We are going to try to commit them to baptism this week :) I am looking forward to it!

 

We have had a hard time communicating with our other investigators, but met up with two of them this week. One gave a prayer at the end of our lesson and said that she is not going to join our church but that she likes being our friend... haha she said that IN a prayer! it was funny. we are going to keep working on it though :) We cant lose hope yet! We also met a less active this week, who has become my favorite person on the planet. She has had such a hard life and just doesnt understand how a loving heavenly father allows bad things to happen. It is so sad but we cannot get her to understand that god does love her. we are going to keep trying though. the reason I love her so much is because she is absolutely amazing. She has done so much and has been through so much, yet she still smiles and laughs constantly. She is so much fun and we loved hearing about her. Also, she speaks english and likes to practice with me :) So it is nice to be able to talk to her and give her feedback and advice about how she can overcome her trials that she is going through. She is a wonderful lady.

 

It is amazing to me how much us missionaries love those whom we are teaching. I feel so much charity towards these people who I hardly know. I feel such a deep connection with them and I feel like I am being blessed to feel just a small portion of what Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father feel for each of us.

 

I love the sisters who I live with. There are 4 of us and we have so much fun together. We all pretty much have the same personality.... so I think you all can guess just how much fun we have together (at the times we are supposed to be... dont worry, I promise I am an obedient missionary) :) Here are a few funny things that happened this week:

We had to break one of the shimai's bikes haha so we smashed the lock with rocks until it broke. You could say we got a lot of stares.... 4 white americans breaking a bike. Haha what a beautiful site ;)

 

I biked into a fence.... so that was funny.... and painful haha.

 

We were running late to meeting the Stake President and his wife, so we biked to the church (a 17 minute bikeride) in just 7 minutes. It was hilarious how fast we were biking haha we were kind of being spazzes.... but it was fun.

 

We wanted to eat tofu for dinner so that we wouldnt get fat.... but it was too watery (we home-made it... bad idea haha) so we tried putting like dressing on it. my companion tried to get me to put nutella on it. Haha we had fun experimenting with pretty much everything in our apartment.

 

My companion and I have made the goal to do an act of service every day this transfer, and one night we were biking home and realized that we had done our act of service for the day. We hurriedly looked around for something we could do to help. We found a pile of dog poop on the sidewalk, so we decided to use sticks to try and pick it up. haha it was a nasty mess but finally we did it. It was pretty funny.　not your typical sister-missionary service, but hey, it counts :)

 

We had two men who we ran into this week show up at church, which was a huge surprise, and we were so excited! As we were talking to them though, we just realized that they were creeps. The elders in our ward tried to get them out the door and to leave us alone haha it was pretty funny. Being a tall, blonde, american in Japan is interesting! Little kids are even scared of me sometimes... it is sad but helps me focus on not playing with them I guess haha. So that is a blessing in disguise I guess!

 

The Japanese man I ate dinner with when I was seven, shown in the picture below.

 

This is the little boy in the picture.

 

Dinner at my Grandma's when I was 7.

I love being a missionary. There seriously is nothing better! I am so happy with my decision to serve a mission. I love Japan and the Japanese people, and yes, even the Japanese language. I love all of you and hope you have a great week.

 

Remember, keep smiling!

 

愛しています！