Is it Halloween or Christmas?

Hola!

The Halloween Train - so festive, so fun

Tomorrow we get to see Elder Bednar!!!!! I am so excited!!!! It's like Christmas!!! Even though it's almost Halloween!!! :)

I am so so so excited to see him and to hear the words he has to share with the Japan Tokyo and Japan Tokyo South Missions tomorrow. He asked us to read 4 of his talks over the past month to prepare for his visit and I re-read all 4 this morning. They are amazing talks and even just reading them and applying the things I've learned from them has helped me be a better missionary.

This week, we spent a lot of time in other areas. Besides Zone P-day, which I wrote about in last week's email (sorry that it didn't send last week, double emails for all of you this week!), we also went to Maebashi on Tuesday for Interviews with President and Sister Nagano and we went to Oyama on Thursday for Exchanges.

Interviews on Tuesday were so great. It is so nice to be able to have time to talk to President and Sister Nagano one on one. They help me so much, and give me so much strength. I have the best Mission President! The only sad news? Sister Nagano brought amazing brownies and cookies, but we had to say no because we are still on our sugar fast. :( It was so nice to see them though.) The Zone Leaders were doing iPad checks while we were being interviewed and when we came out, Elder Watabe (who was checking my iPad) just asked "So there is this video of caterpillars falling from the sky, what was going on?" Haha, good times.

On the way home from Interviews, we got to ride this super festive train, it was completely decked out for Halloween. It was amazing and so fun! Haha, not many people actually celebrate Halloween in Japan, but sometimes you will run into things like this and think "Wow, they are more festive than America."

Ping Pong

That night, we ran Ping Pong by ourselves again because the Elders had exchanges in Takasaki. Four young women showed up and it was chaos. They were just taking selfies all over the place! It was crazy! Haha, they were so fun though. Sayuri, an investigator, and Naomi, a member, both came with two friends and it was really fun. We play church music while we play Ping Pong, so you know it's a party :)

Two amazing lessons we had this week were with Dayane and Sayuri, a mother and daughter that we teach separately.

Dayane has such amazing faith. She is trying to do all she can to live the gospel, to come to church and to help her children. At the end of our lesson, we only had to ask her once if she would pray and she agreed! Then she gathered her two youngest daughters and said the prayer and it was the sweetest prayer I have ever heard. She was praying for us and the other missionaries around the world. It has been such a blessing to teach her. She really wants to be the best and to live the gospel every day. She wants the best for her family
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Sayuri is just as amazing as her mom. She has such enormous faith as well and wants to participate in all of the activities. She is excited to go to church and learn about the gospel, and she always has really good questions. This week we taught her the Plan of Salvation and she was asking about the Celestial kingdom and she was understanding everything. It really is amazing.

I feel so lucky to be teaching this family. It was such a miracle that we found them a few weeks ago at the Churrasco, and I am so glad that we did. They are so strong and they have such a desire to learn more. I can't always understand what they are saying, but I can always feel the Spirit as we share our messages and they share their thoughts.

Exchanges with the Sister Trainer Leaders

This week we also had exchanges in Oyama with the Sister Training Leaders! I got to go out with Sister Coughanour and we had a blast! She finishes her mission at the end of this transfer, so I was able to learn a lot from her. She really helped me to be confident enough in my Japanese to survive one day in a Japanese area. When we started this exchange, I realized that my Japanese has gone down so much, it was so hard. I had almost no confidence to speak to people, but over the course of the day, I was able to rebuild that confidence and although some people would just look at me weird when I talked, I was able to communicate with people and help share this amazing message.

After dinner, we were waiting for an investigator to show up, but she never did, so we decided to call some PI's. Well, Sister Coughanour had the brilliant idea to use my ability to speak Spanish and Portuguese and have me talk to all the Spanish and Portuguese PI's. It was so weird because I felt so much more comfortable talking to those PI's than I was talking in Japanese. Portuguese feels so much more natural now. Who knew that I would ever say that? I was able to set up two appointments for the Oyama Sisters, so it was a miracle that we decided to do that! The Gift of Tongues is real! It has helped me so much on my mission so far, and I know that my testimony of it will continue to grow for my whole mission.

At night, our last lesson of the day, we were working with a mother and her daughter. Sister Coughanour was helping the daughter with her English speech and the mom and I just watched. After a few minutes, I decided it was probably a little awkward to have two of just just watch the daughter, Kamuri, so I moved over to the mom, Kaori, and started talking to her. It was very slow and it took a lot of hand gestures and dictionary help, but we were able to talk a little bit. She even showed me pictures of her and her daughter at their baptism. I showed her pictures of my family and we talked about families and how amazing and important they are. She was so patient with me, and I know that we both were able to feel the Spirit as we talked.

Exchanges were amazing and I learned so much. I will be sad to see Sister Coughanour go home. She has been an amazing missionary and Sister Training Leader to me. She has such a strong testimony and she is fearless when it comes to talking to people on the street.

Now for the highlight of the week...Mutual!!!!!!

Sister Pourre and I really want to work more with the youth in Oizumi, getting to know them and helping them, and all the youth here are Young Women, so we decided to have a Mutual activity on Saturday for all the girls ages 12-18. We invited the members and investigators and told them it would be a fun Halloween activity. We were so pumped for it! We bought all this cute stuff (Daiso has the cutest Halloween section) and we prepared all morning for it.

Our Halloween Costume Challenge

That night, only two girls showed up, Sayuri and Miki, both investigators. We had so much fun though! Dayane was there too, waiting for Sayuri. We did introductions then we had our Halloween Costume Challenge. We split into two teams (Sister Pourre and Sayrui, Me and Miki) and each of the girls had 30 min to create a costume out of plastic bags, toilet paper, napkins, body paint, and origami paper. It was so fun! They got really creative. Haha, Miki and I had a blast! It was so much fun, such a mess, but so much fun. We gave them all Choco-pies and Pumpkin Kit Kats at the end, and it killed me that we couldn't eat any, but it's all good. We hope to be able to have more mutual activities in the future with more of the girls to help them get to know each other better and to help us get to know them too.

Overall, it was another crazy week, but it's also been a fun week. We are starting the last week of the transfer, so next week is transfer calls! Will I stay in Oizumi or will I go? Who knows? We will find out next week!

See you next week!

ブラクラ姉妹
Black Shimai