I'm a city girl now!

Konnichiwa!

I am definitely not in Oizumi anymore. Urayasu is different from Oizumi, but I am loving it! Also, today I actually bought something...to wear...from a store! What?

Hitomi Shimai's last Sunday in Urayasu

We had a crazy week since Sister Chinain had to deal with a lot of things this week. She goes home at the end of December so we had to pick her classes for BYU and get her student visa since she is from Tahiti. As many of you know, picking classes can take a long time, and it did. Then we also had to go all the way to the U.S. Embassy to get her student visa. She went inside and I just sat outside the embassy, reading my Book of Mormon, and waiting for them to kick me out, but they never did, so it was all good. :)

This week our whole district also started getting sick. Sister Chinain got it about halfway through the week and it just completely drained her.  We have also been teaching a lot of lessons/spending a lot of time traveling to lessons so we were completely exhausted all week. We were getting really discouraged, but our District Leader is amazing and has really helped us. He gave us a lot of suggestions and he just really showed that he was worried about us and wanted to help us and that was enough.

Some of the craziness from this week that drained us:

In the big city now

We had two really great lessons with Liu San about the Law of Chastity and she totally agreed with it. She really saw how it can help us have the happiest marriages. Her older sister is a member, and I think she has seen how the gospel has helped her sister's family and she wants that for herself too. She also came to church! She used to go to Tokyo First because there was a Taiwanese Elder there who would translate for her, but he ended his mission this week so she said she would come to Urayasu again because she understands Japanese more than English! Yay!

We also taught Bernadette more Japanese. She is learning so fast! She came to church as well and she seemed to like it. We are working with the YW so that she feels comfortable going there since she is 13.

Our apartment

Thursday was a crazy day because we had Zone Meeting. Sister Chinain and I were in charge of a training on Following Up on commitments we extend to our investigators. It was so amazing! I learned so much! Following up to see if the investigator read isn't so much us trying to getting them to actually do the commitment, it's us giving them an opportunity to grow their testimony. Something we learned from the Elder Bednar conference a few weeks ago was that when someone shares their testimony, even if it is just by explaining what they learned/read, their testimony grows so much more. We are giving them an opportunity to act and to be agents and to really learn for themselves.

We saw this a little earlier in the week when we read in the Book of Mormon with Hitomi Shimai. She was confused, but as she started to try to explain what she knew, things just started to click for her. It isn't until we give others the opportunity to act and to grow their own testimonies that they will actually be able to grow.

Mexican restaurant

After Zone Meeting we went to a Mexican place to eat tacos and churros. It was really good. Haha I thought it would be a long time before I got to eat Mexican food again, I guess i was wrong :)

Funny story: so we actually got on the train going the opposite direction, and we figured this out when we got to the next station. We were with the sister training leaders and one of their less active members. Anyway, we figured out that we were on the wrong train so we decide to get off, well half of us got off and the other half were still on the train when the doors started to close...guess who was right in the middle of the doors as they started to close. ME! I got squished by the doors and it kind of hurt, but I saved us all because the doors opened again and we were all able to get off. So I am a lifesaver. Yay!

After all of that, we came back to the church where the members were setting up for the wedding reception of a couple in the ward. We helped out then stayed for the wedding reception. I had the chance to meet a lot of members! Sister Chinain was so so so tired, so I went around and started up some conversations on my own. Nihongo is so hard still, but I feel like every day it's getting better. Yay! Everyone keeps on telling me my Nihongo is way good, I'm not sure if they are just trying to boost my confidence ... Anyway, the wedding reception was such a good way to meet more members and talk about Mission School with some of them.

Our district

On Friday, as we were trying to weekly plan, we got a surprise phone call from Takagi San, the one who called us my first day here and wanted to investigate the church. She told us she read the pamphlet we gave her then saw there was a website she could go to to learn more. She went to the website and read more and she told us that she didn't know yet if she wanted to be baptized, but she wants to learn more. She brought up baptism all on her own!!! It was such a miracle! She is such a great person, she is doing all the work herself because she really wants to learn for herself.

View from our apartment

Well, after that we had to leave to go to Suzuki Shimai. We ended up taking a train and a bus to get to her house (and walked across a bridge with a beautiful view) only to find that she wasn't home. So we ate Italian food then went back to Urayasu.

During sacrament meeting on Sunday I bore my testimony and introduced myself in Nihongo. It was terrifying! I was more scared then my first Sunday when I had to say things in Portuguese. But, Illya Kyoudai (the ward mission leader) was sitting right in front and he was just smiling and that gave me courage to just say things even if they didn't make sense. I guess my challenge to all of you is to just smile and encourage others to act. I've been really trying to help my investigators to act, to think and ponder and share their thoughts, and I've noticed that it makes our lessons a lot more personal and effective because they learn so much more. I've also noticed that as others smile and encourage me, I am more willing to make mistakes and keep pushing forward. I have probably made a million mistakes already while speaking Japanese, but the support I feel from people I barely know has helped me so much. Even if it's just a smile, it can really help someone have more confidence.

So...funny-ish story of the week, so it's getting pretty cold in Tokyo right now, and my companion is from Tahiti, so she gets excited about the cold. We were on the way to an appointment earlier this week and she just stops and looks at me all excited and she's like "I'm making clouds!!!!" then she just starts breathing really hard to make clouds in the air. It was so funny. Later that same day, she turned a corner and biked straight into some tires and got stuck, it was hilarious.


This week was literally so exhausting. We were so tired every night and we were really frustrated with ourselves because we were tired and we were working so hard but we weren't seeing the results we expected. I don't really know how to explain it. The Elders noticed how much we were tired and Elder Kenley actually commanded us to go to bed two days in a row (not that we were being disobedient, we were going to bed on time). Anyway, it was getting so bad that we were doing our weekly call-in report (in person at the church) and Sister Chinain literally fell asleep in the middle of our meeting. It was so bad. Then the Elders asked if we would like priesthood blessings and we said yes. So, last night we both received priesthood blessings, and immediately we felt so much better, more like ourselves. I cannot explain to you how much of a change happened, but it was amazing. I am so so grateful for the priesthood. It has blessed my life in so many ways and last night was just another testimony builder to me. Today we were back to being normal and it is such a blessing.


I know that this Church is true and that the same priesthood that Jesus gave to his 12 apostles is back on the Earth today. The priesthood has blessed me so many times and I am grateful that the power of God is still here.

Urayasu is an amazing area, I love it. The members are amazing, the area is fantastic, the missionaries are really enthusiastic about helping the area. I really do love working here in Urayasu, there are so many great things happening and things that we are starting to do to make dendo even better. It was a rough week, but we are ready to go up and up and up!

Thank you all! See you next week!

ブラクラ姉妹
Black Shimai