What do we do when we are sick? WE ORGANIZE

Konnichiwa!

First of all, Japan is the best! :)

There are more at the bottom

I will start with today because we had an amazing P-day! We went to Daiba to go to the Tokyo Trick Art Museum, basically a 3D art museum where we took tons of pictures. It was so fun! There are so many cool things in Daiba like Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, the ferris wheel, and a Takoyaki museum. We only went to this museum, but maybe some day we will go back. It was so fun to take pictures! We thought it would be funny to do a lot of missionary pictures with our favorite Japanese Book of Mormon. It was great! We also did Purikura, a Japanese photobooth that makes your eyes really big. We also got Baskin Robbins! It was such a fun P-day! In this case, pictures really do speak a thousand words, so I will let the pictures do the talking.

Purikura

Sushi with the Yamashitas

Last Monday, the Yamashitas took all 6 missionaries out to sushi and they let us eat as much as we wanted. With 4 Elders, it really was a generous dinner :) We went to a place where the sushi just goes around like a little train (like Genki Sushi in Factorial Mall) and you just pull the sushi out and its 100 yen per plate. You can also order other kinds of sushi and it will rush to you on the top level. I'll send a video so you can see. It was so fun and we ate a lot of good sushi! Sister Chinain and I were able to sit with the Yamashitas and talk to them. They are so funny! Sister Yamashita actually learned Spanish when she was younger and she wants to come to Mission School to learn more! The Yamashitas are one of my favorite families in the ward, they are so ready to help with everything and they are so warm and welcoming to all the members and investigators and missionaries.

Another fun thing about this sushi place was that they have a place to drop your plates down when you are done. Every 5 plates, a little movie shows and if the character wins, you get a prize! Sister Chinain and I each won once! I got a cute little juice key chain and she got a chicken one. It was adorable! Also, we went way over time, so we had to bike like there was no tomorrow to get home close to curfew. :) But it was worth it!

On Tuesday we were supposed to go to Koiwa to do exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders. Last week I mentioned that Sister Chinain has been kind of sick, well on Tuesday she woke up and she was so sick that we had to cancel exchanges and we stayed in the apartment all day. It was both nice and terrible at the same time. Nice because we were able to recover from a crazy two weeks and we were finally able to organize the disaster that was our supply closet, but terrible because we couldn't go out and dendo!!!!! We did get a lot of contacting and calling done though and we were able to have a lesson with Miki Shimai about family history, which was nice.

Funny story, so on Mondays we usually do our grocery shopping in the morning, put all our groceries in a backpack and leave them at the church to pick up at the end of the night. Well, Monday night we had to rush to get home so we forgot our groceries, then we were sick on Tuesday so we couldn't get them, but we needed the food. So, we called the Elders and they were nice enough to meet us at a 7/11 near our apartment to give them to us. Well, the funny thing was that Elder Kenley and Elder Payne met us at 7/11 with our groceries, and as they gave us our groceries, Elder Akagi and Elder Kooyman showed up across the street, headed right towards us as well. How crazy that all 6 Urayasu missionaries would meet on the street? It was just so weird to see two sets of Elders coming towards us from different directions.

Anyways, after our sick day, we were able to continue for the rest of the week at like a 75% level. Sister Chinain was still sick (her voice sounded so funny) but we didn't want to take another sick day. Wednesday was a great day with a great miracle!

View over the water in Urayasu

At about 5:30am we got an email from a member far away (near Mt. Fuji) saying she would be in Urayasu at 2:00. There wasn't anything else. We had no idea who she was or why she was coming. So, we continued with our day and went to lunch with Sakamoto Shimai (ward missionary and the Bishop's wife) and asked her if she knew the lady. She didn't, so we decided to call the lady after our lunch.

Side note: Every Wednesday we have lunch with Sakamoto Shimai to talk about missionary work and how we can improve. She gave us a lot of ideas and gave us a lot of information about the Sisters in the ward that can help with member-present lessons and such. It was great. Also her family lived in Thailand for 2 years so she showed me a cool Thai cookbook (I recognized a lot of the food) and we talked about how awesome Thailand is :) Yay!!!

Free Food from Imaizumi-San

Continuing, at about 1:30, while we were still at lunch, the member called us saying she would be at the train station in about 30 min, and we finally got the full story. She is a member from the Nagoya mission who was bringing her friend, who lives in Urayasu, to the church for a church tour. So we hurried and biked to the church to prepare it for the church tour. They showed up just as we finished and it turned out that the friend was a former investigator! Her name is Imaizumi-San and she is this cute grandma who LOVES to talk. We only showed them the chapel and then they just talked and talked and talked. We could barely get a word in, but the member did a lot of testifying. We also found out that Imaizumi-San loves Christmas songs so we sang a few and it was really great. She is interested though, and it was a crazy miracle! After the tour, they gave us a huge bag of snacks as a thank you! It was so sweet!!!

Ice Cream from Baskin Robbins

Thursday was our last day with Hitomi Shimai. She was the first person I met when I got to Urayasu because she came with Sister Chinain to pick me up from the train station. She is a super sweet recent convert who just moved to Matsudo, but on Thursday we were able to help her pack her things into her car. It was fun and we were making jokes the whole time and she kept trying to give us things :) We got a free mirror from her which is great! Also, after we finished packing her car she played on the organ for us and let me tell you, she is amazing! We had a little organ dance party as she played everything from Pirates of the Caribbean to High School Musical. She is so artistic, it is insane! She made me want to learn the organ again!!! I will miss her lots, but I'm glad that we were able to have that little bit of time with her. <3

We had a great district meeting on Friday all about charity. I have really been focusing on having charity since the moment I got to Japan. My first few weeks in Oizumi, I had such a hard time and I prayed so hard to just be able to feel charity and love towards all the people, and over time I did feel that love for them. Here in Urayasu, I still feel like I barely know the people, but as I continue to pray to feel love for them and to be able to express that love, I have started to feel more charity for each person. Love is such a big part of missionary work. I am here in Japan sharing this message of hope and happiness because I love it and I know it can help everyone. However, it is hard to help others see that when you only get to talk to them for 30 seconds on the street. Sister Chinain and I are really working on showing our love to people even when we barely meet them, so that even if they say they aren't interested, they have the opportunity to feel the light and love of Christ through us.

Along those lines, at the end of the week we decided we wanted to actually talk to 100 people this week. By Saturday we only had about 20 meaningful contacts, so we made a goal to talk to 50 people that day. All day, we stopped every single person we saw and by the end of the night we had 31 meaningful contacts. So Sunday we set the same goal and we ended with 35 meaningful contacts. Overall, we got 89 contacts this week and even though it wasn't 100, we were really proud of ourselves. We didn't get any new investigators from this, but we were able to have really meaningful conversations with people and we were able to give them the opportunity to learn more. We are really focused on not dragging anyone to the church, simply giving them the opportunity to learn more. We met so many amazing people, all with different levels of interest in the gospel and mission school. I know that as we continue to try to talk to everyone Heavenly Father will guide us to be in the right place at the right time to talk to the right person. We know that we have been slacking on talking to people, mostly because we haven't been scheduling in enough travel time to talk to people, but these past two days, as we have taken the time to talk to people, we have seen such an increase in our happiness and we have been able to plant many seeds.

Our favorite approach lately has been to ask people "When have you felt the most happiness?" A lot of people say its when they eat food, which cracks me up. However, even if we ask the question and they say they have to go, hopefully as they walk away they think about when they felt the most happiness and they are able to feel a bit of joy as they think about that memory.

I love this gospel so much! It really does help us feel so much happiness, every day. I am so happy to be here in Japan, as a missionary. There are lots of trials and hard challenges, but the joy and happiness? That makes all those hard times 100% worth it.

I love you all! Thank you so much! Have a great week!!!!!!

ブラクラ姉妹
Black Shimai