*drumroll* Transfer calls!

Transfer calls were today!!! It was so nerve wracking because no one got calls for the first hour. If you don't get a call in the first hour from the Zone Leaders, you know someone in your companionship is transferring. Well, President Nagano calls us and because we were all together with the Elders doing district study at the church he told us everything all at once.

So what is happening to Urayasu?

Korean dress up

Elder Payne is staying.
Elder Richards is staying.
Elder Barraclough and Elder Kenley are transferring (I'm so sad! They were great missionaries here!)
Sister Bede is transferring.

And I am training a bean-chan (a trainee). On Wednesday, I will go to the honbu and pick up my trainee, fresh off the plane from America. Ahhhhhhhh!!!!

I'm still freaking out a little bit, but it's going to be super fun. I'm super excited! Also, Sister Atkinson is coming back to the mission and I will get to be the first one to see her! I'm so excited!!!

I'm sad to say goodbye to Sister Bede because she was an amazing companion for the last 4 weeks, but I'm super excited to be staying here in Urayasu. We saw some crazy miracles this week and I'm excited to see even more this transfer....oh dear. I'm transfer 5 now. Time flies by so fast!!!

We had a great last p-day together though. We met up with Kei Shimai, one of our recent converts, and the Chiba sisters and went to Kei Shimai's old university. She showed us around a little bit and took lots of pictures. There they have all these little areas for different countries where you can try on clothes and take pictures so we chose Korea and it was so fun!

Onto the miracles!

This week we did cookie drops to all the members that fed us during the Christmas and New Years holidays. We made about 80 cookies last week, so we frosted them, packed them, wrote notes, and hand-delivered them to members, less actives, recent converts, and investigators. At first I thought it was going to take a lot of time and not be effective for our dendo, but I was so wrong!

Each day we picked an area to go to and we would just talk to everyone on the way. We were able to talk to so many people, hand out flyers, and we even gave out a Book of Mormon! It was so good, and it was really nice to have finding time again. We found some people that are really interested in Mission School and Eikaiwa too! Yay!

Taiju-Kuhn made a picture for us.

The biggest miracles came on Tuesday night when we decided to take cookies to 2 less-actives that I have been trying to visit since I got to Urayasu in Oct, but they were never home. However, on Tuesday, when we brought them cookies, THEY WERE BOTH HOME! We were able to set up a phone appointment with one and the other one just didn't seem like she wanted to talk, but we were able to share our love with both of them and it was amazing. These are people that I have never met before, but in those few moments when we were able to meet, I felt so much love for them. To think, we would have never talked to them if we hadn't been doing these cookie drops.

On Sunday, many of the members came up to us to tell us how much they appreciated our cookies. I love doing service for others and I'm so glad that I get to be here in Japan serving 24/7!

Ping Pong at Mission School - just like home

Then on Friday at Mission School, we had another miracle. You might remember Alexander, the Brazilian Eikaiwa student, from my past emails. Well, he came again and Elder Barraclough and I were working with him during Mission School. I was teaching Alexander English as he taught Elder Barraclough Spanish. It was pretty fun! But then all of a sudden he started bringing up things with the Word of Wisdom which led to us talking about the purpose of life. Alexander is not afraid to talk about God and his beliefs and we were able to testify to him many times.

View at a park.  Almost looks
like southern California

In the middle of this conversation I received the strongest prompting telling me that I needed to ask him if he wanted to take the lessons with the missionaries and learn about the gospel. It was so strong that I couldn't ignore it at all, so I asked him and he does want to learn! We spent the rest of Mission School talking about God and parts of the Plan of Salvation. It was amazing and I didn't want it to stop!

There were so many things that could have kept me from asking him if he wanted to take the lessons, but I did and I was blessed.

Ferris wheel at the park

I really feel like I have been super blessed with my interactions with Alexander. It would have been so easy to forget all my Portuguese because I wasn't speaking it or practicing it for 3 months, but since I first met him, it's come back. When I was testifying on Friday, I really felt the gift of tongues, because I was definitely not doing the talking, the Spirit was. It was a very interesting conversation because he would talk in Portuguese, then I would respond in Portuguese, then I would translate to Elder Barraclough who spoke in English then I would translate that to Portuguese and it kept going around and around. It was perfect though because Elder Barraclough said all the perfect things too and I was able to translate.

Heavenly Father really does have a plan for each of us. That is one of the biggest things I've learned on my mission. At the beginning, I might not have understood why the Lord needed me in Oizumi, learning all these new languages, but now I can see that I have been blessed so much because I did, and because I didn't give up.

In the Rainbow Tunnel

If there's one thing I want to teach my trainee it's that. Never give up. There is always a bigger plan. I will not be a perfect trainer. I'm not a perfect missionary now, but I don't give up. There are days when it gets hard, and sometimes it gets really hard, but if you take it one day at a time, soon you will be a transfer 5 missionary realizing that almost half of your mission is over and you have become someone so different.

This week during our District Leader call-in summary report Elder Kenley said that he has seen me grow so much in my short time here in Urayasu. It is hard for me to see the change in myself, but as I reflected on it later, I realized that I have changed a lot. I can't completely describe it, but there is a difference.

I don't know what will happen this transfer, or who my bean-chan will be, but I am so excited to be working in this amazing area for another transfer! I love Urayasu!!!

See you all next week!

ブラクラ姉妹
Black Shimai

Visiting Chiba