The Urayasu Young Women are the Best!

Konnichiwa!

Making miso soup

February marks the start of my 9th month as a missionary and it's so crazy! Time has gone by so fast!

This was a bit of a rough week because I got sick and we had to take some time away from dendo so that I could rest. I guess I didn't take enough time during the week because by the time Saturday came around I was feeling so bad that I just slept the whole day and we didn't even go to Mission School. I'm feeling 100% better now and I'm ready to dendo hard this week!

Despite my being sick, we still saw some pretty cool miracles this week!

While going house to house

First of all, was our lesson with Karin Shimai on Tuesday. The Ward has a calander for people to sign up to mogi (role play) with us and she signed up, but she actually wanted English help. She has the goal to listen to General Conference in English! Such an awesome goal! Anyways, we decided to do some listening practice with her so we watched "Continue in Patience" a Mormon message from a General Conference talk that President Uchtdorf gave. We helped her go through it a couple of times until she understood almost all of it, then we shared a message about patience and how important it is for us to be patient with ourselves and with others. She told us that this was actually a message that she really needed to hear! The Spirit 100% guided us to pick this video and share the words we did to help her. That just goes to show that we don't always know people's needs, but Heavenly Father does and he will guide us to help the people we are serving here in Japan.

Typical missionary

This week we also helped Hanai-chan with English. She is so cute! She's one of our young women that we have been helping prep for the Eiken. She took the first part recently and although she was still waiting for the results to come out and tell her if she moved onto the interview part, she decided to come study for the interview with us. It was really fun and she was really getting the hang of it by the end. Then on Sunday we saw her again and she told us she passed the first part! Yay! Ah I just love the Urayasu youth so much!

That same day we had a really cool meaningful contact. At lunch we decided to go buy some sushi bowls and while there we saw this mom and daughter (so cute) and their friend come in. While we were all waiting we started talking and it turned out that the mom and little girl were visiting from Ireland and the little girl was Catholic. The mom pointed out our name tags saying "Iesu Kirisuto" and it was so cute. We gave them an Eikaiwa flyer and said goodbye. Then when we were biking home from Hanai-chan's lesson we went a way we don't usually go, but we passed the same family and friend and it was so fun to say hi again. Haha! I really hope they come to Eikaiwa!!!

Some shrines at Asakusa

Sunday was the big miracle day. After church we went on splits with two of the young women in the Ward. Sister Atkinson had a great lesson with Ashely (the YW) and Bernadette. My lesson fell through, but the YW I was with said she was totally willing to help any time this week with any lessons we have, which is so helpful!

After those lessons we got to go to the Kawamuras' for dinner and we had a really powerful mogi with them about praying to know that the Book of Mormon is true. The Spirit was so strong and even though not all of our Japanese made sense, the Spirit was speaking through us and it was amazing. We had fun afterwards eating spaghetti and celebrating Sister Atkinson's birthday! Yep, Sunday was also Sister Atkinson's birthday! I couldn't do much to surprise her, but I did get most of the Young Women to sign a cute card for her and it was really fun. :)

When it is cold, hats and coats
are put on the Buddhas

Our last stop for the night was yoruseisankai (Night Sacrament Meeting) which we have every month, on the first week. This one was special because, Kei Shimai, Eri Shimai, and Aiko Shimai came (all Less-actives we had been trying to contact all week) AND AOI-CHAN CAME!!!!!!! She is our super amazing investigator who has been wanting to come to church, but because of work wasn't able to until yoruseisankai. She really liked it and she had fun meeting some of the members. Afterwards, we had an amazing lesson about prayer. She read way past what we had asked her to read 2 weeks ago and she's been marking it and seeing the similarities between the Book of Mormon and the Bible. Although she didn't outrightly say that she knows it is true, I could tell that she is definitely on the path. She had such a light about her as she talked about her experiences and she was very open to our invitation to pray about the Book of Mormon. She is such an amazing, sweet person. I am so glad that I have the chance to work with her. I don't know everything about her, but I can feel that she has a really sincere desire to learn the truth and she is hoping that she finds it here.

It really was a day of miracles and we slept very well last night. :)

Today has been a pretty relaxing p-day. We managed to bake a cake, clean the apartment, study, and go to Asakusa all before 1:30. This was my second time at Asakusa, but it was still so fun. We just looked through all the shops and took lots of pictures. There were many girls in kimonos there and it made me want to get one so bad! They are so pretty!

We also met an LDS couple from Utah who had a 9 hour layover in Japan and decided to come visit Asakusa. They were so sweet! Haha, last time I went to Asakusa I met a member too. Is this going to become a habit? Haha, it was really funny because we walked past and the husband was like "SIsters? I just saw your name tag and even though I can't read it, I thought I'd give it a try" it was funny.

Thank you all for your love and support! I will see you next week!!! I'm excited for this week because we have Zone Conference and Interviews with President Nagano. Ah I'm so excited!

ブラクラ姉妹
Black Shimai

Moshi chopstick holders

Pulling handcart outside Asakusa