11 Day Miracle

Ushiku Transfer 11 Week 5

Konnichiwa!

Some favorite members from Matsudo

Well, this is my last full week in Japan. Next week will be my last email to all of you from Japan and I will be arriving home on Friday, November 10th. It's been a crazy year and a half, but it's not over yet!

This past week was full of crazy miracles and I am still amazed by how much we were able to do!

On Tuesday we had interviews with President and Sister Nagano. My companion had an extra long interview with President Nagano so I got to have a long interview with Sister Nagano and it was like an exit interview with her. I was so happy to have a little extra time with her. That was my last interview with her!

Haha she and President Nagano both mentioned several times in their interviews with me that I only had 2 weeks left and I just kept thinking "AHHHHH I KNOW!!!!!! WHY IS IT GOING SO FAST?!?!?!" I really can't believe it. I realize that it is coming, yet it also feels like I'm just doing normal dendo and nothing will change. Yep...

Our neighbor gave me an orange

Moving on. On Wednesday, the Sister Training Leaders came to Ushiku and Sister Fernelius and I got to have 1 last exchange! We were planning on heading up to Hitachinoushiku to do some finding, but when we got there I felt really prompted to go try and visit a less active that we haven't visited all transfer. On the way there we actually ran into one of my favorite Kodomo Eikaiwa moms and it was great!

Then we arrived at her house, and we weren't really sure what to expect. She welcomed us in and told us her daughter would be home in about 30 minutes and then she could give us a ride back to Ushiku (because it was pouring rain). So, we had the chance to talk with her and just build her up a little bit. She is having a baby soon and her youngest son broke his arm and her life has been a little difficult lately, so it was such a miracle that we were led to talk with her. I'm so grateful that Heavenly Father always leads us to the people who need us the most. That visit may have derailed all of our plans for that exchange, but I didn't mind. We helped someone who really needed to be helped.

Nabe - a soup with vegetables and tofu

I also remembered something that Sister Tobe once told me "We [normal people] receive so many blessings when we serve the missionaries." I thought about that phrase a lot while we were with this less active. She offered to give us a ride back and despite the fact that it ruined our plans, I knew that she would receive some important blessings from Heavenly Father for serving us. As we left her, we saw how much happier she was and we were so grateful for the chance we had to meet with her.

Then on Thursday we had another fun adventure! We had a Zone Blitz where half of the Zone went to Kamagaya to do finding and half of the Zone went to Tsukuba. Tsukuba is our neighboring area so we biked there :) It was a beautiful, very long 1.5 hour bike ride. Super fun ^^

Sister Fernelius

During a Zone Blitz all the companionships get mixed up and we go out finding for 2 hours. It's a great way to unite the faith of the zone. Well, I was the very grateful recipient of a tender mercy from Heavenly Father because my companion for this Zone Blitz was Sister Shim. I almost cried tears of joy at the chance to work just one last time with her. During those 2 hours, I learned so much from her and we saw so many miracles. At one point we were trying to decide which way to go to return to the starting point and we both felt that we should go down a street that normally has fewer people. Well, just 15 minutes later, we stopped a middle school student who really wants to learn more about God and BECAME A NEW INVESTIGATOR!!!!!! YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!! MIRACLES!!!!!!!!!

That was a long day with a lot of biking, but it was such a blessing to be able to see both Sister Shim and Sister Van Pelt just one more time. I love both of them so much!

The miracles didn't stop there though!

With Sister Shim and Sister Van Pelt

During weekly planning on Friday, Sister Savage and I were talking and we had heard about a lot of miracles around the Zone and they really inspired us. At that point, I only had 11 more days in Ushiku, so we decided that we were going to see an 11 day miracle. What miracle did we want to see? We had no idea, but we knew that if we just gave it our all and showed our faith to Heavenly Father that he would help us see a miracle.

The very next day we saw not 1, but 2 amazing back-to-back miracles! The very first person that we stopped on the street became a new investigator! This is huge because lately we have had a hard time having conversations with people on the street let alone finding new investigators.

Singing for the talent show

But then, we had an even bigger miracle! We had an investigator that we gave to the ward a few months ago because she just didn't seem to have any desires and just wasn't progressing. Well, we decided to give her one more chance and set an appointment to meet on Saturday. She was 30 minutes late to the appointment (her bus never came, so she walked back to her house and then biked to the church, amazing) but when she came she told us very clearly that she wanted to know if this was the true church or not. She wanted to know whether this or her other church was true and if this was true she wanted to join. She said that she feels so much light here and she's been thinking about joining and we were just amazed. To help her receive her answer and really try her best to know, we decided to set a goal together...yep WE SET A BAPTISMAL DATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She picked the date herself after we talked about what baptism meant and how we would work together to achieve the goal. She is going to be baptized on November 19th!!!!!! ALL THE MIRACLES!!!!!!!!!!!

And that is how our 11 day miracle started :)

I don't really know how to follow up that huge miracle. Haha, I guess the miracle from Day 10 (aka yesterday) was that there was another typhoon but it was raining lighter than last week so we decided to go out and house...except it was rainier than we expected so we got completely soaked. What was the miracle? That we didn't get sick!

Halloween party

One more fun thing from last week was that on Friday we had a Halloween Party for one of our Kodomo Eikaiwa classes and it was so fun! Earlier in the day we decorated the room with the Primary Presidency and it looked amazing. We taught the kids a bunch of Halloween words and taught them how to trick or treat. It was so cute!!! We have one more Halloween Party tomorrow (on real Halloween) and I am so excited!

I realize that I still have one more email to reflect on my mission, but I just want you all to know that I am so grateful for every single experience I have had on my mission. You have all only received 1/100th of everything that has happened here and everything that I have learned. I just can't write about everything in the 90 minute email time that I have. I love this gospel so much. I love the joy it has brought me and the joy I see it bring others every single day. I know without a doubt that this is the true church of God. I am so so so grateful that I decided to serve a mission.

I love you all, and I look forward to writing you all one more email.

Love,

ブラック姉妹
Black Shimai

Typhoons Destroy Plans...and lead to miracles

Ushiku Transfer 11 Week 4

Konnichiwa!

It has been a wonderful and rainy week here in Ushiku! As you may have heard, we had a pretty big typhoon hit us on Sunday, but don't worry, we are all safe. There was just a lot of rain and there are some really strong winds right now so we are staying inside just to be safe. :)

Dinner with the Tobes

Yesterday the rain was getting so bad though that the Bishop came in and told everyone to leave during the 3rd hour, so everyone left pretty quickly and all of a sudden all of our plans for the day were canceled. Granted, when we made our plans for the day we didn't know that a typhoon was coming. We were still able to have a fairly effective day preparing for our big Talent Show on Wednesday and going to a dinner with a few less actives and the Tobes. Yay!!!

As for the rest of the week, this was the week of miracle Kubarikais!!!!!!! I don't know what a kubarikai is in English...handing out flyers? Because of the rain, a lot of our plans got canceled so we ended up doing quite a few kubarikais and they were really successful! We are trying to build up our Mission School in Ushiku and we have a new class starting next month, so we've been trying to advertise it to young people especially.

Just a few miracles:

Sakura water drain in Tokyo

A ridiculous number of High School boys would walk past us and be super interested in English so we handed out a lot of flyers to them. I don't know where all the High School girls went, but the boys seemed to have a lot of interest. Please bring your girl friends!!!!! Or girlfriends....either or ^^

One day we only had 15 minutes. It was ridiculous. But we decided that this was going to be the most miraculous 15 minute kubarikai ever. And it was! With only a few minutes left, I spotted an American man walking past and I just said "Hi" because clearly he didn't need a flyer. Well, he stopped and came over and started talking to me about what we were doing and I explained that as missionaries we are doing service and teaching free English. He told me that he was an English Teacher at a nearby high school and that a lot of his students are looking for an English class to practice and improve. He then told us that we should come back from 7:00-7:30 in the morning to catch all the students on the way to school. It was so helpful and it gave me a lot of hope that all those students I'd been giving flyers to really did have interest and wanted to come. We are going to try that early time next week and hopefully we will be able to help a lot of students. Yay!!!

Mei-chan and Ryouka-chan

Another fun thing from this week was that we went with Ryouka-chan and Mei-chan (two college student PIs that Sister Honda and I met) to their school festival. It was raining pretty hard so there weren't a ton of people, but we got to listen to Mei-chan sing in her acapella group! She was so good! And she said that she is going to come preform at our talent show too (perfect since we didn't have many people lined up to preform). Yay!!!! We walked around and talked a lot and it was great, but then we sat down to eat some of our food and they invited us to come to their English Circle at their school. They really want to practice speaking with native speakers and Mei thought that it would be perfect to ask us if we could come. I want to go so badly!!!!

Zone Conference

It was so sad, I asked what they normally do at English circle and she said that around holidays they will try to search on the internet for things about the holiday and try to do their own presentations about it. They really really try, there just aren't many English speakers to help them. This is perfect though! We are so excited to help them out!!!!!

Also, another fun thing about the school festival. We were at a pretty small college so everyone knew each other and they were all freaking out because "THERE WERE TWO AMERICANS" walking around and speaking English and Japanese. So many people called out "Hello!!!" And there was even a girl who wanted to take a picture with us. We got to start a lot of conversations with people in English and I'm sure we made their day. Haha, it was so cute! I've never been stared at so much in my life :)

Kimiko-san

Those are just a few of the highlights from this week. We were also able to do a lot of work with members and we had several members come up to us asking if they could help with anything. For example, Sister Tobe had a friend from Russia come and stay the weekend and she really wanted to help us dendo, sadly because of the typhoon and terrible weather in general, it didn't work out, but it was so nice of her to want to help!

Biking with Anna

We also taught Anna-chan how to ride a bike!!!! She is a Young Woman who moved here from Mexico a few months ago and will be staying here until March at least. Because almost everyone in Japan has a bike, I thought that it might be nice to give her mine when I leave and she was so excited! The only catch? She didn't remember how to ride a bike, so we helped her. Yay!!! She is so cute!

That's all from this week! It's just been a great week of dendo and we are loving Ushiku and all the miracles here.

Have an amazing week!!!!!

Love,

ブラック姉妹
Black Shimai

My Heart Will Forever be in Matsudo

Ushiku Transfer 11 Week 3

Konnichiwa!

This week we did a lot in Matsudo and I realized that a piece of my heart will always be there. I already feel it breaking every time I go back because I know that eventually I won't get to go there 3 times every 6 weeks. I guess that is what happens when you stay in a zone for half of your mission, it becomes a part of you.

Matsudo Zone

On Tuesday we went to Matsudo for Zone Conference and it was amazing! There was one training/mogi where we were talking about asking "Questions from Heaven" aka asking questions through the Spirit. In our companionship we had one person who was the investigator and the other missionary was the missionary and they had to really seek the Spirit to ask questions from heaven. The interesting thing was, when I did it I really felt the Spirit guide me as to when I should be quiet, when I should ask a question, and when I should testify and it was so powerful! We were doing it in English too, so I was able to use the exact words that I wanted.

A young woman drew this picture of me

On Wednesday, we were back in Matsudo for Exchanges!!!! I was with Sister Zundel and we had a blast! We went to Matsudo Eki and did a kubarikai (handing out flyers) and it was just so much fun! We were singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and just being super genki and I loved it! I've never done a kubarikai on my mission (wow Sister Black, Transfer 11 and you've never done a normal kubarikai? Haha yeah, too many Free English Challenges) but it was really fun and I want to do some here in Ushiku!

Then came the part that broke my heart. We went to go teach Eikaiwa and I got to surprise all the students! Even students who I hadn't talked too much were excited to see me and it just warmed my heart. One of my favorite students Kimiko, somehow found out that I was coming and brought more of her amazing smoked duck! Then a huge miracle happened! A Less Active Young Woman who I worked with a bunch when I first came to Matsudo decided to come to Eikaiwa for the first time in about 4 months that Wednesday! She kept saying "It's a miracle that I came today and got to see you!"

At the end of class she found out that this was my last transfer and that I probably wouldn't be able to see her again and she started crying so hard and she wouldn't let go of me for 30 minutes. I'm going to miss her so much! And then I had to say goodbye to Ayako-san one of my favorite investigators/Mission School students and it was the hardest thing. I love them both so so so much. I started crying too. AHHHH MY HEART!!!!!!!!

We also saw some cool miracles in Ushiku!

On Friday we messaged the Relief Society President to see if she would go with us to visit an older Less Active. Later that night, we were near her house so we stopped by to share a quick message and say hello and she told us that she was just about to message us saying that she couldn't go but since she saw us in person she just couldn't say no. That was a miracle! The next day we went together and it was great! She loved it so so so much! She was so excited afterwards and even though we had planned to only visit the one person, she asked if there was anyone else so we went to visit another Less Active.

We later found out that she actually messaged the whole Ward Council to tell them about her experience and how much fun it is to go out with the missionaries and since then we have had 2 other members come up to us asking us to go visit Less Actives with them. It's amazing!!!! I'm so glad that we were able to make it a good experience for her :)

Part of the Portuguese church group

Saturday night were our magical splits! Last week we found a new investigator and the only time he could meet was 7:00pm on Saturday...the same time as Mission School. So we set up some splits. Originally I was going to go teach him, but at Zone Conference I received a prompting to ask Sister Savage if she would ask Heavenly Father if she should go. A few days later she felt prompted that she needed to go, so she prepared and practiced and went with the member to visit him and it was amazing! They caught him just as he was running inside to grab his bags so he had a few minutes to talk. He felt bad for not reading the chapters we asked him too, but he said he would and that we could come back again next week! Afterwards Sister Savage and the member (the amazing Kawasaki Shimai) talked for a while and set up times not only to go visit the investigator, but also to go visit a bunch of Less Actives in a car! MEMBER MISSIONARY WORK WHOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

I also had some amazing splits. I stayed at Mission School and had the chance to really bond with a Young Woman that is pretty quiet so that was great! I loved talking with her and helping her with her English. I just love Mission School and Youth! I LOVE MISSIONARY WORK!!!!!!!!!!

Sisters of Matsudo Zone

To round out a pretty amazing week, today we went bowling for Zone P-day. I love the Sisters in this Zone so so so much! I loved having the chance to talk with them and bond with them. I look forward to each opportunity that we have to see each other. I really love this Mission and all the amazing missionaries in it. I feel so blessed to work with such talented and humble and hard-working missionaries. I love the Matsudo Zone so much. I really feel blessed to have been in this zone for 9 months.

I truly know that Heavenly Father has a plan for each of us. He knows exactly what we need. I didn't know that I needed to be in this Zone for this long, but I can see how this Zone and these people have influenced me and I can see a bit of how I influenced them. I am so grateful that Heavenly Father loves me and cares for me enough to create a plan for my growth. He knows what I can do to help others and he knows who I need to interact with to grow myself. I love my Heavenly Father and I am so glad that I have the chance to share this love with all these people in Japan.

I hope you all have an amazing week! Love you all!

Love,

ブラック姉妹
Black Shimai

All the Adventures!

Ushiku Transfer 11 Week 2

Konnichiwa!

Well this week was just full of adventures! Hehe :)

This week we did a lot of Less Active visiting. We would pick a part of the area and try to visit all the members and Less Actives there. We don't have a list of all the Less Actives, so we were basically just visiting anyone whose name I didn't know...which led to lots of Less Actives. It was quite the adventure though.

The first day that we did this we found the house of a Brazilian PI that I met at a baby shower last transfer (her daughter, who I recognized, was peeking out of the house when we passed by), we also found a Less Active who clearly did not remember that she had been baptized and she rather forcefully told us that she was Buddhist, and we found a Less Active who actually wants to meet with us! It was getting pretty dark when we talked to her and she told us that her house was pretty messy, but we asked her what was her favorite thing about the gospel that she could remember, and she said that it was that Jesus Lives! YES! That is the best thing to remember! We asked if we could come back next week to share a little video about that and she said yes! Then she called us 20 minutes later (not quite sure how she found our phone number) to change the day because she had another appointment!

So lots of fun miracles!

Super yummy lunch

The second day we did it was filled with some more fun! I think my favorite though was when we visited this really old lady and she invited us to come in, let us sit, and then started talking about how she was really sick and couldn't clean her house. She did not remember at all that she had been baptized a long time ago. Well, as missionaries, we love to serve! So we offered to come and help her clean (bringing along a member of course)! She was really skeptical like "Is this your part-time job? Do I have to pay you?" Why no, you do not. We are volunteers. Then came my favorite, "I just don't want you to try and convert me or anything." Well, no problem there, you were already converted! Haha, she doesn't remember it, but we feel very fortunate to have found her. She was clearly in need of help spiritually and physically and we look forward to coming with a member and hopefully helping her bring the light of the Gospel back into her life.

Helping to translate

On Saturday I also had the chance to go to the dentist with a Peruvian Less Active. Wow, the gift of tongues is real. They were using a lot of really technical dentist language in Japanese and I had to translate it into Spanish for her. We made it though! And she fed us a really good lunch and we got to talk to her non-member daughter who lives in Peru over Facebook. Yay!

Those were just a few of our Less Active Adventures. :)

As for some Investigator Adventures:

We tried visiting a new investigator that we found last week and she wasn't home. It was pouring rain and we were not prepared at all, but we had planned to do some finding around that area. We wandered a little aimlessly, but the Spirit led us to a few apartments. The second person we talked to told us that his father had recently passed away and he really wanted to know where he went. He accepted both a return appointment and a Book of Mormon! It was a perfectly timed miracle because we had just been talking about success as a missionary. Sometimes its hard to see if you are doing the right thing as a missionary. Sometimes you wonder "Am I listening to the Spirit and he is just leading me to those neighborhoods that are hard and have no one who wants to listen or am I not listening hard enough to the Spirit and I'm just trying to do this on my own?" We were talking about these things and then all of a sudden we found this really prepared person. Neither of us had felt really strong promptings from the Spirit to go to this apartment, but he led us there anyways.

Success as a missionary isn't measured in anything except for yourself. This ties into a lot of the things that I loved from General Conference that we also watched this week. One thing that really stood out to me from General Conference was the talks about perfection and the Atonement. As a missionary, there are a lot of rules and there is a very clear image of what the perfect missionary is (maybe its someone with endless amounts of energy whose testimony is strong enough that when they talk to someone on the street the person begs to be baptized). If that is the image, then clearly none of us can every reach perfection. God asks us to be perfect, but it's not something that we can do right now. It's something that we slowly build towards. As we do our best every day, and use the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we can slowly grow and come closer to reaching our eternal potential. Through the Atonement we can be made perfect, but it takes time.

Now what does this have to do with success? In my mind, a lot of times success and perfection appear to go hand in hand. To be successful, you have to be perfect. They do go hand in hand, but in a different way. As we strive our best each and every day, to work our hardest, to serve and do good, we will be successful. At the end of our missions we will feel that we did all that we could do. That was true of the night that we found that new investigator. We did all we could do and it wasn't the fact that we found a new investigator that made us feel successful, it was the fact that we went out and used every minute of our day as effectively as we could have and we listened to the almost silent promptings of the Spirit that led us to that particular apartment.

Success isn't measured by the number of apartments you knock on or the number of people who are baptized, it's measured by your commitment to do everything that is asked of you (all the rules and the promptings from Heavenly Father) even when it seems to amount to nothing.

I just want to end with one last experience from this past week.

We met with Nodoka-chan for our first lesson this week. It was the night before her Eiken (a huge English test, like the ACT or SAT) test and it was in a food court. My Japanese was all over the place and we couldn't hear each other too well. Despite all these factors, it was one of the most powerful lessons I have been a part of. She had read the Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet and as she read about Baptism she though "Hmmm maybe I want to be baptized." We taught her the Restoration and she has the strongest desire to learn more about Jesus Christ! She was overjoyed when we gave her a Book of Mormon and at the end of our lesson, she prayed without hesitation. She has the most sincere desire to learn and to truly know if this church is true and when she does she wants to be baptized.

From the moment that we met her, Nodoka-chan has been in the hands of God. Nothing that we do stops her from having her desire. During this lesson, my Japanese was probably the most scattered, poorly executed that it has ever been, yet through the Spirit it made perfect sense to her. I am so grateful that I am not doing this work alone, that me and Sister Savage aren't doing this alone. We have a powerful force on our side, Heavenly Father. He will never let us down! He will always make up for our weaknesses!

I love this work so much and I love Ushiku!

I hope you all have a great week this week!

Love,

ブラック姉妹
Black Shimai

New Companion

Ushiku Transfer 11 Week 1

Konnichiwa!

Welcome to the new transfer! Featuring my new companion, Sister Savage!!!!! It's weird not having Sister Honda here to reflect on all the things we did the past week as we write our emails, but she is having a great time in Yachiyo so it's all good!

During Sister Honda's last few days, I was still recovering from my really bad cold, so we spent the days sleeping and packing (I slept, she packed). However, we also had the chance to go say goodbye to some of her favorite members.

On Tuesday, we had the chance to go eat dinner with the Koikes and the Matsubaras and it was so cute and sad at the same time! Koike Shimai made us a really good dinner and we just talked about their mission experiences and our mission experiences and it was so great. Also, I brought a lot of Disney stickers with me on my mission and I wasn't quite sure what to do with them because I still had a lot so I decided to give them to Koike Shimai's two daughters, Mi and Leah, and they were over the moon! They were ecstatic. It was the cutest thing ever!!!!!!!

We also had the chance to go to Eikaiwa in Ryuugasaki. This Tuesday our Kodomo EIkaiwa class in Ryuugasaki was canceled because there wasn't room for us, but because it was the last Tuesday of the transfer we wanted to go so that Sister Honda could say goodbye to Nao-chan (one of our investigators that goes to Eikaiwa in Ryuugasaki). That was also sad, but there was also a miracle that happened!

So, we always start and end Mission School classes with a prayer and so on Tuesday we decided to play Rock Paper Scissors to see who would pray. There was only us and the Elders, a few members, Nao-chan and her older brother Kota, who is also an investigator. Nao-chan won and she gave a great prayer! But then, at the end of class she was like "I said the opening prayer, so Kota you have to say the closing prayer." He was a little shy about it and said that he didn't know how, but Nao wasn't having any of that. She taught him how to pray using the same hamburger analogy that we used to teach her almost a month ago!!!! And then he prayed!!! Wow! She remembered and then taught her brother! That was a really cool miracle. We are so proud of her! <3

Graduation

We also had another miracle this week! Because some of the new missionaries coming in had visa problems, they couldn't come until Wednesday which meant that Transfer Day was moved to Thursday! This meant that both Sister Honda and I were able to be at the Graduation for our Eikaiwa Basic class! They were so sad last week when they found out that one of us would be transferring and might not be there for the Graduation, but when we were both there, they were so happy!

Miyake Shimai - like my mom, but Spanish

The Graduation was really great! We gave them all certificates and then gave a presentation about graduations in America and they all loved it. It was such a blessing to be able to see them all grow over the past 2 transfers and really rise to the challenge of moving onto the next level. I love them so much! Over the next 5 weeks, Sister Savage and I will be doing a lot of finding to find students for our new Basic class starting in November. We are excited!

This leads to Transfer Day! It was so sad saying goodbye to Sister Honda. Even though it's only for 6 weeks, I already miss her! <3 Hehehe

The morning of Transfer Day it was raining so so hard and my new companion's train got delayed. Well, Sister Honda had to leave on her train and through a series of events I ended up waiting with the Elders for an hour until my new companion came.

Sister Savage

So a little bit about Sister Savage! She is from Highland, Utah, loves singing and art, is a Transfer 3 missionary (she has only been out 3 months) and is amazing! She has so much energy! It has completely reenergized me. I don't know how it happened. In fact, sometimes I feel a little selfish because I feel like I'm stealing her energy, haha :)

We have seen so many miracles together already! The main miracle day was on Saturday. Our amazing investigator Nodoka-chan was supposed to come to both the Women's Conference and the YW activity right afterwards, but she caught a cold that morning and couldn't come. So that changed all our plans for the rest of the day. We ended up watching the Women's Conference in Spanish with a YW who just moved in (well I watched in Spanish and Sister Savage read it in English on her tablet) and then we went out finding.

The actual finding time was just full of miracles. We were talking to this one college student at her apartment when all of a sudden her cat ran outside. We spent like 10 minutes trying to help her catch the cat and she was really grateful for our help. She studied Christian religions at school so she took a pamphlet, but doesn't really have time to meet. However, her neighbor (a family of 4) said that we could come back next week!!!! Yay!!! Miracles!!!

Mission School

The biggest miracle of all though was that we stopped this one girl on the street and started talking to her in English. Her English was way good and she was a middle school student so we invited her to Eikaiwa. Well, the next day, we got 2 calls from a random number and when we finally called back, it was the girl's mom! Apparently their whole family used to come to Eikaiwa a long time ago. When the girl gave her mom the flyer we gave her and talked about how cute we were and nice and how we complimented her English, the mom recognized the church and gave us a call to find out more about our classes! They are really really interested in coming back and she wants to meet us! Her daughter has some confidence issues and other things so it meant a lot to the mom that we were able to boost her confidence and make her really happy.

We had no idea when we stopped her that all of this would come of it. I remember stopping her and just thinking "I don't want to scare her!" I just wanted to help her and invite her to English. I am so glad that we stopped her though and talked to her. God has a plan for everything. He needed Nodoka-chan to get sick so that we would change our plans and be put in the path of this girl. I really hope that we have the chance to meet her again soon!

Bowling

There are just so many miracles from this week. I think Sister Savage brought the miracles with her from Narita because on Friday we saw another huge miracle! We went out bowling and to lunch with a PI. She is Nao-chan's brother's girlfriend and she is just the cutest! We love her! Well, in the car ride from bowling to lunch we found out that she loves choirs and so we invited her to come listen to General Conference and to hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. She was so excited! She really really wants to come! She even said that she would bring Kota with her which is even better!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHH ALL THE MIRACLES!!!!!!

It has been a great week here in Ushiku and I can't wait for this next week as well! We have a lot of great plans for this transfer and I'm excited to see them be put into action!!!

I love you all! Have a great week!!!!

ブラック姉妹
Black Shimai

Katsu and Karaage - two of my favorites