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