Come Follow Me: Is This Tole Talk Or What?!

October 5, 2015

こにちわ! (Konichiwa) Hello!
How is everyone?! I'm sure great beaus you got to listen to the amazing apostles and our loving prophet Thomas S. Monson. Oh man am Iso jealous you already got to hear it, I'll hear it all this coming weekend! But it sounds like it was a fun weekend with the marathon, yogurt land during priesthood, crepes, dad asleep during conference, and the other usual things JODAN (jokes) Dad But really so glad that all is well in good old America. First, Merc Happy Birthday this week. Hope it's a good one, last one without the baby so enjoy. I hope it's good and know I am thinking about you on your special day. Love you so much and good luck with the baby coming soon! Thanks for all the pictures, I love them and I save them on my iPad and it's the greatest. Especially on general conference with the sign, brought tears of joy to my eyes! So here we go, I hope I can remember all that happened. Everyday is a blur plus I am never sure what's going on anyways so uh yeah haha so Tuesday I got to experience my first ever eikaiwa lesson. We teach little kids English at 5:00-5:30 which is crazy! But so much fun, they are the CUTEST (besides all my nieces and nephews of course) but it's hard to keep them focused but we just teach them simple vocabulary with pictures then sing a sing in English like head shoulders knees and toes or something. It was quite entertaining! Then at 7:00 we teach anyone else who wants to come and we teach for an hour and do vocabulary and sentences with them etc. People here in Japan can't say there L's like at all because the L doesn't exist in Japanese.. It's hilarious. But I LOVE teaching English, it's so fun and you just get to make new friends and enjoy your time with them. We'll next on Wednesday we had a lesson with our Investigator KanaSan. So Kana San is our one progressing investigator we have right now. The missionaries met her through eikawai or English class. She is such a sweet heart. She is lonely because she moved her from Osaka and people in Osaka are kind of different compared to everyone of else so I feel so bad for her. But we teach her English for an hour then we have our lesson. Well this lesson was baptism and enduring to the end. And guess who got the opportunity to do the invitation of baptism?! That's right, me.... HA The lesson went well. We showed her the font and she thought it was awesome, then we showed her a video called "Mountains to Climb" {Side Note: I challenge you all to PLEASE go watch it. As I watched it, I felt the spirit so strong and I testify that Christ and his gospel will help you through anything. We must endure and stay close to Christ. He is our savior and redeemer, life should never over take Christ. He should be the center of our life and our life will be much happier. I know this to be true. I love our Savior, Jesus Christ} and after I testified and asked her to be baptized.. Well she told me she wanted to read the whole Book of Mormon first and pray about it. So yeah, it broke my heart but it was cool to have that experience. We will keep praying for her and helping her come unto Christ. Thursday was an interesting day for us. We have an American family inour ward and she is having her baby ANY day now and we have to go with her to the hospital to translate and such.. I mean obviously my companion did that but it was fun to see the baby ultrasound and such. (Oh and we just found out last night that she had her baby! Crazy women having a baby in Japan when she doesn't speak any Japanese...Haha props!) We were sadly there for about 3 hours so we didn't get to do any work that day because Thursday's are weekly planning days so that takes about 3 hours so needless to say, by the time we studied in the morning, helped her, and planned, there was no more time. Here in Japan we can't proselyte past about 7ish cause it makes people upset if you bug them.. So today was long and we didn't get to work or teach much. But we did draw closer to Sister Solomon and served her. Which is something Welch 会長 (President Welch) wants us to do this transfer, gain a relationship with the members here. Friday was a long day.. We got up at 5:15 and had to go to seminary early at 6:30 cause they only have one student and so we like to support when we can. It was a good experience. Then we went had our first district meeting, it went well! We are focusing in hope this transfer so we talked a lot about that. Then we went to lunch together and we got okonomiyaki I sent a picture, it's SO good! Saturday was a lot of ping ponging and street contacting.... And also a lot of no's or doors in my face... It'd hard. No one wants to listen here but we keep on going! But I had a fun experience will ping ponging, almost died haha ready? Well I had my first experience with a dog on my mission.. Yup one week in, it happened. Well we were ping ponging and it was pretty dark and late but we decided to knock on one more house. She here in Japan, there door bells are like videos as well and a lot of people have them on their gate a few feet back from their front door. So this is how this house was and we walk up to ring it and BAM! The dog jumps out of NO WHERE and so we just sprinted for our life but luckily it didn't chase us. But let me tell you, I thought my life was over! Hahaha so we ended up being leaving that area for the night cause we both were SO scared hahaha. But then Sunday came again, those days hurt my brain cause there is so many Japanese speakers that speak SO fast ha but it was fast Sunday which was hard as well. All the bike riding, door knocking etc. you have no energy, it's hard stuff haha but anyway, it was weird our branch presidency had us bare our testimonies and then sing a song after hahaha so the testimony actually went pretty well and I just bore a very simple but true testimony. It was scary but I did it! Then we sang I Need Thee Every Hour together and it was actually very pretty! We practice only once that week but it ended up well and you could tell everyone felt the spirit that came through song. It was AMAZING then this Sunday I got to experience my first member feeding us. It was GREAT! On fast Sunday too so it was a good day to do so haha we ate at the 大村 or oomuras families house. It was so nice and just a time to get to know them better. They have served a couple mission and are both converts and have a cute daughter who is an RM and lives with them. So when you walk into someone's house you take your shoes off and sit down on your knees at the table that's on the ground and you came change your position till the head of the house says to do so.. OUCH! Hahaha but I survived no worries dinner was AMAZING! We had this meat stuff, rice (of course), veggies, edamame, THE best apples in the world, kabucha soup or like pumpkin type soup and it's THE best thing ever. (Mom and dad get ready to try that), and this weird cheese casserole we will call it haha then she made pine apple dessert I guess we will call it that. Haha but it was delicious, all with chopsticks too. And they just keep giving you rice over and over, plus it's rude not to finish the rice so wow I was so done with rice but they were awesome and I loved it. Anyway, that's all I got this week. But last quote/thought, "you're future is only as bright as your faith." -Thomas S Monson. Never forget to have faith. Always being striving to strengthen your faith. Prayer, studying scriptures, serving, church, and just being like He is. I know you will be so much happier if you do so. Faith is real and it blesses your life more than anything else. I know that through Christ our faith can grow and we can have a happier life. Share that with others and be an example of a person who has STRONG BRIGHT faith. I love my Savior. He loves all of us the same and died for each and everyone of us, how great is that?! Never forget that and try to do all you can to repay Him for that. I know this church is true and I love sharing the gospel of Christ to others. It's hard and everyone sounds like Tole when they talk but I still love it with ALL my heart and soul. Keep being like Christ. I LOVE YOU ALL #TRUST
Smith Shimai スミス姉妹