Come Follow Me: Kobe Japan mission is gonna see baptisms! Transfer 10..wow!

October 3, 2016

Family and Friends, Hello!

How are you? I can't believe this transfer is over, wow so fast and it's October. Time is just not normal out here. Sounds like conference was amazing as always and boy I can't wait to watch it this week. Merc! Happy Birthday! Hope it's a good day and you're treated like a queen. Love you!! I'll be thinking about you. Also my best friend GRACIE! Happy Birthday Sister Walton. Love you!

Well this week was a great spiritual train that's for sure haha Well Nishio San the lady we met last week who yelled our names, well we met with her Monday night with our ward mission leader and it was good but hard. She thinks the Book of Mormon is way hard to understand , which it's not easy but we taught about the gospel of Jesus Christ and committed her to be baptized on December 12, she said yes but is very nervous. But we are excited to study with her and help her learn progress and grow. This week we had our last exchange and I went with Nakayama Shimai. It was so fun! She is Miller Shimai's old companion so it was fun to get to know her and talk about weird things Miller Shimai does etc. but anyway the best was we had a lesson with a member who is from the Philippines and doesn't speak Japanese so she had to teach in English and she's decent cause she lived in Utah for awhile but she was so nervous. There was a few times she would say something and the member couldn't hear her cause she's kind of old and she wouldn't repeat it cause she thought it was wrong English. It was weird being on the other side haha but the best was we had an appointment with a LA who we teach weekly cause she has a goal to go to the temple and wow the spirit is the best is all I can say. So we teach from a temple prep book and we committed her to come to church last week but she didn't come so we started off with following up with that and then she just opened up about lots of things. And we had the RS president there and she shared lots of things and so did Nakayama Shimai and I just kept feeling like I needed to share this video called Mountains to Climb and talk to her about faith. Well I listened and showed it and testified about the importance of having faith in order to overcome anything in life and we all just were shedding tears and I just felt the spirit working through me so much. It was such an amazing experience. I'm grateful for the spirit. We also had a wedding reception this week, boy was that weird attending as a missionary. We weren't going to but the ward asked us to help and we knew the girl well so we helped decorate the church and cook etc. but it ended up a little dorky but it doesn't matter they did the growing up picture videos, a game if he knew his wife's handshake, cake, etc. but wow the whole time we were just awkward missionaries watching love life haha but it was fun and delicious. The bride made her own cake and it was awesome. Fun time for sure. So the amazing thing of the week, we had MLC and as we are spiritually preparing the Ap's come in and say alright we are going to the Welchs house today. We never do it there so we were shocked. We get inside and President Welch starts off with well we did it here cause today is a special one. And he ends up announcing the new revelation he received which is a new goal we have here as a mission. Every companionship will see a baptism before 2017. We were all so pumped and the rest of the meeting was amazing. I felt the spirit so strong there. So we and the Zone Leaders prayed individually about what we needed to share at training in order to pump up the zone and I felt I should talked about attitude. And usual we train together but the zone leaders wanted us to train separate because we had so much revelation we wanted to share. So I stood up there and trained by myself for 30 minutes, scary! But wow did I learn a lot about the importance of attitude. It makes everything different and makes the good, bad, or in the middle greater. Just take a step back and look at what attitude you have in life. Do you wake up thinking today is gonna be awesome or do you wake up and say well here we go again? I promise you through good attitude, life will be changed. When you wake up, please when you start the day with the morning prayer ask for that help of a good attitude and I know the saviors atonement will bless you to have that. Last, for my message, I'm sure all the sisters know this talk but in the women's conference President Uchtdorfs talk "Fourth Floor, Last Door" I read it on the gospel library app. It is amazing! But I'll just share the last part of it with you. "In our search for enduring faith, in our quest to connect with God and His purposes, let us remember the Lord’s promise: “Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” Will we give up after knocking on a door or two? A floor or two? Or will we keep seeking until we have reached the fourth floor, last door? God “rewards those who earnestly seek him,” but that reward is not usually behind the first door. So we need to keep knocking. Sisters, don’t give up. Seek God with all your heart. Exercise faith. Walk in righteousness. I promise that if you will do this--even until the fourth floor, last door--you will receive the answers you seek. You will find faith. And one day you will be filled with light that grows “brighter and brighter until the perfect day.” I know as we push till the fourth floor, last door in life that god will bless us and the lives of others. So please go read this talk and think how it can apply to your life. God wants us to try our best even when days are long, hard, and tiring. He will bring that big blessing I promise. I love you all and miss you lots. Have a wonderful week!

スミス姉妹 Smith Shimai