Hello all. I am staying this transfer in Nishinomiya. Sadly, my companion is leaving me. Funny thing, my companion and I are just switching companions. Here's the kicker... They are both native French speakers. My new companion is from Tahiti. Bean shimai's companion is from Canada. So my Japanese isn't the greatest, so this will be an interesting transfer that's for sure. I am nervous ,but Bean shimai told me that Chapman shimai knows some English so it shouldn't be too bad! This week we had 3 investigators come to church. Which is good! It was really awesome and I think that they felt the spirit. We extended the invtation to be baptized to one investigator she said she wants to be baptized but she has to talk to her dad and see what he says he doesn't know that she's taking the lessons with the missionaries ,so we're praying everything works out!
Today: I met a woman my dad gave a Book of Mormon 26 years ago. Her name is Yoko Ikegami. She did not want anything to do with religion and she used to kinda stand her ground and say I don't need religion. My dad and his companion elder "kanji" smith prayed that morning and felt inspired to go to her apartment. She was on the 9th floor. They gave her a Book of Mormon and she called them later that week and said she did not need it.they went and visited her and she kept her Book of Mormon. She became an Aikaiwa student because she always fought back with the missionaries saying she didn't need the religion in her life. She did not talk to my dad at English class only elder smith because he was her teacher. A couple weeks later my dad was transferred. She did not join the church until 3 years later. She has been an active member since the day she joined the church. She married in the temple and she had a son. He might be serving a mission after he finishes college. Her husband used to be the bishop in the himeji ward(now released). She wants to serve a couple mission after her son finishes college. She was incredibly happy to meet me and she has been trying to contact my dad for some time via Facebook. However, his name is kory she has been typing in Cory and had not been able to find him. I gave her the correct name and helped her find my dad. It was amazing to see the fruits of my dad's labor after all these years! She kept saying 26 years it's been 26 years! It was awesome!
Sorry I don't have a lot of time! Spiritual thought Ether 12:4
4 Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God. I might have shared this last week I don't remember but I really like this scripture. I don't have any thoughts behind this expect that I like it and I hope yall do!
Have a great week! Love, Fullme Shimai Ps currently writing this smushed in a train! So thank full for iPads!
Well it's been another busy week in Nishinomiya. That's the name of my area just so everyone knows. I'm in nishinomiya area, Kobe zone ,and amagasaki district. Try saying that ten times fast! I've been here for 2 transfers (6 weeks each transfer) and I'm fluent... Just kidding on the fluent part! I am so far from fluent ,but Japanese is coming.
So this week we did not have a lot of lessons. A couple of people cancelled on us and we didn't have too many planned anyways. So guess what that means? We did a lot of finding. Finding is when we go and try to find new investigators to teach. Sometimes it's just so depressing because I know with all my heart that this gospel is true and I want everyone to know that! Sadly a lot of people do not want to hear our message. It's kinda like when you find this really great restaurant and you just want to take your friends and family with you because you want them to enjoy the food and experience. That's how I think about the gospel. It's brought me so much joy I just everyone to be able to experience it. However, sometimes that doesn't happen ,but that's okay because we do find those people who want to hear and are ready to hear our message.
We went finding down by an eki (train station) a lot this week. It seems old people and young people are the people who have patience with us and want to hear what we have to say. We met this young about 12 year old girls because they came up to us. They asked us why we were here and what we were doing. At that time we had been handing out English fliers for our free English fliers because a lot of times we can find investigators thru English class. We told them we teach English and invited them to come. They were super giggly and friendly. They kept saying that we had pointy noses and that we were really tall. A common thing I hear a lot in japan is that we have pointy noses. Japanese people really love our noses because they think that theirs are flat (Miyu ,our investigator, told us that).we invited them to English class and they said that they wanted to come ,so we'll see what happens.
After some time up and down this street, we walked passed these two college age guys. And one kinda snickers "Mormons" we were like what! And turned around and he kept walking but he yelled at us "I went to BYU!" And we were like hah ya right. We were standing at a busy corner and decided to approach these young high school girls. We went to talk to them and they kinda just walked by not even noticing that we were there. We were like darn and turned around and standing behind us were these other high school girls we saw earlier. They looked like they had some attitude and so we didn't know if they wanted to even talk to us ,but they came up to us saying "pretty. Wow so pretty!" To us. They really loved my eyes. They thought that they were pretty. We took them down to this cafe to sit and talk with them. When we sat down I notice at another table the college guys were there. We were like oh no! The guy turned around and started talking to us in English. Turns out he actually did go to BYU Hawaii and he ended up joining the church there. However, now he's inactive. He lives far from our church so he would go to another church ,but we invited him to church as he walked out. We said" church is at 10!" He kinda chuckled ,but at least we tried. We talked with the girls and invited them to church and to English class so we'll see what happens. Before we left the head girl of their group asked to take a picture of my eye. I laughed and said sure. So now she has a picture of my eye. I wasn't kidding when I said they loved my eyes. Ah Japan. So interesting ,but so great!
Spiritual thought: Moroni 10:20-21
20 Wherefore, there must be faith; and if there must be faith there must also be hope; and if there must be hope there must also be charity. 21 And except ye have charity ye can in nowise be saved in the kingdom of God; neither can ye be saved in the kingdom of God if ye have not faith; neither can ye if ye have no hope.
^ I've come to love three words on my mission. Charity, hope, and faith. Towards the end of the Book of Mormon, as Moroni was writing the last bit knowing fully well that he would die soon he wrote about faith, hope ,and charity. You can't have one with out the other. You can't hope for better days ,but not have faith that they will come. You can't be charitable towards people ,but have no hope in things, same goes vice versa faith and charity, etc. It simply doesn't work. When you have one you have to have the other. Easier said then done ,but as we strive to walk in the ways of the savior we can develop faith, have hope, and have charity(pure love of Christ). So hope for better days, have faith they will come and have charity in your heart.
I love all of you and wish you a great great week!
Hello everybody! This week was fun. We were very busy. So cool story. We had a meeting set up with this college student who seemed pretty interested in church. We had met her Streeting a couple of days ago and she said she wanted to come to church and that she believes in God and really all the things missionaries want to hear. So we were at the church and we set everything up and we waited. Time passed by and we figured maybe we would give her 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 20 minutes. After about 30 minutes after we came to the conclusion that she stood us up. We decided to go Streeting since we had the church all set up. We walked out of the church ,but then we stopped because we forgot to say a prayer before we left. We said a short prayer then started up towards the college on the hill. We were passing by the junior high school saying hello to everyone on our way up when a girl walked out of the school. I said hello like normal and then I did a double take. She did too! We had met her before. Her name is Yuuka. We were like hey!!! How are you? This is so crazy right. She just a 14 year old kid ,but she has a great interest in the church. So she happened to be heading home. Her way home was a path that went right next to the church. Of course we gave her a tour and sang hymns. Sadly she has no time because even after school ends they have summer school for like 10 hours a day ,but it was cool how we met her again when we thought we wouldn't see her again.
Ah also fun thing about this week! I got a new bike. Like a new new bike. They changed the bike policy in our mission and they told the sisters to go buy new bikes. So I got a mountain bike. It's fire truck red and I love it.. I named it ringo (apple in japanese)
Spiritual thought: Mosiah 18:21-22
21 And he commanded them that there should be no contention one with another, but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another. 22 And thus he commanded them to preach. And thus they became the children of God.
Have you ever wondered why sometimes as a human race we compete with each other? We all end up the same no matter what we had or didn't have in this life. Life is hard. It's going to be the hardest thing we ever do ,but when we all serve one another and comfort and love each other life becomes a bit easier. We are all children of God and together we can accomplish amazing things. So I have a challenge for all of you this week. Go out of your way and serve someone in need. It doesn't have to big ,but if you see someone who needs help I challenge you to give them a helping hand.
Well I love all of you and hope you have a fantastic week!
This week has been a fun week! We were very busy this week, we had a lot going on. Lately we decided we needed to find more people to teach so this week we were finding new ways to find.
Well what is finding? Finding is Japan is one of these things. Street contacting (talking to people on the streets) housing (ping- pong.. Camera and video com) church tours, going down to train stations and trying to talk to people there just usually something like that. Well after you go to the same places and do the same kind of finding it can get pretty old pretty fast ,so we usually find ways to change it up or to keep it interesting. My companion and I recently came up with this thing called dare dendo. We dare each other to do something out of our comfort zone and if you don't do it you have to memorize a scripture in Japanese. So we dare each other to do just little things and it seems to be helping us become more bold.
On Tuesday we decided to go finding in an area that we have never been before. Well that was interesting. We got lost at one point and couldn't find our way back ,so we decided to go up this hill and see if we could see where we were. As we went up this hill it slowly started to change. There trees started to thicken and houses started to disappear. It looked like narnia! Then little girls in their school uniforms and business women started to walk down from some where up the hill. We were so confused and just continued to bike up this hill. When we finally reached the top we discovered a huge school building at the top. So we pretty much biked up this beautiful forest to reach a school. That's was kinda a bummer, but that's okay because we got to talk to the little girls they love to talk to us and it's fun to see them giggle and get really shy.
After figuring out where we were we rode down the hill and found the train station that we were looking for. We talked to a bunch of people ,but we didn't really have luck with anyone. We decided to pray and see if we needed to stay or go to the other train station a couple minutes away. After we prayed we decided to head to the other station. We were stopped at a light and struck up a conversation with this lady. She said "can we meet? I want to talk with you" and we were like of course! So we exchanged numbers and decided to meet sometimes next week. We rode down the rode like woah! That was awesome. We pulled over and said a prayer of gratitude and continued on our way. It was just so cool to see the little miracle of someone wanting to talk with us about our message.
Story time: ok so we have this investigator we try and visit all the time. She is really nice and she has 3 kids all under 5 years old. Well we biked to her house and on the way there we saw a bunch of little girls outside playing outside. They were saying "foreigners? Americans? Who are they?" (In Japanese of course) and then they came up to us and asked us why we were here and if we could play with them. We told them we could maybe play with them later. Well our investigator came and we taught her a short lesson at her door. her 3 years old ran out the house in a diaper and a shirt kept running in between our legs and down the drive way and then back up to the door. Her name is Yuu. She is the cutest little kid. After we finished the lesson we went to go get on our bikes and Yuu came after Us. First she grabbed my hand and then my companions and she started to walk us around the neighborhood. She walked us a good couple of blocks and with her mom running behind apologizing and finally grabbing her and saying that we had to go. She did not want to let go of our hands. We had to bribe her with candy to let go and not cry. It was the cutest thing ever!
Spiritual thought
3 Nephi 12: 14-16
14 Verily, verily, I say unto you, I give unto you to be the light of this people. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. 15 Behold, do men light a candle and put it under a bushel? Nay, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light to all that are in the house; 16 Therefore let your light so shine before this people, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. ^ I know that the light can be taken to mean lots of different things ,but this time reading this I was thinking about the light of Christ. The light of Christ is that want in us to do good and as we do something good we desire to do something else good and slowly build this testimony of love and service. Christ's gospel is all teachings of love. We need to be those shining lights on a hill. The bright lights that emulate love. Becoming true disciples of Christ means to follow him and become examples for our brothers and sisters around us. So let's let our light burn bright and be the light on a hill.
