Email address: lauren.fullmer@myldsmail.net

Monday, December 14, 2015

Dec.14, 2015 - I'm 20!

Hello people!

I'm 20! Ah oh no I'm an adult! 

This week I had a taste of America seriously! It was awesome. It's been too long since I've had a s'more and guess who is teach the Japanese people all about s'mores.. Yes it was so fun. So for game night this past week we decided to make s'mores. Problem is we had to improvise. We had no frying sticks or fire pit at the church and gram crackers aren't sold here so we made a few adjustments. We bought some hangers at the dollar store and bent those into sticks and we had a member bring his grill thing for the fire. We found marshmallows and chocolate, but we couldn't find gram crackers anywhere. So we bought these little cookie crackers because most treats here aren't very sweet. We opened the pack and discovered the cookies were slightly smaller than the standard size Oreo ,but we didn't let that stop us. The Japanese people were so amazed "this is the best!" "Holy cow! Wow this is so good" was said over and over. I sat there in the camper chair with a bit of a smug look on my face because earlier one of the members who was exclaiming "soooo good!" Had some doubts about it earlier. He gave in and said "you were right! This is the best American food I've ever eaten" after sometime, we decided to tell ghost stories. I know ghost stories but explaining them in Japanese was a bit harder than I thought it would be. The scariness went down because my vocabulary for describing scary things is something like "very scary" or very very scary. But with hand motions and a fire creepily lighting your face the stories can become scarier. 

December 12 the weirdest birthday of my life.
So this morning we went to the train station to met with an investigator. We ended up going to the city over to make Christmas ornaments with her and her friend. I thought they were our age. Nope they have 7 years on us. I don't think I'll ever be able to tell you how old a Japanese person is because they don't age until they get to be about 65ish. So we went to this place with them and made these wooden monkeys because this year is the year of the monkey. We were the odd ones out in a class full of old ladies 2 kids and our group. They sure thought we were cool because we are Americans. They also thought that we didn't speak Japanese ,so they were saying stuff and I replied to a question about me ,but not directed at me. I love doing that, the looks you receive are priceless. Wide-eyed and jaw dropped and this confused look kinda like "how?what the.." I sometimes pretend I don't speak Japanese with kids and then you say one thing and they go crazy! So that was fun. After that we got lunch with them. We got soba. Sobs is cold noodles in raw egg and various of sauces. Man it was so good! All throughout this exchange we were telling them all about God. They asked about if we could ever get rid of sin or sadness. I told them about baptism and how when we get baptized all our sins are washed away. I told them that when we have faith in Jesus Christ we can overcome anything, despite what the odds seem because in reality that's the truth. We can do anything through him. We invited them to come to church with us ,but they said they couldn't because they were busy.
Last week met a woman named Annie. She speaks fluent English and she is a skate boarder. She told us that she has a boy friend in London ,but she doesn't really like him. She told us to meet her at the skatepark at around 2:30 so we went over there. She was there and she was skating around she had this huge old school radio playing rap music. She tried to teach me how to skateboard.. That didn't go over well most of the time I was holding her hand. I hopped off because I didn't want to get hurt. She then said that some of her friends were coming over too.  We got excited because we thought it would be some other skater girls we could teach and then She told us " they're really cute boys". My companion and I looked at each other and just thought "oh no she's trying to set us up." We told her about the church and about what we do as missionaries. And she said "oh I've got lots of Mormon friends!" Her friends were really late showing up ,but we figured it would be better not to meet them. We both felt it was better to 
Leave. She is really trying to set us up with people! No! We decided that if we went down to the skate park we would bring the elders or just not go maybe meet her at a cafe. 
After that we had a lesson at the church with setoura shimai. She's such a sweet heart. I love her so stinking much. During the lesson, Tada kaicho awkwardly came in gave me cookies and cake shook my hand then left. It was so funny! 

After that we decided to go to dinner. We went first to this new sushi place that opened up ,but it said we wouldn't get seated for 2 hours so we decided to go some where else. We went to this way good omelette rice place and the elders got this huge 12 egg omlette rice plates and ate the whole thing, well towards the end sugimoto choro looked sick and he started to sweat from eating so much. It was so funny!

So Christmas is coming up really soon. You know what that means? We get to celebrate the best thing in the world! Jesus's birth. Often it seems we forget why there is gift giving and this whole happy spirit. The best gift ever given was from our Heavenly Father and he gave us our savior. I absolutely can not express how grateful I am for that. I am far from perfect and I make mistakes over and over again ,but through the grace of his son and through faith in Jesus Christ. I can have a second, third chance. Amazing huh? Ever wonder why me? Why did I get this amazing gift? I sure do wonder that sometimes ,but I know it's simply because of the love that God has for each and everyone of us. 

So as the season rolls around, be a little kinder, love more, and spread the good news of or savior's birth because it is the most important thing we can celebrate! 

Love,
Fullmer shimai 

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