Dec. 27, 2015 - Happy holidays!

Hello all! Merry Christmas! And happy new year too!

I've been reflecting a lot because the year is coming to and end and
I've been thinking a lot about this year. Sometimes is feels like
yesterday when I waved at my parents and boarded a plane for the Mtc.
It felt so fast. It's still feels fast. See the crazy thing about time
as a missionary is that it is fast ,but at the same time slow. They
say the days feel like weeks and the weeks like days. This is so true
,and the months feel even faster sometimes.

This past week was full of busy days and lots of train rides. I think
I was the most tired this week because we were always going to places.
This past Monday we went to nishiwaki and hiked a small mountain but
according to my companion it was hill. Ha! And when we got to the top
we talked about love and how we are going to focus on the youth, it
was so good ,but man I was exhausted. We had to go 3 hours by train to
get there ,so by 2ish we had to run down the mountain to catch our
train. I was covered in mud and completely exhausted by the time we
got home. I think I fell asleep ,but I'm not entirely sure. I don't
really remember the ride back.

We baked cookies for the Christmas party. Gosh not a good idea. Our
oven is a microwave that converts into a oven, we could only cook 3 at
a time.. Not fun. We finished the next morning. We made cookies
because one of the activies was to frost sugar cookies and decorate
them. I wish I could tell you how surprised everyone was when they saw
the frosting. They kept asking is this food? They were shocked because
the colors where so bright , they thought it wasn't real food. So they
don't have frosting here and so frosting is scary and also way way too
sweet, towards the end of the frosting of the cookies people just ate
the cookies the way they were because without frosting "it tasted
better" but the point was to frost them! After the party, we headed to
Kobe for our Christmas meeting with all the other missionaries. Which
was the funniest ever. I got to see one of my old companions and some
other missionaries I knew. We played sports in the morning ,ate lunch.
Tacos! We had tacos I didn't know how much I missed mexican-ish food
well Americanized Mexican food until i got to a place that doesn't
like Mexican food.

Okay funny thing, so because I am not blonde and blue eyed to Japanese
people I am not American. They see my companion and say oh she's
American and then they see me and say Mexican? Everyone thinks I'm
from Mexico. So the joke in the mission is that I'm from Mexico ,so
when we were having tacos a lot of people  kept saying "ah this
reminds of you of home huh?" So call me hermana Fullmer! Actually one
member is totally convinced I'm from Mexico. I haven't told her I'm
not yet ,so ya.. I think I'm not going to tell her.. It's too funny!

So yesterday, I went over to ask a member of we could set up an
appointment with her, her husband is less active and she doesn't
really like him. She asked me if spiritual stuff or love is more
important to share. I thought about it for a bit and I told her that
the gospel is love and that the commandment that Jesus gave us was to
love our brother. She said she knew ,but that it was hard because he
is kinda cold. I told her that when we do things through love that
people's hearts soften. I shared this scripture with her and she loved
it.

 1 John 2:10-11
10 He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none
occasion of stumbling in him.
11 But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in
darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath
blinded his eyes.

^ you cannot force people to change. They will change through love,
the only way people will change is through love. If we love people,
that light of Christ that burns within us will burn brighter and touch
more people's lives. So spread the love and reach out to those in
need!

Love all of you!
Love,
Fullmer shimai

Dec. 21, 2015

Dear all back home!

Wow this week flew by. So transfers came and went. I'll be in Toyooka for 1 more transfer I think. I'm excited ,but so nervous. It snowed one day this week and I'm not so much Afraid of the snow I'm more afraid of how fast it comes. One minute it was raining and then it changed to this beautiful snow blizzard. I can't saw I love blizzards but boy they are beautiful! 

This week we seemed to be teaching a lot of children. I've heard once that children can recognize that we are disciples of Christ so they know we are different. When we were out finding earlier this week, we were at this neighborhood and we saw a group of six kid and so I said hello to them and they all came to us and we talked to them. I asked them if they knew the true meaning of Christmas and this little 5 year old boy said "yes" so I asked him well what is it? And he got really quiet and nervous, luckily the 11 year old in the group said "Jesus's birth right!" Turns out she was taught by the missionaries a year ago well at least her family was. She wanted us to come to her house because she loved the elders that visited her. She told me that one elder was Brazilian and then she didn't remember the other one I have a hunch that it might be an elder I served with in my first transfer. So cool. 

I believe in miracles I believe that God provides miracles for his missionaries. Though often they seem small and we might not even see them at all they are there ,but I saw one this week. We were on our way to visit an investigator. And we went by this house and I saw someone in the window putting something up in the window,so I said hey let's stop there ,so we did. Turns out we found the house of one of the kids we taught before. 3 little girls answered the door ,and we talked to them. We taught them how to pray and we said a prayer with them. One little girl said wow I really feel good. It was so cool to find and teach them. I have so much faith for them although I don't know the future I know it's so good. In all things there is good and bad ,but if we have faith in God and a belief in our savior, we can overcome anything. I know that this is true. I know that this is Jesus Christ's true church on the earth. 

I found this story in a talk by president Thomas s monson "see others as they can become" 

During the 1940s and 1950s, an American prison warden, Clinton Duffy, was well known for his efforts to rehabilitate the men in his prison. Said one critic, “You should know that leopards don’t change their spots!” Replied Warden Duffy, “You should know I don’t work with leopards. I work with men, and men change every day.”

Through Jesus Christ we can change . Any bad habit, characteristic, mistake we can change and fix through the atonement. I know that anyone can change. And if you follow Jesus Christ you will change for the better. Life is not meant to be easy ,but we are not meant to suffer until we die. God wants us to be happy , and you know what we can be happy and rejoice because of one thing. We have a savior! He lives. He was born and he died for you and for me. He loves us with an  incredible incomprehensible love and he died for us. He died so we can be clean and move on from the past. It's amazing. So amazing. Please let Jesus Christ into your life and I promise you will never be the same. 

Love always,

Fullmer shimai 

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 

Dec. 6, 2015 - I'm afraid of Cars....

Gosh this week was an interesting one. 

Tuesday 

I was so so sick we didn't go out. I've been so sick lately, but this day I had a fever and it was just a rough day. You know when you feel like your head is heavy, that's what the feeling was. I was so nauseous. Not the funniest day that's for sure.The elders weren't here because they are the zone leaders so they were at meetings in Kobe ,so I texted a member to see if they could put a sign on the door that said we didn't have English class. The member asked if I needed to go to the hospital and I was just like no I'm good it's just a fever I'll be good if I get some sleep. So if you are sick at all they tell you to go to the hospital ,even if it's a little thing like a cold. 

Friday

Today was a hard day for me. Well in the beginning. So we had zone meeting. That's where go a meet with other missionaries and talk about what we can to be better missionaries and how we need to teach people. Well our meeting was in fukuchiyama so we had to get a bit earlier and we were kinda later leaving ,so we were biking fast. Bad idea. I got in car accident...and I don't have a car. I was going on the crosswalk and this car turned in front of me and I ran into the side of it and fell off my bike and fell on the right side. I'm kinda scraped up ,but other than that I'm fine, I just busted up my hand and my knee and my shoulder kinda aches. well really small accidents here are a super big deal. So some one else pulled over and he came and asked if we were okay. I was just worried because I felt like it was my fault for going fast. It was green so I had the right away ,so he wasn't supposed to turn in front of me ,but I didn't see him. Gosh I felt so bad for the accident. we stood with the guys for about an hour waiting for the police to show up. It was so so cold this morning, but me an my companion just stood there waiting. And then it started raining, and shortly after hailing.. -_- The policemen showed up and it took 6 of them to look at the scene and everything. It was so so cold this morning, I'm not much of a fan of rain in freezing cold . I was so soaked through,by the time we finished everything we did. I had made cookies yesterday for the other missionaries ,but I decided to give it to this man because he seemed so shocked and scared kinda for me ,so I thought it would be good to give him the cookies. He was way surprised and I decided to just give him a Book of Mormon because hey I know how it's blessed my life ,so why not try and help him out too. He was surprised ,but car accidents are kinda the worst. He was like I'll give you candy! And I was just like no no it's totally fine! ,but he did come to the church on Sunday and gave me a cake. Japanese culture... If you give someone something, they are going to give you something back. 

Sunday 

So despite the ups and downs this week. I was so happy on Sunday because this recent convert that was starting to go less active came to church! In the end of last transfer ,he stopped coming to church ,but we didn't stop teaching him. We kept going over to teach him and tell him that the ward misses him and so do we! This Sunday was testimony meeting and he got up and he said "I've felt so much love from the missionaries, they showed me so much love, even when I was busy or I didn't feel like coming to church" he called later that night and thanked us. He said "thank you so much for always coming even if it was cold or you guys were tired. I really came to church because of you. Thank you so much". I'm still recovering from the car accident and the sickness ,but seeing him come back to church was so worth it.  On top of that a less active family we work with came to church as well! It was just so good to see people coming to church. I shared my simple testimony today and a recent scripture I found:

Mosiah 14: 6 All we, like sheep, have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquities of us all.

^ I found this when I was reading my Japanese scriptures and the meaning was just so much more profound it just hit me so hard. I just sat there thinking about this scripture and about Jesus Christ. Why am I here? To help people come unto Christ. No matter what any of us goes through, the happy times, the bad times, he's experienced it too. He knows us better than we do. I told the Japanese elder we work with that Jesus is my best friend and he asked "why?" And all I said is "because he knows me". Because he really does. His love is like the best hug you ever got probably from your grandmother because grandmas give the best hugs :) when you get hugged by a loving grandmother you feel warmth,safety, and peace. That's the same with the pure love of Christ. My most sweetest times where when I felt his love stronger than ever. It's incredible to feel that love despite my faults and mistakes. And to know that no matter what he'll always love me.

Well I love you beautiful people! 

Have a fantastic week! 

Love,

Fullmer shimai 

My zone!