皆様こんばんは!!!
皆様元気？！ I hope so!
This week has been such a crazy week. :-) We saw some pretty amazing miracles. I'm WAY stoked to write so let's get to it! :-D
Tuesday:
This last Tuesday
we went on kokans (Exchanges) with the Sisters in Matsudo. Sister
Sasaki went to Matsudo and I stayed here in Kichijoji with a new sister
missionary. From my end, kokans were really hard. This new sister is
going through a lot of the same experiences I was going through in my
first transfer. Her companion is a Nihonjin on transfer 4 exactly like
Kuwahara-shimai was for me. Apparently this new sister has been having
a lot of struggles with her companion and told me she was "counting
down the days to exchanges." Basically I spent the whole day trying to
give her advice and just letting her have someone to talk to. I don't
know how much I helped her (if at all), but it made me realize (I should
start off this sentance by saying, I did NOT learn this from the new
missionary... I learned it by sharing with her a ton of the experiences
that I had as a bean.) just how terrible of a bean I was for
Kuwahara-shimai! This new missionary is trying SO hard to have a good
relationship with her companion... I just gave up. :P I was so
impressed with this sister who, even though it was hard, was doing her
best and trying to stay positive. I told her "Don't even think about
going home because I won't let you!" Her response? "Why would I even
consider going home?! We're here to grow right? Of course it sucks,
but it'll get better." Erai! (Ehhhh... Noble? Here. Google search it. ;D
偉い)
Thursday:
The day of
miracles! Sister Sasaki and I had a meeting in Nakano where we got some
trainings from President Budge, Sister Budge, the AP's, and the Zone
Leaders. Normally paying attention during all of the talks and
trainings and lectures is REALLY hard, but something about it this time
made it much easier to pay attention to... That was having a
Nihonjin companion who doesn't speak much English. After the first
training had ended I glanced at my companion who looked... distressed.
:P I realized she probably wasn't understanding and asked "Do you want
me to translate?" I said it before I really thought about it, but she
nodded greatfully so... I translated for her! Although I couldn't
translate everything, I surprised myself by being able to get the basic
ghist of all of the trainings! The spirit was super strong and I was
AMAZED at some of the things I realized I knew how to say. I'm sure
most of it was a terrible translation, but Sasaki shimai said afterword
that because of my translation she was able to understand the English.
She said between the two she understood, so although she didn't always
understand what I was saying, because of that she could piece together the English. :-) Yatta, ne! :-D
Well, from the meeting both Sister Sasaki and I were WAY
fired up to get back to work. And we got right to it too. As soon as
the meeting was over we came back to Kichijoji as fast as we could to
have 3 shokai lessons! (Shokai: Introduction... so for Eikaiwa they're
all required to have a 30 minute shokai lesson about the chruch.
Basically just what we do as missionaries and such. :-D) We tried our
best to use the things we learned from the meeting, and of the 3 shokais
we had, 2 of them became investigators. :-) Their names are Echo and
Rina and they both are really strong PI's. I'm super excited to work
with them. Echo even came to church yesterday! YAY!
Saturday:
I wrote last week
about the miracle with Yuki(Hitomi... I don't remember which name I used
to refer to her. xD) This last Saturday we were able to meet with her.
We were able to find a member to come with us to her lesson. When we
first walked in, the very first question she asked was "So, in order to
be baptized I'm not allowed to drink Green Tea or Black Tea, right? Why
is that?" Talk about intimidating. Sister Sasaki and I explained the
reason behind it and both shared experiences and bore testimony on the
importance of living the Word of Wisdom. The member we brought with us
also was able to bear a really strong testimony on how the Word of
Wisdom has helped her in her life. After sharing all of that with Yuki
she said "Oh. Well, that makes sense. Okay, I'll stop." Just like that.
:-) From there we went on to talk about baptism and what exactly it is
and such. At the end she said "I want to do my best to be baptized.
Please help me." We were able to set a baptismal date with her and
we're going to be meeting her 2 times every week from here on out. :-D
WAY psyched, but WAY nervous. She speaks really hard Japanese that
even Sasaki shimai doesn't understand sometimes. I'm really relying on
the Gift of Tongues and doing my best to stay worthy of it. :-)
And that was pretty much my week! There
were so many miracles and things are going SO well right now. This week
Sister Sasaki and I worked REALLY hard though so both of us are pretty
疲れた (Yes, I left that one in kanji so you can look it up on google
translate. :P English is hard. xD). This week we're going to do our
best to see even more miracles! We have a goal as a mission to have 20
lessons every week per companionship. This last week we had 8, so it's
going to take a miracle to get that up to the Standards of Excellence,
but I know it's possible. Miracles happen out here every day
and it's only a matter of time, patience, and faith until we see those
numbers happening here in Kichijoji.
Thank you all for your prayers for me and my investigators! Please continue to pray for them (and for me of course! :P) and know just how much your prayers truely are being felt. I can't do this without them. I honestly can't. Knowing that I have you all back at home supporting me really does help strengthen me. Every time I find a letter in the black void of a mailbox I smile a little bigger and find I can make it through one more day of dendo. :-) I love you all and I'm SO greatful to each one of you.
Have a great week you guys!
SOTW: Luke 1:37 - 信仰が持っていれば何でもできます！
おやすみなさい！
愛している！
Love,
Christine
Christine and Sis. Sasaki
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