Transfer 4 Week 3: January 13, 2013

皆様おはいよございます！

This week was... definitely a week.  x)  Actually I feel like it was just barely P-day... It's kind of weirding me out how fast yet freakishly slow this week went. xD

Wednesday:

Nothing super exciting happened on Tuesday this week. :P  On Wednesday though, we spent the day with a girl in the ward named Ribekah.  She's been preparing to go on a mission since the age change!  She's one of my best friends out here. She's awesome. x)  On Wednesday Ribekah invited a few of her friends to come out to Urayasu (one of them all the way from Nagoya!) to read Preach My Gospel together and do some pretend lessons.  She invited us to come and give them some advice and stuff.  What ended up happening though was that after they gave us their mini-lessons they'd prepared, we invited them to go dendo with us!  We took them to the eki closeby and chirashi kubari'd. (In English: We went prostelyting at the train station and handed out english class flyers. :P)  It was a lot of fun!  :-)  They are all going to be FANTASTIC missionaries.  Much better than me.  Everyone says that's a good thing though because that means that the work is definitely progressing.  I completely agree. :-)

Thursday:

Merry Christmas!!!! xD  So... when I woke up on Thursday I looked in the mailbox and discovered a slip of paper saying that someone had tried to deliver a package, but we weren't home..... YAAAY!  Well, needless to say... I couldn't focus after that... at all... on anything... So Sister Lundy and I decided we'd walk about 2 miles (OH! Sister Lundy's bike is broken... I forgot to mention that... It kind of died a few weeks ago. She can still ride it if absolutely necessary, but it's pretty much like riding with no handlebars so we've been avoiding the bikes...) down to the post office to get the package! x)  It turned out to be my Christmas Package from my family so Thursday turned into CHRISTMAS!!  x)  YAY!

The other exciting thing of Thursday happened right before we left to get the package... The doorbell rang and there were these 2 ladies standing there.  They were speaking SUPER polite Japanese which is practically a different language (Ha, get it?).  I didn't understand a word of what they were saying, but luckily Sister Lundy kind of did. x)  Eventually they handed us a little book that had English written in it.  Get this... They were Jehovas Witnesses. x) They asked us what we were doing here and you should have seen the look on their faces when we told them we were LDS Missionaries. ;)  They said "Well, we wanted to try to schedule another a point to meet with you and talk about this, but that looks impossible doesn't it." We smiled and said "Yeah, probably."  and then we gave them a HUGE bag of candy and sent them on their way. xD Everyone keeps saying "What!? You didn't baptize them?!"  To which I respond, we considered throwing a bucket of water at them, but didn't think it would have the same effect.  ;) Just kidding. :-)

Sunday!!:

Friday and Saturday we went on Exchanges with the Kofu sisters... It was an almost 2 hour train ride just to meet halfway and split with them. So most of Friday and Saturday was just riding the trains. x)

Sunday was super exciting though!  It actually started Saturday night... when Sister Lundy and I remembered that we'd been asked to speak in Sacrament Meeting... and we hadn't even started thinking about our talks... Fail. ;)

Sunday morning we spent in a frenzy writing talks.  Then at our meeting with the Dendo Shunin the Elders told us that they had a referral for us. Her name is Mercy.  She's from the Phillipines.  A year ago she met one of the Elders (who actually taught Tamae) and got a chirashi from him. She said after that she went back to the Phillipines and just recently came back. She said "I'm Catholic and want to go to mass! When do you have church?" 

Sure enough, Sunday morning she showed up and came to church!   The talks went fairly well.... Everyone said they could understand me and said my Japanese has really improved!  I believed them until someone else said that our talks were proof that it doesn't matter what you say as long as you help others to feel the spirit. ;) Oh well.  I tried.

After Sacrament Meeting we were able to talk a bit with Mercy. She's pretty set in her Catholism, but she said that we worship the same God and that's all that matters. However, she said that she was SO excited to meet girl missionaries!  She wasn't sure there were any! :-)  This week she said she'd be bringing her son with her to Eikaiwa so hopefully we'll get to meet with her again on Wednesday!

When church ended we decided to go visit one of our potention investigators named Chizuko.  Since it's Sunday we weren't sure she'd actually be home, but miracle of miracles, she was and we were able to talk to her again!  It's been a long time since we've actually been able to meet with her... While we were leaving her house we got a call from a member.

The member told us that someone had come to the church and wanted us to give her a tour of the church!  We were about 30 minutes away from the church, but we ended up getting back to the church in roughly 15-20 minutes.  :P We went fast.  The woman's name was Judy and she is also from the Phillipines.  She said she's been wanting to come to a church for a while and decided to go searching for one!  She spent all day Sundy riding her bike around Urayasu searching for a random church to go to. She found ours and saw there were people inside (hanging around talking. :P).

We were able to give her a short lesson and a copy of the Book of Mormon which she promised to read. :-)

Overall, it was a fantastic week.  We saw quite a few miracles and definitely had a lot of memorable experiences.  :-D  I love being here!  I still can't believe I'm in Japan!!  I love it so much!  I hope that anyone who is reading these emails and considering serving a mission, DOES IT! It seriously changes your life.  I'm SO glad I chose to do this.  It's worth every hard day.

I love you guys!  Have a fantastic week!

-

Christine

Transfer 4- Week 2: January 06, 2013

皆様おはいおございます！

This week was rather eventful... I'm just going to go through day by day!  There wasn't a single day this week that something big didn't happen.  First thing you all have to know though is that I've been really sick this week. It's just a cold, but it zapped all my energy and made this week really hard on me.  I'm just greatful for my amazingly awesome companion. :-)

 

Tuesday:

Tuesday was techincally P-day... but we only got a couple of hours of P-day time in.  xD  We were invited by a ward member to have Lunch with them at their house!  When we got there we discovered that they wanted to introduce all of us American missionaries to the way that the Japanese celebrate New Years!  Basically they have a REALLY big meal together, but they eat certain foods for New Years that they don't eat at any other time in the year... Probably for good reason. ;) One of the things they serve is Mochi! I really like mochi!  But they way they serve it for New Years is they mix it with different kinds of Miso soup.  It was really interesting. They also have these bento (You'll have to look up pictures of Bento's on google or something. xP) boxes with stuff to eat on New Years that will bring you good luck for the year!  Most people go to their parents houses and celebrate with their families and play.  Here's the best part of Japanese New Years... They all take a WEEK off work!  :-)  School finally started again today (1/7/2013).  They've been out of school since right after Christmas.  Ta-dam!  That's New Years in Japan.

 

Wednesday:

We spent the day with one of our investigators who I don't think I've written about in an email before... Her name is Kaori and she is FANTASTIC!  I love her so much!  She invited us to come over to her house to meet her family since they'd all be over for New Years!  Before we went, Sister Lundy and I set a goal to give Kaori a copy of The Family: A Proclamation to the World".  When we got there we were able to meet Kaori's 3 kids (ages 14, 10, and 8), her husband, her little sister, and her two nieces (ages 7 and 5).  It was so fun!  The littlest ones and I played most of the time. xD  At the end when we were about to leave, Sister Lundy turned to me and said "We can't just give a proclamation to Kaori and not give one to her sister now..."  I said  "You're right... What do we do?"  It took us all of last week to find just one proclamation and that was totally by chance that we discovered it.  Then Sister Lundy said "Wait a second..." and went over to her backpack.  Next thing I knew, she pulled out two copies of the proclamation and gave one to Yoshimi and one to Kaori.  :-)  Both of them were so excited to get it!

I asked Sister Lundy where the other one came from later and she said that she'd accidently bought 2 of them while she was in the MTC.  When we left the apartment she didn't remember that. She just grabbed the proclamation.  Then she remembered having two in the MTC.  When she went to look in her backpack, sure enough there were two!  Bread and fish anyone? ;) This really was a testimony builder for me.  Heavenly Father knew that we would be meeting Kaori and her sister.  He has been preparing us for them and them for us!  He really does know everything from beginning to end.  There is no other possible way to explain how we had two right when we needed them.  :-)

 

Thursday:

This is when the cold started to really hit.  I decided to ask the Elders serving here in Urayasu to give me a blessing.  It also turned out that Elder Petersen (he was my first Zone Leader and came to Urayasu at the same time as me.  He finished up his mission this last transfer) came to visit Urayasu!  I asked him to join too.  So Thursday night I got a blessing to help me recover quickly from this illness.  :-) It helped me a lot.  I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it through Friday, but I know that the blessing was the only reason I was able to.

 

Friday:

Was miserable... We went to a Zone Meeting first thing that morning and I felt SO sick.  I wanted nothing more than to curl up on the floor and just lay there.  After Zone Meeting the Dendo Shunin (Ward Mission Leader) wanted to take all of us out for sushi!  After Zone Meeting I said a little prayer and asked for the energy to make it through lunch with him.  Heavenly Father definitely answered my prayer.  In the Sushi store I actually met a family and started talking with them.  It turned out they lived really closeby and they had an interest in Eikaiwa!  I was able to give them a chirashi (flyer) for Eikaiwa and they really seemed like they wanted to come!  Yay!!

After that we went back to the apartment and Sister Lundy forced me to go lay down for 3 hours.

Then it was time for us to go meet with Rosalin who I wrote about last time...

Her birthday party turned out to be outside our area so we had to get permission to go over there. It was in this REALLY fancy hotel.  Like seriously.  It was like something out of a movie... Sister Lundy and I felt SO lucky that as missionaries we're always dressed up... But even with what we were wearing we felt extremely out of place... Then we met everyone else that Roslalin invited to her party.  4 of them were missionaries from other churches.  After a little while of being there, they started ignoring us and wouldn't talk to us. Then Rosalin came. She was wearing this incrediably fancy gown that was rather immodest...  She went to entertain all of her guests and we ended up keeping her two kids (5 and 3) entertained.  My life is so hard.  ;)  Then towards the end, they pulled out the champane.  The spirit was just... gone.  However, we were able to build a good relationship with her kids and she really wants us to come over again!  So although it was really rough on both Sister Lundy and I we were able to get a lot of good things out of it.

 

Saturday:

We were able to meet with another Less Active member named Maria.  We had a really nice lesson with her and the spirit was there really strong.  Other than that we took the day really slowly.

 

Sunday:

Maria came to church!!!!!!!!!  She bore her testimony and cried a lot saying that she wants to come to church more often and she's so greatful to everyone who has been helping her the last year through all her trials.  Then she said "The sisters shared a scripture with me yesterday that really helped me." She shared that scripture and bore her testimony on it.  It was SO good. :-)

 

Although most of our stats for the last month have been nothing but zeros, I feel like we're still getting a lot of work done.  I just have to keep reminding myself that although the work I'm doing isn't being recorded here on Earth, it's definitely being recorded in Heaven and in the end that's all that matters. :-)

 

 

And that was my week!  Thank you guys all for your prayers and everything!  I love hearing from you so please keep writing me!  Also, any members of the ward that may be reading this: THANK YOU!  The letters I got for Christmas from all the primary kids really brightened my day. You all are amazing and I'm SO blessed to come from such an amazing ward. :-)

Write you all again next week!  Have a great week!  :-D

-

Christine

Transfer 4-Week 1: December 31, 2012

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE!!!

あけましておめでとうございます！！！

 

I have a whole bunch of New Years cards from out here I want to send to a bunch of you... but I haven't had a chance to write them yet. xD  HOWEVER.  They exist and they will be sent to you all! :P  ..even if it is kind of bad luck to get one of those after New Years.... Look forward to it! :-D

So not a ton happened this week...  But there were a couple of things that happened I can share. :-)

 

First though...

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE BESTEST LITTLE BROTHER EVER!!!! :-D I LOOOOVE YOU!!!!!! (And Sister Lundy and I may or may not have recorded something for you on the Voice Recorder. >:D)

 

Transfers:

This is probably the biggest one this week. :P Transfer calls came last Friday (the 28th).  At the time, Sister Lundy and I were on exchanges so I was in an area called Kichijoji.  How transfers work is that if your transfering area's you'll receive a call from the Honbu(...Uhmm... I don't know the English word for that. xD Where the Assistants to the Mission President work! :D).  If you're not transferring you'll get a call from your Zone Leaders.  Well, neither I nor Sister Facer (the girl who I was on Exchanges with) wanted to transfer so we were praying that it would be Zone Leaders that would call us... Then another set of sisters who are in the same Zone as Sister Facer got their call from the Zone Leaders. The Zone Leaders told them that they were the only companionship in the whole Zone who would be staying together in the same area.

Here's why that affected me.

There's so few sisters right now that if any of them change there's a HUGE change to everything... So Kichijoji sisters were definitely changing...  Sure enough, the phone rang and we got a call from Honbu.  They told Sister Facer that she'd be transferring to the middle of nowhere (Also known as Kiriyu) and she started crying... Then she handed the phone to me and said "They want to talk to you." GAH! My heart was pounding out of my chest.

"Sister Grosland. We're here to give you your transfer call.  We want to thank you for all of your hard work the last 6 weeks in Urayasu.  You and Sister Lundy worked really well together and saw a lot of miracles and we're very proud of your work out there.  Are you ready for your transfer call? (Me: YESS!  JUST GIVE IT TO ME ALREADY! :P) Well, Sister Grosland.  We believe that it is the Lords will for you to serve... in Urayasu with Sister Lundy for 6 more weeks."

 

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!

 

Kimura Linda:

Kimura Linda is a Less Active member that we've been working with for as long as I've been in Japan.  Missionaries have been trying to reactivate her for much longer than that though.  I know that it goes back at least 2 "generations" of missionaries.  Kimura Linda got into this really large argument with another member in the ward. -_- Because of their argument both Kimura and the member she fought with went inactive because they didn't want to see each other.  Since then missionaries have tried to get them back to church.  The other member has come quite a few times since then, and honestly has a desire to come back! She just has a really busy work schedule that makes it difficult for her.  Kimura Linda on the other hand only didn't come because she was afraid she'd meet this other member.

Well, during these 18 weeks of being in Urayasu, Kimura Linda really started to like me.  She said she felt like I really listened to her. (Mostly it was just that I was to polite to interrupt her 1.5 hours of ranting about the other member. xD)  She also liked the way that I treated her son Masato (who is Autistic).  So we invited her to church just like we do every time we visit her, but this time she said "I'll try".  :-)

Sure enough, last Sunday she came to church with Masato!! She had a really good experience and said she was looking forward to coming again!  :-D YAAAY!  It seriously was a miracle.

 

Rosalin:

Rosalin is another Less Active member.  Missionaries and Ward Members alike have been trying to get hold of her and NOBODY has been able to.  She works at a konbini which makes her work schedule unpredictable and busy.  She has two little girls who spend more time at her mother-in-law's house than with her because she has to work so hard.  She LOVES missionaries and the church, but she just has no time.  She's seriously working herself to the bone... Well, on Sunday night while we were thinking of people to call and try to make appointments with I said "Why don't we call Rosalin? She probably won't answer, but we can try.  If by some super amazing miracle she does answer, try to set up an appointment for Friday sometime."  So Sister Lundy starts calling.  Next thing I know she's saying "AH! Moshimoshi! Rosaline shimai desu ka?! Eeeehhhh!  Sugoi!!" I sat straight up and said out loud "SHE ANSWERED?!" So Sister Lundy sits there and talks to her for a second... Then she gets this look of just "No way" and says "Yeah!  Friday should be perfect! What time?!"  It turns out we called Rosalin during her 2 hours she would be home that day and this Friday is her birthday!  Her whole family will be there and she invited us to come too! :-D  YEES!!   It was amazing. Seriously.  I can't even tell you how much of a miracle it was. :-) SO cool.

 

New Years:

Happy New Years Everyone!!!  :-D So I'm sure you're all dying to know what 2013 is like... You'll find out in a couple of hours! ;)

New Years is THE biggest holiday out here in Japan. It's Japan's Christmas.  People have been asking us about what our plans for shogatsu (New Years) were for about a month now!  It's been crazy!

So what did I do for New Years?

Went to bed at 10:30 and laid there talking with Sister Lundy until midnight (partly on purpose, but mostly on accident. xD) and then we sat up and yelled "HAPPY NEW YEARS!!"  All of the sudden there were these loud BANG's from outside. We looked outside and DISNEYLAND EXPLODED!!!!  With fireworks... ;)   Seriously it was the most amazing Firework show I've ever seen.  I wanted to get a video of it, but I couldn't get to my camera fast enough.  It was SO cool!  Sister Lundy and I stood there watching it going "Oooo!  Ahhhh!" for like 15 minutes. It was SO cool.

Then we went to sleep! xD

Today is P-day obviously, and we also have a Lunch appointment at a members house! YES!  So that is how I plan on celebrating my shogatsu! Writing all of you, eating, taking a bath, and then SLEEPING. ;)

 

I love you guys so much!  Thank you all for everything!  All of your prayers seriously mean everything to me! I can't tell you how many times I've been sure I couldn't do something and then been able to do it.  I know that it has to do with all the prayers for me from home!  I love you all!  I can't wait to talk to you again soon! You're amazing!

 

PS: Emrix, Miranda, Peach, Josh, Deanne, and Mason! All of your letters are sitting on my desk right now... a reply is coming I promise! :P You'll probably get a new years card first though. :-)

 

LOVE YOU!

-

Christine

グラスランド姉妹

Transfer 3-Week 5: December 24, 2012

皆さん！メリークリスマス！！！！

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

I hope you all are having a fantastically amazing Christmas! I know I have!

As with all other holidays out in Japan, Christmas is pretty boring... No body really celebrates it. Really little kids do, but that's seriously about it. Kind of sad. :/ Everyone is getting ready for shogatsu! (New Years!) That's the super huge holiday out here. They've been prepping for it all month. :P I'm kind of excited to see what happens!

This week was amazing. We saw so many miracles!

Kaori:

Kaori is an Eikaiwa student we've got a really strong friendship with. Recently she's taken an interest in the gospel. Mostly out of curiosity than anything, but that's okay. We've had a couple of lessons with her, but she's told us that she's not interested in entering a church. She just wants to learn about it. But she's agreed to keep meeting with us and hearing about it! :-D

This week we had a lesson with her where we watched the Restoration Video. Honestly, Sister Lundy and I hadn't prepped much of a lesson for that...  I can only say that the Spirit guided that lesson. Neither Sister Lundy or I had to question what we would talk about. We just knew what the other one was going to say and we were ready to keep the lesson going. Everything went amazingly perfectly. :-) She even said her first prayer by herself and she did SO good. It was amazing. :-) I loved it!

Tamae's Baptism:

The day of Tamae's baptism was ridiculously stressful. xD We wanted everything to be perfect for her baptism. We stressed and planned and practiced. The service ended up going really really smoothly. All of the missionaries who came ended up singing this BEAUTIFUL song. I don't have a video of the final performance sadly, but I attached to this email a video of Sister Lundy and I practicing on our own... It's not the greatest, sorry... but hey!

Yamamoto:

Oh dear. I think I talked about this last week, right? Yamamoto came to Eikaiwa, freaked out and left... Well, we had an amazing miracle this week with him. After Tamae's baptism we headed over to Kaori's house with a birthday cake for her! It was so fun! We got to meet her family and it was awesome! After, we were walking back to the eki to go back to the apartment when I saw a man that I recognized and immediately a name came to mind. "Yamamoto-san!" Amazingly, when he saw us he actually stopped and started talking to us! Short version, we were able to start over with him! He said he still wanted to meet and talk about the church. We said "When?!" He said (Keep in mind it's currently 7:15pm) "8:00?" So for the next 45 mintues we stressed beyond all reason about what to teach, getting the Elders there, and trying to find another woman to joint with us so that we actually could meet with him. Again, Heavenly Father seriously helped us out... The Elders and one of the members just dropped everything they were doing and came to the church as fast as they could so we could have a lesson. :-) The lesson went fairly well. I mean... He mostly just talked at us, but that's okay. He agreed to meet again! Heavenly Father seriously put us exactly where we needed to be to meet him. It was incredible.

I love you all! I hope you have an incredible Christmas! I know Heavenly Father is aware of every one of you and loves each of you! Don't ever forget it! :-) Thank you all for your prayers! Keep praying for us! We love you!

-

Christine

Transfer 3-Week 4: December 17, 2012

皆様おはいようございます！

今日はちょっと。。。仏じゃないけれでも楽しいと思う。

LOL!  Kay, I totally just started writing that without completely thinking about it. Sorry.  I've been writing too many emails in Japanese lately!   Also, last night we had exchanges and I was with Oseki姉妹 who is a Nihonjin.  I'm still switching out of my Japanese brain into English.  Forgive any random grammer/spelling mistakes today... :-)

 

So this week was rather rough... Everyone is right. Every single part of your mission is hard. Everything. The longer you're out in the field the more those difficulties change. They don't necessarily get harder or easier, they just change.  My first two transfers were really hard because of the whole not understanding what was going on and just feeling like I couldn't do anything right... This transfer has been hard because now that I kind of have a hang of what missionary life is like, it hurts more when we get rejected. :/  I've been searching through my journal for something super positive and amazing to share this week, but the fact is all of the big things that happened this week weren't really positive things so let me start off by clarifying: I'm totally fine.  I'm not letting this get to me. :-) 

 

Yamamoto:

Last week I wrote about the revelation that I got from D&C and I think I briefly mentioned that I was able to talk to 9 people about the gospel... I didn't tell you guys about who I talked to though! Right before the huge earthquake last week, we were handing out Eikaiwa flyers an eki.  There was this man there who was kind of looking at me funny... that's normal.  Well, I gave him a flyer and he sorta wandered off a little and read the flyer.  A couple minutes later he walked up to me and started asking a bunch of questions about Eikaiwa, and then he started asking questions about the church.  I got his contact information and we arranged to meet at the Urayasu eki before church so we could go together the next Sunday! Woo! :-)

However, before that Sunday came Wednesday, Eikaiwa.  Since this man (named Yamamoto) had an interest in Eikaiwa as well, I decided to call him and invite him to Eikaiwa.  He agreed and said he'd come!  Not just that, but HE CAME!  He was afraid to enter the chruch though.  He called us from outside the church and said "I can't come in, but I'm here."  We went outside and we were like "It's okay!  It's safe!  Come in!"  So we went in together.  This is when things kind of took a turn for the worst.

It turns out he had misunderstood why we'd invited him to come.  He thought that we were going to be having a lesson with him about the church, not Eikaiwa.  We told him that we could have a lesson after, and he said he liked that idea. So he went to the beginning english class... In the middle, he got up and stormed out of the church saying he couldn't believe it.  We called him after Eikaiwa to find out what happened... He basically chewed me out saying he couldn't believe I tricked him into coming to Eikaiwa and how I lied to him and he could never trust the missionaries, etc. etc. etc.  I apologized over and over again, but we haven't been able to get hold of him since then.  It was rough... Luckily, I have wonderful sweet amazing Lundy shimai who is beautifully amazing!!!! She really helped me not to take it too personally. :-)

 

Helen:

So, Helen is supposed to be baptized this coming Sunday... We haven't been able to contact her since last Wednesday. :/ She's been feeling really sick and she's really struggling with the Word of Wisdom... So it's looking like she's not going to be baptized this week after all... The most depressing part of that is that in 2 weeks, I'll likely be transferring out of Urayasu and I won't be able to teach her anymore... I'm praying that Heavenly Father keeps me here in Urayasu for just one more transfer.  Even if she's not baptized during that transfer, I want to find out what is going on with her. I don't want to leave! :(

 

Tamae:

Sooooo everything else that happened this week was just depressing so I'm going to end this email with the BEST thing that happened this week. Ready for the full story on Tamae!?

Tamae has been in Illya kyodai's fitness class for the last 10 years.  They've known each other for a REALLY long time.  :-)  Well, Illya was baptized. He told Tamae that he'd been baptized into this church and she was like "What?! What church is that!?"  So she went to find out.  She started meeting with the missionaries in April and decided she really liked what we were teaching.  She eventually prayed about it and felt that it was true. She wanted to be baptized, but she is the kind of person that refuses to make a promise if she's not COMPLETLEY sure that she's going to keep her promise.  So she refused to set a baptism date... Until October with Kuwahara shimai and I.  Her baptismal date is this Sunday.  Two days ago she had her interview with the district leader to make sure she was worthy to be baptized.  She passed!  :-D

So, December 23rd, (Joseph Smith's birthday) Tamae is going to be baptized by Illya kyodai! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!

 

 

And that was my week!  Wooo!  I'm so glad I'm out here. As hard as this week was, I know that it's important and there's nowhere else in the world I'd rather be.  I love you guys!  Enjoy your snow! >:)

-

Christine

Transfer 3-Week 3: December 9, 2012

Hello everyone!  :-)   How is everyone doing this lovely day?  Oh, wait.. that's right.. it's freezing it Utah. >:)

Well let's get started with this weeks email shall we?

 

Job Offers:

So, this week was rather uneventful, but I did have a few good stories for you guys to share!  This one just made me laugh. Really hard.  On Tuesday this last week Lundy shimai and I went to visit a Less Active in the ward. We were worried we wouldn't be able to find her house so we left really early to make sure we made it to our appointment on time... Well, we were definitely on time.  We were about an hour early actually.  xD  So we decided to spend that hour streeting around her house.  :-)

While we were streeting we received a phone call from a man who we found while we were Denwa Dendoing (Uhmm... Looking through the List of previous investigators from like 10 years ago and calling them to see if they have an interest... Yeah. :D)  Lundy shimai was talking with him, so while she was talking I was just sort of standing around listening to the conversation.  Off in the distance I noticed a man who was sort of watching us.  It's not extremely uncommon... Lundy shimai has REALLY beautiful long blonde hair that attracts a lot of stares. :P 

While Lundy shimai was talking, the man walked up to me and started talking.  He asked me if I spoke English and Japanese.  I told him I spoke English and was learning Japanese. Just like I tell everyone. :P  He then proceeded to tell me (from what I understood) about how he was going to open an Eikaiwa (English Class) in Europe and was looking for people to be teachers there who were able to speak Japanese AND English.  He asked if we'd be interested. I politely explained that right now we can't accept jobs because we're working full time for God for the next year and a half.  He then asked "Well, how about after that?"  In effect I said "We'll see".  So we exchanged business cards and he went on his way.

After that, Lundy shimai hung up the phone and started laughing.  I asked her what she was laughing at.  She explained that the man on the phone had just offered us a job in China! xD  2 Job offers in the space of 5 minutes. We laughed pretty hard... but it didn't end there. xD

After we visited the Less Active's house, we stared walking back to the train station to come back to Urayasu.  On the way, a man on a scooter pulled over and started talking to us.  First reaction: What the heck?! That's what WE'RE supposed to do!  x)  Translating what he said from Japanese to English kind of sounds weird... so sorry.  :P  He basically said "Because you both were so beautiful I had to stop and talk to you!  I run a bar and I'm looking for foreigners to come and work for me! Are you interested?" LOL!! Job offer number 3. xD  Oh my gosh we cracked up.  We invited him to come to Eikaiwa though and he seemed sincerely interested!  We'll see if he comes this week or not. :-)

There ya go.  If I ever were to move back here to Japan after my mission, I'd be set jobwise. ;)

 

Earthquake:

So, I'm not sure how many of you guys heard about the 7.3 magnitude Earthquake or not here in Japan... but I was right by the epicenter.  That day, Lundy shimai and I got a strong prompting that we needed to go Chirashi Kubari (Hand out Flyers) in a station called Minami Gyotoku.  That's where we were when the Earthquake hit.  At first, I didn't actually notice anything.  This group of High School girls who were by me started screaming and bent over covering their heads, and that's when I started to feel it.  I looked over to Lundy shimai who was over by the bus stop and... she was just out there doing her thing!  xD She had no idea there was an Earthquake, she was just still walking around to random people offering them flyers!  LOL! She said after that she wondered why everyone was looking at her like she was crazy.  x)  Meanwhile, right next to her, the things by bus stops to cover you from rain and such were shaking up and down like they were going to break at any second...... and my companion is handing out flyers. ;)  Oh my gosh I couldn't help but laugh.  I loved it.  If you guys want more details on the Earthquake write me and I'll give you more! :-)

 

D&C 88

This one was probably the biggest experience of this week. I wrote about it to my mission President so I'm just gonna copy and paste. :-)

This week was actually kind of hard on me. Not nearly the hardest I've experienced out here but it was fairly hard. This week I received an AMAZING revelation. It seriously changed my entire outlook on missionary work and what I'm doing here in Japan. I was reading in D&C 88. In verses 51-60 the Lord tells the parable of servants in several fields and the Master promises to visit each in their own hour. While I was reading this it hit me that this parable was written for US. It wasn't a parable told over 2,000 years ago, this parable was told to a prophet 200 years ago! This is for US! Keeping that in mind I continue to read.

I reached verse 73 which says "Behold, I will hasten my work in its time." I received a letter recently from a friend of mine who was in the MTC at the time of the announcement concerning the age change in missionary work. He said that week Elder Bednar came and spoke at the MTC and said "The reason for the announcement is that the Lord is hastening the work." AH! So, NOW is the time that the Lord is hastening the work. That revelation given to Joseph Smith 200 years ago is NOW being fulfilled. (And I'm here to participate in it!!) After that verse the Lord goes on to specifically talk to those who are called to spread the gospel during the time the work is hastened. He's specifically talking to us! Verses 80-90 talk about how we need to do everything we can to warn those around us because it's not long before Christ comes and they will stand before God and Christ to be judged. They're running out of time and right now we're the only people in the entire world who can bring them eternal happiness! In Tokyo, there are 180 of us trying to save the souls of 4 million people! When that thought hit me, I couldn't help but feel extremely overwhelmed. I kept thinking "How is it even slightly possible we can rescue them all!?" On that note, I had to end my personal study and Lundy shimai and I started Companion Study. During companion study, Lundy shimai shared a scripture she'd read during her study. 2 Kings 6:16 "Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them." We're not alone in this. Besdies. We've got GOD on our side! "With God nothing is impossible." 180 to rescue 4 million? Bring it on.

This seriously changed my entire perspective on why I'm here. With all the Earthquakes and everything lately I keep being reminded that Christ is coming. Christ will be here soon and soon it will be too late for these people! These people are my brothers and sisters and if I don't do my best to help them... Well, I just have to be my best! Which is why this week was so hard on me... I think because I got that revelation, I've started to be TOO hard on myself. Everytime I make any sort of little mistake I get really mad at myself... but I keep trying to remind myself, I can't be a perfect missionary all at once. Little by little I'll get better and better.

Anyways! That was the biggest thing of this week. Because of this though, I feel like I HAVE improved a lot as a missionary! I've always struggled with talking to people... It's like pulling teeth to talk to someone I've never met... Especially in Japanese... but the day I had this revelation, I was able to talk to 9 different people about the gospel and even give out a Book of Mormon! :-) I'm improving! Just slowly. :P

And that was my week!  I love you guys and I'm so grateful for all of your prayers.  You're amazing and I love each and every one of you!  Have a fantastic week!
-
Christine

Transfer 3-Week 2: December 2, 2012

皆さん！

尾はいよございます！

It feels like it's been forever since I wrote last!  This week was... Awesome.  xD  Again, Mom, you're going to hate this.  :P  It was fun.  I'm gonna get the depressing stuff out of the way first though. :-)

 

Saito Yoko:

Yoko is the lady that just walked into the church during my first transfer who you could tell in a split second was not a member.  I haven't really said much about her lately and here's why.  A few weeks ago we got an angry email from her saying that we had really offended her.  I could go into details, but I'll just get annoyed if I do. :P  So suffice it to say she was really offended.  We sent her an apology email and waited to hear back from her. We didn't hear anything... but we didn't want to give up on her.  So we kept emailing her scriptures and trying to meet with her.  She just kept giving us the silent treatment.

Finally, 2 days ago (Saturday) we got another email from her... Again, I'm not going to go into much detail, but she basically ranted about how we betrayed her and how she can never forgive us and how she'll never trust Americans or Mormons again.  The last things he wrote was "You don't have to reply to this email.  In fact, please don't."  I was SO upset.  Not necessarily because of what was said as much as the fact that we had lost her.  I love her!  I didn't want to lose her!  Lundy shimai must've sensed that I was really upset about it because she just said "It's okay.  It happens."   I knelt down and apologized over and over to Heavenly Father for losing one of his precious daughters.  While I was praying I had this thought go through my mind.  "It's okay my daughter.  Even Alma and Amulek couldn't save everyone.  You did your best and I'm proud of you."  I also had a few scriptures come to mind that I felt impressed to read.  Although I'm still upset about losing her, I know that I did do my best.  There was nothing else I could do.

 

There. Depressing stuff out of the way.  Let's get to the part that Mom's gonna hate. ;)

 

November 29th - Thursday:

November 29th started off as just a normal day.  We got up, we exercised, we studied, and then we started our weekly planning session where we discuss all our goals for the week and such.  We LOVE Weekly Planning.  Basically we just sit in the apartment for 3 hours wrapped in blankets, eating snacks, and talking about our investigators and what we want to do with them!  Best day ever. :-)  One of our investigators though is really really emotionally draining.  I've talked about her a little before. Ayaka.  Teaching her is just... draining.  Well, part of our weekly planning was to plan our lesson with Ayaka for later that evening.

After we planned we headed over to Ayaka's house.  We had no idea what was going to happen.  There were 2 possibilities.  1: We'd actually get into the house and be able to teach her or 2: Ayaka's mom would be home, freak out when she saw us, and slam the door telling us to get out.  Yeah.  Ringing their doorbell was fun.  ;)  It turned out her mom WAS home, but she reacted differently than expected... She was happy to see us!  She let us in and we got to teach!  The lesson went REALLY well and Ayaka said she felt the spirit!  YES! :-D  So it was awesome, but Lundy shimai and I were both pretty tired after.

Then we headed to the church for Illya kyodai's Life Class.  We were surprised while we were eating by Sashida coming!  :-)  It was the first time Lundy shimai got to meet Sashida! She's doing well, but she quit her job recently and is searching for a new one.  We talked to her for the rest of the time we were there.  After the class, it had started raining REALLY hard.  Sweet wonderful Lundy shimai looked at Sashida and noticed that she wasn't wearing a coat.  So what does she do?  My wonderfully awesome Christlike companion takes her coat off her back and gives it to Sashida and started walking back in her missionary clothes. :-)  We had no idea that it was going to rain so we didn't have an umbrella or ANYTHING.  I was worried about her, but Lundy shimai insisted.  So we started walking with Sashida back to her apartment, but she surpised us by going a different direction.... and taking Lundy shimai's coat with her. :P  I looked at Lundy shimai and we both just shrugged.  We were almost to our apartment anyway.  So we just kept going.  When we got outside the apartment building Lundy shimai smiled and said "Just so you know, my planner was in my coat pocket."  I laughed and said "Oh well.  We'll go get it tomorrow."   We walked to the elevator. "Oh... and my Passmo Card (The thing that lets us ride the trains) was in the pocket to."  I said "Good thing we're not taking the train anytime soon!"  We kept walking... We got outside the door of the apartment and Lundy shimai's face fell.  She looked at me and said "Oh no... and the key to the apartment..."

Yup.  That's right.  We were locked out.  The umbrellas were in the apartment, we had no spare key, and Lundy shimai had no coat.  I gave her my gloves and my scarf and we hopped on our bikes back to Sashida's house to get the coat... But remember, Sashida had surprised us by not going home... We had NO idea where she was.  We waited outside her apartment for about 15 minutes and then decided to call the Zone Leaders and find out what to do.  The Zone Leaders told us to wait there for a little longer and then if she didn't show up in about 15 more minutes to go to Shibuya and spend the night with the Shibuya Sisters.  So that's what we did.

We waited outside Sashida's house for a total of 45 minutes.  xD  She didn't show... so we went to the train station.  But remember, Lundy shimai didn't have her passmo card either... So, I paid for her to take the train. :-)  We ended up spending the night in Shibuya, one of the BIGGEST cities in Tokyo, with Kuwahara shimai and Dolan shimai.  It was a party.  xD  Needless to say though, I didn't get much sleep.  Friday morning, Lundy shimai and I were both exhausted.  (Thanks to Heavenly Father) though, that morning, ALL of our appointments for that day called us and canceled.  So Friday morning we headed back to Urayasu to Sashida's house, got the key, and spent the rest of the day in the apartment.

So from Thursday night to Friday afternoon we had spent about 5 hours outside in pouring rain, Lundy shimai with no coat.  We both got really sick from it and we've been taking it easy since then. :P

 

I learned 2 really important lessons from this experience though.

1: It's okay to take a break.  x)  At first when I couldn't work, I got so mad at myself.  I wanted to go dendo!  I didn't want to lay in bed!  Lundy shimai helped me realize though that if we don't take care of ourselves, we won't be able to be good workers anyway.

2: Attitude.  At first, I got really frustrated with Lundy shimai when we discovered we were locked out.  I started getting really grumpy... but I had this thought go through my head. "What good is being grumpy going to do?  Don't you think your companion feels bad enough for losing the key?  Why don't you try cheering her up?"  So that's what I did.  It was hard, but I spent the whole 5 hours talking to her about her mission and her family and... well... anything I could think of!  It ended up being amazingly awesome for us. We grew a lot closer as companions and I know  that it made a really bad situation MUCH better.  :-)  I learned that no matter how bad the situation, if you just try to remain positive and happy Heavenly Father blesses you!

 

 

And that was my week!  Awesome right? ;)  It's one of those crazy mission stories.  Love it.  xD

Thank you guys for all you do!  You're amazing and I love you all so much!  Write to you again next week!

-

Christine