Week 11 (I knew she looked different in her pictures - Claire)

Mon
Transfer calls. We waited with anxious breath for the call to come and guess what: I didn't transfer but I have a new companion! Her name is Shizuka Eguchi, she's 25, she's from a place in between Tokyo and Mt Fuji, and she plays the piano. So on that Mon, Sis Rogers hastily packed and then anxiously waited all day for the moving truck to come and get her boxes. We had dinner that night with a member family.
Tue
I cried practically all day. I think it had a lot to do with I didn't get a good night's sleep because I was full of worries, so the waterworks were on. Not exactly the best first impression.
Wed
SO MUCH RAIN. For the English teaching class, since Sister Eguchi doesn't speak much English, I'm now teaching the intermediate class and Elder Moretti from Brazil is teaching the beginning class. I think it will be good for him and them. We didn't eat dinner because we had a huge lunch kind of late in the day (curry, yum yum). The preacher we found dropped us. What a loss. After the English class, we had a meeting with the bishop and the ward mission leader. The bishop asked me a question and he was surprised that I could understand him. I was like, "where is your confidence in me, bishop? Haven't I been here for almost three months? Don't you know me?" It hurt my heart a little.
Thu
We went to visit a less active and ended up staying there a whole lot longer than we had time to spend there. She wanted us to talk to the missionary who baptized her all those many years ago over skype. I could feel that missionary and his family's hope for this less active. I also got some figurines from this less active. Part of me was happy and the other part of me was like, "what am I going to do with these? I feel like as a missionary I'm not supposed to have them." So they're sitting inside my desk. An investigator passed her baptismal interview! I was very worried that she wouldn't. We rode to an investigator's house in the dark. It was a different view than in the day time. We also met her husband for the first time. I was afraid that he would get angry or not want us to visit her again, but he was very normal. I've noticed that when I speak English, I speak slowly now. It's become a habit from teaching English to beginners I suppose.
Fri
The less active we visited called us about the scripture we left with her and it turned into a 45 min lesson over the phone. I felt filled with the spirit, so much so that I felt like a whip or a sword or something. At the same time, I felt love for this woman. It was a bizarre combination. It rained, so we wore raincoats. By the end of the day, the inside of my jacket felt like a swimming pool. Gross. One of our investigators had a dream about baptism! Instead of being baptized in water, he was baptized in curry. I'm not sure how to interpret that, but I think it's good.
Sat
I've lost 28 lbs! One of our investigators shared with us a big worry of hers. It was comforting to me that she would open up to us, but it also made my heart heavy over worrying about her. I had takoyaki (little pieces of octopus inside fried batter balls) for the first time. It was delicious but super hot so I burnt my tongue. We met an angry grandma while housing. We didn't even get past we're missionaries before she said "No. I hate it I hate it I hate it." I walked away laughing because it just seemed like a classic missionary experience.
Sun
Our investigator didn't show up to sacrament meeting so her baptismal service had to be postponed. In our mission, you have to come 3 times before you can be baptized and she's only come 2 times. One of the members gave a talk about missionary work and he mentioned some of the things that I've done. I felt grateful that he had confidence in me and warmed by the praise he gave me. We spent an hour looking for a less active's house and had a 2 minute conversation with her. Oh well. It was nice weather to be out and about.

Week 10 Double Digits!

I have some news about the Mother's Day call: we can do it over skype! I can still do it over phone if that works better, but I'd like to see your faces and I bet you'd like to see mine. All we have to do is set a time. I think there is a 14 hour difference between you and me. If I called you the Monday morning after Mother's Day, it would be that Sunday's evening for you. If I called at 7 am it would be 5 pm for you. I think. What time works best for you? Decide quickly because we don't have many times to exchange replys.

Mon

Boring P-Day, but restful. Slept and did laundry.

Tue

One of our English classes may have just become an entire group of investigators. We were talking to the lady who runs it and she said it would be ok if we shared small messages after we taught English, so we may be teaching 7 people at once. Since Sister Roger's birthday was Wed, we bought a cake and ate half of it in one sitting. I also scared Sister Rogers by doing a worm impression. I'm not entirely sure why it was scary, but she screamed.

Wed

At one of our English classes, Rogers Shimai and I played our instruments together for them. One of the students asked if we could play for a housebound grandmother since she likes music and can't get out of her house much. So we went to that grandmother's house and played a few hymns and a few fun songs. One of the people who came to listen was another grandmother who is a long time Christian. She is above 80 and she converted to Catholicism before she was 20. She bore her testimony about how Jesus lives. She was practically glowing. You could tell that she really knew God personally. When we left, she came up to me and said "let's meet again at the feet of Jesus." Her son-in-law also came. He is a pastor for another Christian congregation, but he listened to the first lesson and accepted a Book of Mormon. We have a return appointment, so by all standards, he is an investigator. Who'da thunk? Coming back from that little concert, a lady next to me on the street saw me and my cello and started making hand motions, thinking that I couldn't understand Japanese. I said yes, I do play the cello in Japanese. Then I asked her if she'd like us to come and play at her house. Much to my suprise, she said yes! This is a good service opportunity as well as a chance to find a new investigator. One investigator's husband has started to listen to the lessons. He has many concerns, so his lessons are all very stressfull to prepare for but I always feel the Spirit strongly. Two of his friends just showed up at the lesson and listened along. Then we played Nearer My God To Thee together (he plays the ocarina and its many cousins). One of his friends gave us spoons he hand carved and painted. All day, we didn't really eat a whole meal, just snacks and birthday cake because we had so many appointments.

Thu

The grandmother that paints watercolors dropped us. We were talking and she said that she was going to weed her garden since there was no one else to do it. We said we'd be happy to help and jumped up to start. She practically screamed at us not to do it. "Dame! Dame!" she said. Dame means bad, like bad dog. We were a little startled that she didn't want us to weed her garden that badly, so we just sort of got on our bikes and pedaled away. On the other hand, one investigator that we thought we would have to drop we didn't. When one door closes, the Lord opens another. For Rogers Shimai's birthday we went to that expensive restaurant. I didn't order the most expensive thing. I got a $35 dollar meal and came away feeling pleasantly stuffed. Unfortunately, they served us tea, so we moved it around the dishes a little. Whever we drank all of the liquid from one dish, we put a little bit of tea in the dish. Then we'd sneak some tea back into the teapot. By the end of the meal, our cups and our stomachs were empty of tea. Word of Wisdom kept.

Fri

Made homemade sushi. Another Philipino lady graciously came to one of our lessons with a Pillipino that we are teaching. It was a little last minute, but she sacrificed her time and came from an entirely different ward to help us out.

Sat

We performed our instruments for an investigator and got roses from her.  Sang at stake conference adult session.

Sun

Listened to the same song the whole time in the car going to and from stake conference. Drove me up the wall. Lesson with Investigator long, but good.

Lots of love

Leah

Week 9 (almost to double digits!)

Ok so here's the low down on what happened last Monday. Because there are so many new sisters coming to this mission and other missions, three sister leaders are being called to help train and counsel them. Elders cannot counsel sisters and so a lot of sisters are carrying around some struggles that they can't talk about. Having sister leaders allows them to talk about it and recieve advice. Sister Rogers is one of those leaders and one of the two Nagano sisters (the sisters that came to our apartment on Mon) is another of those. As of now, not everything is clear on who has what responsibilities and such, but more information is supposed to be coming from higher up. I'm pretty sure this is a world wide change, not just for us, but I could be wrong. Another piece of news: missionaries are now allowed to e-mail anyone. Our e-mail time is limited to one hour on P-day, but in that time we can e-mail family, friends, aquaintences, and missionaries serving in other missions. This is in an effort to share the gospel through modern technology. Obvoiusly it has some risks and this could be abused, but it seems to me that it will be more of a help than harm. I am now going to give you both last week and this weeks reports since last week was pretty sub-standard.

Tue

We went to an English teaching appointment with a member in one of the furthest parts of our area. After we taught, the member brought up fasting and suddenly the conversation turned into something spiritual and gospel related. One of the students got teary-eyed when I said that world wide we fasted for Japan after the earthquake and tsunami in 2011. We went up to her afterward and asked her if she would like to hear more. She agreed so we went to the member's house and taught a little bit of all over. I was feeling the Spirit strongly, but she said at the end of the lesson she wasn't interested in meeting another time. She said conversations like that were interesting and fine, but anything more was too much for her schedule. We went to visit the investigator that was in the hospital. The person in the neighboring bed joined in the conversation and when we shared a scripture, we gave her a Book of Mormon too. She said "oh I think like this too!" We said could we come and talk again and she said yes. We had a cello/violin/piano mini-recital at a member's house. It went well but we got home a little late.

Wed

Because we got home late, we had to go back in the morning to grab our bikes. Unfortunately, I forgot the key for my chain lock so we had to carry my bike all the way back to the apartment. We met with the lady from the Phillipenes that we met in the 100 Yen store. She agreed to be baptised, but I'm not sure how much she understands. Her English and her Japanese aren't that great. Apparantly the elders also ran into her when they were housing. I think the Lord really wanted her to come to this gospel. The lady at the hospital read up to page 18 of the Book of Mormon in one day! 

Thu

One of our investigators took us to a SUPER good tofu retaurant. It had like 9 courses, but they were all tiny portions. I still walked away full to the brim. There is a road that follows a river in our area that we travel along often. All along the banks of the river are sakura trees. Imagine a mile long straight of cherry blossoms. It was so beautiful. We talked to a lady at a bus stop and said "hey, we're teaching a free English class. Wanna come?" She pulled out her phone and said "Yeah let's swap numbers!" Wow.

Fri

In District Meeting, we did a role play about asking someone to pray. One of the elders came up with an entire backstory for this role play. It was basically like a soap opera with a kinapped child, drug lord, romance, marriage trouble, and a soccer player. We made a cake for the investigator that took us out to tofu and tried to ding dong ditch the cake, but she opened the door right away so we failed in our ding donging.

Sat

When we tried to plan for this day's activities, we both got this strange "stay in the apartment" feel. So we stayed inside and cleaned the apartment, got our records and map caught up and up to date and studied. It turns out that that day a large typhoon like rainstorm came in the afternoon and flooded many streets. Glad we stayed dry. One of our investigators told us that if you double the liquids in a recipe and put it in the rice cooker that it would turn out like if you had put it in an oven. Well it turned into Christmas pudding type stuff. It was still good though.

Sun

We had two investigators at church! One of them was the lady from the Phillipenes. She asked me if I could translate into English. I tried but I didn't do a good job.

Mon

We went out to eat with the sisters from another district (we got permission). We passed a toy shop with rubber chickens prominantly displayed. Sister Rogers said "Oh I love those things!" Since it is her birthday on Wed, I got the other sisters to distract Sister Rogers while I bought one for her. Unfortunatley, it kept honking as we were walking. I think she's forgotten about it by now though. In the middle of the day we got a call from the APs saying "Could two to four sisters come and sleep at your apartment tonight and can you come to the honbu tomorrow?" We said we have enough space but not enough futons. So after we said goodbye to the other sisters we went to a store and bought futons, blankets, and pillow. It wasn't heavy, but very bulky. Many people gave us strange looks as we were walking around. It was truly Heavenly Father's Plan that we stayed in the apartment on Saturday because if we hadn't in the apartment on Saturday because if we hadn't cleaned and cooked and such we wouldn't have had time on Monday. As we were walking the Nagano sisters back from the station to our apartment I lost my footing and scratched my leg pretty well. It's a lovely color now.

Tue

I did missionary work with a native Japanese speaker because Sis Rogers and the other sister had to go to the honbu. Sister Katsuta couldn't figure out Sister Rogers' bike lock so we took the train to our appointment and walked around the rest of the day. At that appointment, a member just came, just popped up. I was grateful for him being there to share his testimony.

Wed

One of our less active people that we've been working with has kept the Word of Wisdom and has dramatically improved spiritually. Hopefully this keeps progressing. We aslo had interviews with President Baird and the AP's and ZL's. Apparantly we are doing the best in the mission. The interview was an uplifting and a helpful one. The handle of my scripture case broke, boo. That night one of our most promising investigators called and said she wanted to stop. She said very finally "good bye." We were both sad, but I felt like we had to respect her agency and just let it sit for a while and not push.

Thu

We met an 83 year old woman who is just fantastic. We were riding our bikes and both of us thought she's old so she probably won't listen, but we said hello and she asked us where we were going. She said that if we had time, she'd like to walk with us to her house. She believes in God. She paints in watercolors and she says that she can feel God when she paints, especially the color yellow. We gave her a Book of Mormon and are going back next week. Our recent convert Udaka kyodai did animal impressions for us and we busted up laughing. We played badminton with an 8 year old who we hope will become an investigator.

Fri

We made shepherd's pie for an investigator who used to live in Australia who is going through a hard time right now. We dropped by the lady in the hospital and found out that she lives in the Tokyo Mission boundaries, so we can't teach her once she leaves. Referral!

Sat

At 5:30 in the morning, our phone started making the most annoying sound ever. We look at the text and it said "prepare for earthquake." Just as we figured out that the kanji said earthquake, the apartment started shaking. I thought it was fun but Rogers Shimai was a bit freaked out. Then we went back to sleep. Conference was AMAZING! Also, I think I was in the Church World Report. I'll have to check.

Sun

Again, Conference amazing. The New Testament was the most quoted by a landslide. We seem to be finding just as many investigators as we lose. The come and go and come and go.

 

Lots of love

Leah

Week 8 Leah is in for a busy week.

We had a surprise phone call from the Aps saying that two sisters are coming to Yokkaichi for one night so we're busy preparing for them. I don't have time, I'm sorry!

Tue

got home late

Wed

no one at Eikaiwa

Thu

SUPER GOOD TOFU RESTAURANT

mile of sakura trees

Fri

tried to ding dong ditch an investigator with a cake, but they answered the door right away

Sat

stayed in side because of rain

Sun

two investigators at church

Mon

BUSY

 

I love you all so much and I'm really sorry that this is a lame e-mail and I know you're disappointed but I've gotta go!

Leah

Week 7! Wow things are picking up.

Sorry for writing so late. We went to the Nagoya Castle today, so we decided to do our missionary work in the morning, go to the castle in the afternoon and do our normal P-Day things in the evening. More on that later. In Japan, we don't get to watch conference until the 13 and 14 because of the time change, so no spoilers! Also, I'm thinking about getting an electronic dictionary so that I can look up the writing system characters (called kanji). The cheapest are about $100 and the expensive about $400. The catch is I would have to use personal money. I haven't decided if I really want to buy one yet, though. It would be extremely helpful and it would help me improve my Japanese and I could use it after my mission, BUT, it is expensive and I have a paper dictionary and I don't want to spend what money I have on one thing. I'd rather split it up so that I can buy more for other people. What is your input?

Mon
I bought some marshmallows earlier in the week and we toasted them over the stove. Some things that I forgot in my letter from the week before: at the sports night activity, the bishop, whenever he was trying to steal the ball from someone, he would come up to them with wide open arms and say "Give it to the bishop. Give it here. To the bishop" very softly. At ward conference, there were a couple of people on the floor because there weren't enough spots on the chairs. Two of those people were the elders. The first counselor in the bishopric was one of the people taking the picture, so he scurried out from behind the camera, dove onto the floor, and cuddled up to one of the elders. Then the stake president dove on top of them in a dog pile. I laughed so hard. I also raised the seat of my bike. IT MADE THINGS SO MUCH EASIER. The hills that we rode before, no sweat. Literally. Unfortunately, my bike seat keeps sliding down as I ride. Periodically I have to stop, raise it back up and then mount again. It seems to be that the seat pole (for lack of a better word) is really greasy. The clamp at the bottom of the seat pole seems to work fine, though.Tue
One of our investigators got put in the hospital. She has a brain infarction (Mom, what does that mean? Her speech is slurred, she has a hard time writing) according to what Sis Rogers electronic dictionary says the kanji of her illness means. We're really worried about her.

Wed

I've lost my sense of proportion. In the US, I'm undoubtedly short. Here, I feel average sized. The only people who are shorter than me are the old people, and most of the young people are taller than me, but any one who reaches any where past 5'5" is tall. Also, when I look out at a crowd or a train car, I no longer see "Asian" faces, I just see normal faces. When someone isn't Japanese is when it's odd. We found 2 investigators in the same day! WHAT THE? We have a plan to save up our money all month and go to a $60-a-plate crab restaurant at the end of the month for Sis Rogers' birthday. We'll see if we actually have the will power to not spend...

Thu
We visited an investigator for the first time. I thought that it would be kind of slow getting the conversation turned to religious topics, but we kind of barreled  through the first lesson. The lady just asked the right questions and said the right things. She doesn't seem like she's super interested, but we gave her a Book of Mormon and if she reads it with the right heart, I know that she will gain that interest. Here's hoping. We visited a less active couple. They both like to travel and about 20 years ago the drove all of Route 66. Guess where they've been? Golden Spike! I told them that I'd been there too and they showed me photos of it and I was like "Yep. Been there. Seen that. I remember that." The husband also had an original poster from those days advertising the new train. He was talking about the western part of Route 66 and he said "It's just like watching a John Ford movie." I was like "I know those movies! My Dad watches them all the time!" Hopefully we can work this angle to get a relationship so that they will start coming back to church. We dyed eggs for Easter using food coloring. It actually turned out ok.

Fri
We dropped by a member's house just to say hello and she was like "come in I have something to give you." She then proceeded to give us each an authentic yukata (a kind of kimono) complete with accessories made by an authentic Japanese grandmother! I'll be sure to send you pictures soon. The sakura (cherry blossoms) are white! I always saw them depicted as pink, and they do have a pink tinge, but most of them are white, surprisingly  The husband of our investigator who is in the hospital seems to have had a change of heart because his wife is sick. Hopefully this experience brings them closer to Christ. I also hope we can help them in any way that we can.

Sat
Easter Egg hunt. I won. One of our investigators passed his baptismal interview.We taught a lesson in English to a lady who is teaching English here. I felt weird in that lesson. We had a strange finding experience in the dollar store. We were picking up a picture frame for our investigators so that we could give them a picture of Christ to have in their home. This lady kept staring at us and smiling at us. Sister Rogers nudged me and told me to to go talk to her. So I did. The feeling the whole conversation was like "oh it's you! I've been waiting for you." We asked if it would be ok to visit her and she said why, so we said we talk about families and God and she said ok. She then gave us her name, number, and address. WHAT???? It was hard to believe that she was so willing to give us that information after we only talked for like two minutes. Hopefully she'll become a real investigator.

Sun
Udaka-san got baptized (see photo). After the baptismal service, we went to visit our investigator in the hospital. The elders and one of the members who is her friend gave her a blessing. It was a tender spiritual moment. I can only hope and pray for their faith and for the doctors to be guided. I had some personal revelation after we left the hospital. It's simple and basic, and something you hear from the beginning, but a mission isn't about you. When you get sucked inward, you start to get depressed. When you turn out, you can do and see and feel a lot more. We had a mini Easter dinner (potatoes, carrots, onions, beef). It wasn't that great, but it was something.Mon
We went to Nagoya Castle with all the Elders in our district and one of their investigators (see other picture). We met another Mormon (a tourist) and some Presbyterian missionaries there. It was a truly beautiful place and some beautiful weather. I also got a little sun burnt.
Love,
Leah