Feb 21, 2016

My beloved Mckenzie Shimai

What a week! On Tuesday we had splits with our sister training leaders, so we were in a different area for a day and a half. Then on Wednesday we had tons of new students at eikaiwa! Eikaiwa has been really struggling here, like one and two students, but this week we had six kids and four adults! Miracles! Now we are just praying about how to share the gospel with them too!
I want to talk about how important member involvement is. We had so many students in kids eikaiwa this week because one of our members brought her daughters, and her daughters friends. Then at eikaiwa the member talked to and became friends with another kids mom who isn't a member. Now that lady has a friend in the church, and if she converts she will already have a support group! And joints for lessons are so important. Before my mission I never knew that member joints in lessons were a thing. Having a member in our lessons with investigators brings such a powerful spirit and builds a relationship between the members and investigators. That's one of the reasons I hunk Shigeharu San is doing so well. He and Chris kyoudai were already friends, so having Chris kyoudai joint is so comfortable and natural. Shigeharu San trusts him already and gets to hear of his experiences in the gospel. Moral of this paragraph: get involved in ward missionary work! Talk to the missionary's investigators at church, volunteer to joint for lessons, and just become friends with them!
This week we had a huge mission conference (taikai) at which elder Yamashita spoke! The mission tour was three days, so the mission was split up into three parts for the three different days. We had six Shimai from way up north come and stay with us the night before, and uses who one of them was..... MCKENZIE SHIMAI!!!!! I just love her. She was sweet as ever and made me feel wonderful just the way I am. It's so incredible that through this mission experience, I get to build friendships that will last forever! Getting to see Mckenzie Shimai again made me even more grateful for her friendship and example. This is such a life changing time, and getting to see how each other grows and change is incredible.
At the taikai I learned a lot about how to increase my faith to find prepared people to teach. Sometimes it's easy to get into a rut of just expecting to be rejected at every door we knock on, but I'm now really trying to strengthen my faith that the Lord will guide me to people who are ready and willing to accept this gospel!
This week we got a new investigator! We had been praying to find a young family to set baptismal dates with to really strengthen this area and ward. We have met with this sweet couple a few times in their genkan (entryway) and they are incredible! We have talked to both the husband and wife, never at the same time though, but they both were so willing to listen to us! And let me tell you that NEVER happens. We are so so excited to keep teaching them and hopefully have a formal lesson with both of them this week. They have two adorable kids who love us. The last time we came they rushed to the door with their school pictures to show us! It was so precious and definitely strengthened our relationship with them and their parents. This family is such a miracle and we are praying so hard to be able to continue teaching them!
Funny moment this week: So yesterday we had a lesson with Shigeharu San about the gospel of Jesus Christ. In this life we have two main problems we have to overcome, sin and death. Because of Christ's atonement, we will all be resurrected and overcome death, but in order to overcome sin, we have to have faith in Christ, repent, be baptized, receive the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end.  I was drawing a visual to try and simplify the lesson, and so I labeled these two valleys, or problems that we have to overcome, death and sin. Death in Japanese is shi, and the shinu is the normal or not conjugated (I think)  form of the word death. But as I wrote it out in hiragana, I accidentally wrote shine. In Japanese there is 'command form' which is very harshly commanding someone to do something. So when I wrote shine I was basically commanding Shigeharu San to die. Whoops! Chris kyoudai and Shigeharu San both looked at the paper a little confused then Chris kyoudai started laughing and corrected my mistake. So that was a nice laugh. Luckily Shigeharu San is very patient with my Japanese!
I love you all! Remember to rejoice and be happy! 2 nephi 4:28
All my love, Sundell Shimai