March 26, 2012

March 26, 2012

Dear Fam-

Congrats to Mooze for being the star of the Play! And apparently West Side idol! Wow... I'm not going to go anywhere with you Mooze once I get back. : )

You know Fukuda, the guy in my last area whose lessons were more like pulling teeth? Well, I got a call from the Utsunomiya Sisters and they said that miracle of miracles he's agreed to be baptized in 2 weeks! HOORAY! They had a lesson on the atonement, and somehow the spirit was able to change his heart and he realized that he needed to be receiving the blessings of baptism a lot sooner than November. Thanks for your prayers.

Today we begin as a companionship of 3. I always feel like working with a companionship of 2 is like running a 3-legged race; it takes a while and a lot of effort to get in sync with each other and start going somewhere. Having 3 of us now kind of feels like there's someone else tied on... it's a little harder to get us all synchronized. It's good though - I think we will get used to it. I think we will be mostly staying in our apartment here, but might go to the other one if we have a late lesson in that area.

Maria is the lady from Columbia. We are getting together with her daughter this week to make brownies, and then a couple days later we have a lesson scheduled with her too. Kanesaka is good. She wants to read all of the Book of Mormon before she meets us, but loves reading so much she has 17 other books to read  first. We convinced her to meet again though in 2 weeks. Thanks for praying for both of them!

Our investigator Suzuki Shimai has a baptismal date for May 13th because she thinks it will take that long for her to get over not drinking tea. We have seen huge progress with her though - even in the past few days. When she first met the missionaries, all they could see of her was her eyes. She had on a long coat, and a medical mask (pretty-much everyone wears them here), an umbrella, and band aids on all her fingers. Since then she has cut her hair, started using a shorter jacket, bought a new dress that doesn't go clear to the ground, and the last couple times we met she hasn't had any band aids on her fingers...

It's interesting to see the physical changes that naturally come about in people's lives when they start learning about their true identity as children of God. It reminds me of that quote about how rather than taking people out of the gutter, we teach them the gospel and they take themselves out of the gutter. The biggest change we have seen is that within the past week, she has started vocally answering our questions, whereas before she would just sort of shrug and finally whisper a one or two-word answer after a few minutes of awkward waiting. Pretty neat.

 PIX: 1 - Urayasu church.

2 - Us at the mission-home this morning when we went to get Tomura Shimai. The senior couple with us is the Hobbs - they left to fly home to Idaho a few minutes after we left.

3 & 4  - Recognize that? 

5 - The area where our apartment is known for having lots of cats; this one was hoping for dinner.

 6 - View from a bridge we cross a lot.

Mom thanks for telling me about your visiting teaching successes! I don't know what you mean about you not having a testimony of visiting teaching... you are who I think of when I wish less-actives had a good visiting teacher!

HAVE FUN ON SPRING BREAK! It's spring break this week here too - but not for missionaries. : )

I LOVE YOU!

-Waite Shimai

Answers to questions:

-Barbour Shimai started studying Japanese in high school and just kept on going once she went to BYU.

-Of all things, a rice cooker is the only thing every apartment here is guaranteed to have. Most of our apartments don't have an oven, so that leads to some creative baking in the rice cooker sometimes.