February 26, 2012
Dear Fam!
Happy week to you all! Mom
thanks for the ideas of things to do with kids - I laughed when I read all the
ideas you had gathered for me. Painting toast everyday isn't the worst thing
that can happen to someone is it?.. : ) And, just know that I did try to make Grandma's
play dough but they don't have Kool-Aid in Japan. Anything like it already has
the sugar added as well, and that makes the play dough turn weird. Plus,
Japanese people don't make food with that much fake color in it...they're
conservative like that.)
Answers to the questions
that you and Aunt Jenny were wondering about.
1- Do you go to member’s homes each day to eat? We always eat on our
own. Often we will ask members if we can come to their house to share a
spiritual message, or do an activity with their family, and from that a lot of
times they will throw in a meal too, but as far as the everyday meals that's up
to us. The members do help a lot with groceries though. In every ward I have
been in there has been a basket sitting in the hall for the missionaries that
the members drop food into on Sundays. That is really nice.
2- How
much money do you get each month and what does it pay for? We get about $435 dollars/
33,000Yen per month. That sounds like a lot, and it is plenty for us, but
Tokyo is an expensive area. I'm assuming we get more than anyone else. That
money covers: all food (groceries, eating out of the apartment, etc.), supplies
for the apartment (toilet paper/cleaning supplies/laundry soap), travel money
(for trains), toiletries, postage to immediate family and
fast-offerings. Things paid for with personal money: postage to anyone else,
clothes, bike and bike-repairs, souvenirs, gifts, and printing pictures.
4- Dad
asked Tristan a while ago what he was doing to prepare for his mission.
There has been a little bit of a family discussion going on since then as to
what Tristan can do. What are your ideas as to what some of the most
important things are that he should be doing?
How to
prepare: Prepare to go to the temple! The best way I did that was by going to
LDS.org and typed the word 'endowment' in the search bar. I took the
first 10 or so entries that looked good, printed them, and put them
in a binder. Then I read them over a few weeks and highlighted in different colors
3 things I was looking for: 1- definitions of what the endowment is, 2-how to
prepare to receive it, and 3-anything that was suggested to read. Then I went
back through and took all the things it said to do to prepare and made a list,
as well as things to read, and started doing and reading the things on those
lists, as well as going back through the definitions I had found every once in
a while to remind me what it was I was preparing for.
I'm a kind of thorough
person, and Tristan might not need to do exactly all that, but I loved it. It
was so fun to prepare so specifically for the temple. Some of the things on the
to-do list I made could be done once and then checked off, but a lot of them
were things to be doing everyday (like scriptures). It was neat to have that
list and eventually see that I was doing all of the things required to enter
the house of the Lord.
Pix: What it looks like
when missionaries get together. (This is all the missionaries in our stake.
Ours is the biggest of 9 stakes in the mission.)
This week was great. Here
are a few favorite quotes from the Oak's meeting:
"To your investigators
you will never be futsu. You will always be one of the most reiteki, special people
they have ever met." -Sister Oaks served a mission in Sendai Japan and
kept throwing in random Japanese words when she would talk. 'Futsu' means
'normal' or 'every-day', and 'reiteki' means 'spiritual'. She's a pretty classy
lady, and also energetic. Hearing her speak feels like listening to someone who
just turned 16. She's just so excited.
Elder Oaks did a Q&A
with us about receiving revelation. After discussing for a long time about how
to tell if an impression is from the Lord or not, he finally said, "If you
get a feeling you should do something you really don't want to
do, it's probably revelation. If it's something you really want to do anyway,
you should probably put that revelation to some tests first to see if it's from
the Lord." I felt like his point was that a lot of time the Lord just
trusts us and knows we will fulfill a lot of His work with the desires we
already have, and when there's something we should do that we wouldn't think of
on our own, that's when revelation comes. Another favorite from him: "The
Songs of Solomon are biblical trash." : )
Tonight we are doing FHE
with Nakayasu Family and teaching them the last of the lessons Brother Nakayasu
needs before he can get baptized! Pretty
exciting.
Last night we were housing
and met a guy from Thailand. He didn't speak English or Japanese, nor did his
3 Thai friends, but they knew a guy who did and went and got him. We
talked and said we would come back in a couple hours with a Thai Book of
Mormon. We left, went to our apartment and found we have nothing in that
language, called a member at the church and had them print out the Book of
Mormon introduction and first 3 chapters from the internet. Took that back to
the Thai guy and taught him about Joseph Smith. Turns out there are 24 Thai guys
all living in that apartment complex. The one we talked to is named Gein and
said if he could ask God one question, he would ask what will happen after he
dies. We told him we'd be back next Sunday. Stay tuned and put Gein on the
prayer list. (Updated prayer list: Nakayasu (Male), Gein (M), Tateno (F), Handa
(F), and Fukada (M) ... Hooray!)
Alright, gotta go. I love
and pray for each of you every day.
-Sister Waite
