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.

March 19, 2012

March 19, 2012

Greetings Fam from Urayasu, Japan –

The day after I got here a package was delivered from Sachi Mumford! Thank you!!! That granola is amazing. Mumfords also added in a couple of packages of Jerky so tell them thanks too please. How long are they here for?

Urayasu is pretty close to central Tokyo; at least it's in the Tokyo stake. My companion is Sister Barbour, she's also from Califormia and went to BYU before coming here. She just got here in December, but her Japanese is better than most returned missionaries. She studied it for about 6 years before coming on her mission. I like her a lot. She works hard and knows a lot about Japan.

Also, last night I got a call from President and he said that one of the sister missionaries in the area next to us has to go home next week, so starting next Monday her companion will work with us too. We are going to be covering her area and ours together, and he just said to stay at whichever apartment is closest to the appointments we have. I think we might be bouncing back and forth every couple days if that's really how it works out... who knows. Her name is Sister Tomura and she's Japanese.

Our apartment is new as of last transfer, and there are still various items that we don't have, such as clocks and hangers. It's pretty much set though, and I like that there's not as much junk in it.

Suzuki Shimai is an investigator that met the missionaries last transfer and finished the lessons last week. She's ready to get baptized except that she doesn't want to quit drinking tea. She's about 40 I think, and just lives alone. Pray for her if you can.

Also, this week we knocked on the door of a lady from Columbia and she let us in and sat us down. She believes in God and Jesus Christ but thinks they are the same person.  We went back again and gave her a Spanish Book of Mormon and told her about Joseph Smith. Pray for her too.

We also met a lady in a park the last week and have an appointment to meet her again this week. Pray for Kanesaka.

This ward is amazing. Everywhere I go I never cease to be amazed by the ward members, especially the leadership. That's one of the biggest blessings of my mission: having the opportunity to work so closely with so many good leaders and learn what leadership really is.

Mom - keep going with visiting teaching! I would get on my soap box about it every week if I could. You know how if you see a kid with no shoes and a runny nose and no coat on you think, 'Kid, where is your mom?'. Well, whenever I meet a less-active who isn't getting the Liahona every month, is struggling with something and wants to talk, or has problems in their family the first thing I always think is, "Sister, where is your visiting teacher?" Yep.

 

Brother Nakayasu's baptism. 

You know that stuff that is the consistency of snot that I wrote about once. Well, I forgot I had written that until Dad mentioned it in a letter. Since last transfer I've been eating it about every other day, so this is a picture I took as evidence of that. It's called natto, and it's pretty good.

Pix from our front door. We live on the 5th floor. Out the other side of our apartment we can see Tokyo Disneyland off in the distance. Too bad missionaries can't go! haha :) We get to enjoy the perk of seeing fireworks every night from 8:30-8:35. They are way off in the distance but it's a pretty good show. 

I LOVE YOU ALL to pieces...

-Waite Shimai

March 13, 2012

March 13, 2012

Fam!

I have 10 minutes...

I'm sitting in my new apartment in my new area. Yesterday was transfers... thus no e-mail. Brother Nakayasu really did get baptized on Sunday. It was great. It was his birthday too. The meeting was wonderful and a lot of ward members were teary eyed. I think it was emotional to see that family sitting all together in church, and also to think about the earthquake being a year ago. Sacrament meeting right before his baptismal service was really good too, so it all just sort of piled up on them I guess. Anyway, it was a wonderful way to leave the ward.

I don't know if I will ever love a place or a people in Japan as much as I love them. I surprised myself by not feeling sad at all when I said goodbye to them. I thought about that later and decided it's because A) I plan to keep in contact with a lot of them, and B) I felt like I had done what I came there to do. I don't have any regrets about the work I did there. That sure feels good.

Friday a ward member drove us and Handa in her car to a really famous place called Nikko that's in the Utsunomiya area. We visited a whole bunch of old stale-smelling shrines with gold Buddah statues inside.

Saturday was Stevenson Shimai's birthday. I think it's part of my mission calling to be with people on their birthday...

I'm attaching a picture of what I look like and wear when it is raining outside ... pretty scary. I don't necessarily feel like an Ambassador of the Lord like that.

More baking: we had a chocolate cake in the fridge from about 2 weeks before, and we tried to bake a chocolate cake in our rice cooker because we don't have an oven, but that didn't work so then we had 2 bad chocolate cakes, so we crumbled both of them up in a bowl, spread half the crumbles in the bottom of a Tupperware container, mixed the rest of the vanilla ice-cream we had in the freezer until it was smooth and spread that on in a layer, and then sprinkled the rest of the cake on top and froze it all. Served it at the baptism on Sunday. Best ice cream cake I've ever had.

 Love you all,

-Waite Shimai

March 4, 2012

March 4, 2012

 

 

 

 

 

...THIS IS YOUR BIRTHDAY SONG, IT ISN'T VERY LONG, HEY!!!

RUBY! Happy Birthday yesterday! I heard from Uncle Greg that you went to Jamba Juice. How fun. Let me know how your 14-year-old life is ok?

Sorry I didn't get anything in the mail to you last week. I'll be on that today.

Love, Waite Shimai

Dear Fam and Waite Choro,

I got Cam's letters that Mom sent and I still crack a smile whenever I think about Lucy's baptism. Congrats Elder Waite. Japan is sure a different place...

We had a lesson with an investigator yesterday. Our lesson before that, he said he was thinking about getting baptized next year. Yesterday he said this November would be good because it's his birthday. A ward member suggested April 6th because it's Jesus’ real birthday... no go. That man is stubborn. I've never been super good at showing love to investigators, and he is especially a challenge.

We've been meeting him every week since January 1st and every time we have a lesson with him I feel like I'm pulling teeth rather than sharing a message of gladness. And when the lessons finally end, I open the door and feel like I've just come up for a breath of air after a long dive in the deep end. In his lessons we go down deeper, stay down longer, and come up drier than ever before... I think I'm starting to understand what parents really feel like when their kids will NEVER listen.  It's real work being that guy's missionaries. I join with the many parents who say in the most exhausted of voices "How many times do I have to tell you..." (Get Baptized!!!!).

Other things: I had an exchange and went to another area for a day this week. On the train back a girl about my age did something completely un-Japanese and not only approached us, but also interrupted our conversation to show us a ring on her finger. It was a CTR ring. She said she had lived in Utah, and mentioned among other places, Preston. I thought I'd heard wrong. Nope. She spent a year going to Preston High as an exchange student. She's not a member, but loves LDS people. I had just enough time to hand her my card with an e-mail address on it before we had to get off at the next stop. Crazy! That's how the Lord works. A girl from West Side and a girl who went to Preston can run into each other on the underground-trains of Tokyo. I forget sometimes how guided missionaries can be.

About baking: This coming Sunday Nakayasu gets baptized! Pretty exciting. Last week we taught the law of tithing and took 10 little cream puffs and a cake we made to do an example about paying tithing. The cake didn't have the smoothest ride over and by the time we used it the top layer was hanging a good 2 inches off the bottom layer. We testified that the blessings we get from God usually arrive to their recipient in better condition. It was fun.  Afterwards he made us dinner. 

The next day we went with Handa to a cake-making workshop she wanted to go to. That night we gave our cake away to a ward member's daughter when we did a lesson with them about the word of wisdom. She's getting baptized this year so we go over once in a while. The next day at Eikaiwa we had planned to teach everyone how to make the apple crisp I had made for Christmas because a couple of the women students had said it would be fun. Well, that day it snowed a lot and so only 4 males showed up. We taught them anyway.

From this morning's Book of Mormon Study: Alma 16:16 - who within your circle of acquaintances has the Lord prepared to be taught?

Saiyonara!

Love,

Waite Shimai

PS- What is Anne Holliday's address? I really need to communicate with that girl.

PSS- Extra pictures are from last P-day - some other sisters came to our area and we all ate out together and shopped for a while. One picture is of our temple trip last week. We 'happened' to go to the same session as 2 other sisters who used to be serving in our mission but went home because of sickness. The one on the right has cancer. (I count my blessings that I'm still serving.)

February 26, 2012

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