April 2, 2012

April 2, 2012

Hey Fam -

What's up? (Thanks for writing Hallie!) Our investigators are: Suzuki. She is still coming to church and everything, we are just praying for her to give up tea, and she will be baptized on May 13th.

Here's all the other stuff that's 'been kickin': A while ago I was riding a bike that wasn't mine (mine was still in pieces in our apartment) and the back brakes on it weren't the greatest. I was doing pretty well on it until one time Barbour Shimai stopped really fast right in front of me. I squeezed the breaks and only the front one worked I went flying over the handlebars and toppled. I forgot to tell you last week. I get in a good bike wreck at least once every 6 weeks though, so it wasn't a big deal.

Something else that was 'legit': our ward had an Udon-making party. Udon is thick noodles that you put in a kind of soup they have here. They started by kneading flour and water together in balls about the size of a softball. They wrapped it in plastic-wrap for a while and let it sit for a few minutes. Then we unwrapped it and put it between 2 layers of plastic, set it on the floor and stepped on it until the ball was flat. Then we opened the plastic, folded the dough over 2 times, and did the stepping thing again. We repeated that process 5 times and then rolled the dough back in a ball and put it in plastic again. After a few minutes we took it out of the plastic and rolled it out like pie crust and cut it into noodles and cooked it. Yum.

I'm watching the Disneyland fireworks right now out our window. The show is different every night.

Today we went and left a note at a member's house and while I wrote it, Tomura Shimai took those last 2 pictures of us. She's a pretty fun girl. 

OK, well, I sure do love you all! I'm jealous that you got to see conference already... I'll see it next week.

Love,

Waite Shimai

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.)