Konnichiwa, kazoku!!!
Thanks as always for the awesome letter! I love hearing how everything is going for you all. I can't believe you have already started school again, I guess time flies when you're having fun. This week was a bit hectic with a few things, but lots of fun. I'll get to that in a minute though. Good news - in a few hours, we're going to go and buy me a new camera and electronic dictionary! I am pumped for both of those. So I will make sure to take more pictures and such, don't you fret. Good luck with school, working with junior high school kids, and the fair this week! And dad - that's awesome that you're so close with your class. Hang in there with the studying and such - you'll be awesome!
Oh and I don't know exactly what we'll be doing technology wise in the mission yet - they haven't let us know. For now the extent of our technology usage is our emails (basically just long texts but they're called emails) to our district leaders, zone leaders and ward council each week. I'm sure that will change eventually though.
So this week our schedule was a little different - we had zone conference on Wednesday in Kumamoto (a prefecture about 3 1/2 hrs away by bus) so we left here later Tuesday afternoon. Kumamoto is where Suzuki Shimai spent the first 4 transfers of her mission, so it was a bit nostalgic for her and fun to see some people she knew. We spent the night in the sisters apartment there (there are 4 sisters in that apartment, so it was a party having all of us there for the night). Zone conference the next day was awesome! President and Sister Gustafson are so great. They spoke to us and gave wonderful advice, reminders, and counsel that will really help us improve as we apply it each day. The relief society made a huge lunch for all of us (it was two zones) and after that the APs taught us more about working with members. Really great information - we're excited to apply it and improve. One thing that was really nice was seeing a few familiar faces - two people from my MTC district (Anderson choro and Davidson Shimai) are both in my zone, so it was great to talk to them and see how they were doing. I was also able to meet a lot of awesome missionaries that knew Suzuki Shimai and were super nice as well. I guess all in all it was really encouraging and uplifting to see and talk to a lot of other missionaries that are doing the same thing Suzuki Shimai and I do every day. Japan is just the greatest. Funny story - so we were supposed to ride back to Miyazaki right after ZC, later that afternoon early evening ish but when we tried to get on the bus, they didn't have enough seats for our district! So we ended up staying one more night and leaving in the morning. It was really great though - we got the opportunity to proselyte going streeting in a different city than what we were used to and it was really different. People are so nice in Miyazaki. But anyway it was great. Oh and we went to Kumumoto's Eikaiwa (English Class) and it was a party. We're trying to build up our eikaiwa here a little more because we don't really have very many consistent students at the moment. But that will change!
We got back Thursday afternoon, prepared our lesson for our investigator (the eighteen year old girl I talked about before) and went and taught her that night, and (drumroll please....) she now has a baptismal date! Together, we're going to work on getting ready for her to be baptized at the end of this month. One kind of sad thing though is that we can't meet with her this week, but it's happy because the reason is she'll be at SMYC in Nagasaki (aka kind of like Japan's EFY) with one of her member friends. Huzzah!| So we're hoping that will be good with helping her be surrounded in the gospel a bit more and help with more questions. Anyway, she is awesome and we thing she's the greatest. It really is so incredible what can be done with the help of the members.
Oh another funny story - a few days ago we were rushing to get back to something on time from an appointment and realized we didn't have enough time to go back home and make dinner, so we stopped at a mcdonalds. Let me tell you, that was the best McDonalds I've ever had. To tell you the truth, I have never really enjoyed it very much in America but I think just the fact that the burger I ate tasted exactly like any burger I've ever had at a McDonalds (the familiarity of it, I guess) was a bit of a happy thing. Fun stuff.
Also Suzuki Shimai and I get along really well, and are always telling each other funny stories and such so we often just speak in English at home. But last week we decided that had to stop, so now we have a rule of only Japanese. It is hard, and I can't tell quite as many detailed stories, and she is super patient with me but we have been doing it - which is way exciting! It's definitely helping me feel better about Japanese, and even though I've got a long way to go I'm glad I can work on things each day to continually try to improve.
Last thought, then I'll end my rambling. My favorite Japanese word is "genki"- essentially in English it is happy, energetic, enthusiastic, full of vigor, full of life...etc... the list goes on. Basically it doesn't have a one word counterpart in English. It just makes me feel genki to think about how awesome it is when we are genki! I was talking to another missionary this week who made an offhand remark about the importance of staying genki through everything, and it really got me thinking. Therefore, I decided a great motto to live by is this "When life gets you down, just be genki!" Doctine and Covenants 68:6 is the best with this. In English, it says "Be of good cheer, and do not fear..." whereas in the Japanese scripture it reads "Genki....." in place and I love it! It brings such a joyful tone to the scripture, and really means alot. Anyway, so the challenge for this week is to always be genki! Life really is amazing. And everything is more fun when you look on the bright side :D
Well thanks for listening to (or reading?) my rambling, I love you all so much, and I hope you can continue to feel genki!
Ai shite imasu!!!
-Flake Shimai
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