I love international little Saijo--6-22-14

Konnichiwa, kazoku!

I don:t know how it happens, but every time I sit down to email I just feel like I can:t possibly explain everything that happened in the week! But, I will try to give it a shot.
Alright. Transfer week is always crazy - get the transfer calls from the APs Tuesday afternoon and if you are transferring you leave by earlyThursday morning. It is kind of crazy to think that it has not even been a week since then. The news is this - Willes and I will be staying here, going on 3 transfers together which I am just pumped about. Sister Williams transferred, but Sister Burgon came in and she is great. We are excited to work with her. Sister Sou, who we have been here in saijo with for the past two is just awesome. I always forget that she is a lot younger than us mission-wise (she was on her first transfer when we all came to Saijo). She is rock solid - she just joined the church a little under 2 years ago in Taiwan.

Because Burgon shimai was coming from Okinawa, she did not come in to hiroshima until late thursday night, so me, Willes and Sou were a threesome on Thursday. We were able to teach Suzeni, our Brazillian friend that does not speak japanese or much english, with another nonmember brazillian friend. It went well, but it was a member, this non member, the three of us missionaries, and suzeni so it was a lot of people. There were four languages going on - We explained some things to her in English, willes explained a bit in Spanish (the nonmember `joint` is fluent in all four languages), we spoke to the member in Japanese, and yoshidasan, our brazillian friend translated the majority of it all in to Portugese. Straightaway after that lesson, we booked it to the church for a lesson with the other sisters` Chinese investigator. We were able to listen to Sou teach about half in Chinese, and we testified and taught in Japanese. One cool thing about learning Japanese - Chinese doesn:t sound nearly as impossible to learn as it may have earlier on in my life. Anyway, that was a fun varied languages kind of day.

One of the most exciting lessons of the week was with Barbara, our new investigator from the Phillipines. She is 23 and just started working here in Japan. She has a strong relationship with God but feels like there is something missing. We had a great first lesson, and were really able to feel God:s love and the spirit was so strong. She shared a lot of wonderful experiences. I can:t wait to keep meeting with her. Only problem is her work schedule is super busy, but she was excited to meet again as soon as possible as well.

This weekend was a little crazy but loads of fun - we were able to go to Takasu (only about an hour and a half away, maybe a little under that by train) for Stake conference this weekend. Coolest thing about it was this - it was a broadcast from Salt Lake for all of Japan - Elder Christofferson spoke, and 2 general authorities who had served in Japan and/or been mission presidents in Japan spoke in Japanese. They were Americans, but it was way cool to hear that broadcast and have only two of the four talks being translated in to Japanese, as well as all of the conducting in Japanese. what an awesome experience. We stayed Saturday night with the Hatsukaichi sisters, and it was great - they are a party.

After Stake conference, there was a small meeting for new members (basically our whole saijo group was there) and Haishan, one of our RC that just got the priesthood spoke and did an awesome job. 

Okay, that is a summary of the week - as for your news I am happy for everything the brothers are doing! Can:t believe Logan goes on his mission so soon. Time flies. Anyway, loads to say but no time to say it - just know that I love you and am praying for you and hope you have a great week!!!

Ai shite imasu!

Flake Shimai

Mawaige is what bwings us togezah, today. 6-16-14

Konnichiwa, kazoku!

What a wonderful week! Thank you so much for telling me all of the wedding details! I know it has been said before, but I will say it again - I wish I could have been there, but the only other place I would rather be is right where I am. We had a great week! 

I am so so grateful for the wonderful members, investigators, other missionaries - and even the random people I meet on the street each day. I feel like I learn and grow a little bit from every person I meet. 

I feel like way too many things happen each week to tell all of them, but I will share some main things. 

---We got our death calls from the APs this past week. Just so you know, mom - I will be coming home on December 5. Huzzah for getting an extra transfer because I was in the MTC for a little less time. Willes and I are SO EXCITED that they aren't making us go home end of October. December it is!!!!!!!

---I love accents. Living in such an international place, you'd think I would be used to them by now but nope - still makes me happy every time.

---We had a ping pong tournament tonight with the ward members and investigators. It was so much fun. Everyone gets really in to games here, which always makes things a party. Loads of fun. Just so you know, I held my own (kind of). I did alright, beat a few people, but then was still out long before the championship. Best part about it was playing around the world with everyone at the end. I love how much everyone gets in to games here!

---A few days ago when we were on  our way to visit an investigator, a lady standing in the gate of a nearby house flagged us down and asked if we spoke any Japanese. When we said we did and went over to talk to her, she just started asking us a bunch of questions - why were we in Japan, what were we doing, what was our church like, and things like that. We answered her questions and explained a few more things, and she told us that she lived in that big house all by herself and wanted us to come over and talk to her a bit more when we had time. We exchanged numbers and will hopefully be able to meet her soon!

---I can never remember everything I have told you about Ayakosan. She is a character. We went with her last week to help clean out her mother in law's house (she had a few set backs with the church, so we are trying to focus on serving her and feeling our love for her as of late), and this past saturday we went to a Soka Gakkai meeting with her. It is a sect of Buddhism that she is a member of. One of the most interesting things I have ever been to. Very Japanese-y. I will try to explain that one better when we talk in person because I don't really have words for what it was like. However, going to our church the next day made me even more grateful for the fulness of the gospel that we have. We are so blessed!

----We had  a lot of great lessons this past week! I am so sorry I can't talk about all of them because I am running out of time, but here it goes for a few of them - lesson with Suzeni, our Brazillian friend (who doesn't speak japanese, and has very very little English). We were able to give her a portugese book of Mormon and testify a little about it, and we told her we would be coming back to explain a little more with someone who speaks portugese. Problem - none of our members speak portugese. That is okay! When we try our hardest, the Lord provides a way! Solution - our ward mission leader's cousin is brazillian (but not LDS) and said he would be willing to come translate for us. We are meeting again in a few days and can't wait!  So many miracles! Another awesome lesson with Umedasan, another Brazillian friend that went really well. Lots more to say but no time - sorry!

-----We met a really nice girl on the street the other day, Nana. She was really interested in the Book of Mormon and we will be meeting with her again in a few days. 

----Biggest news of the week. So we had a lesson with Tomikosan last week that honestly was a bit rough. It went a little long, she kept getting off on tangents and uses a lot of grandma Japanese that is hard to understand, and willes shimai and I were just not feeling like we were explaining things as clearly as we should be. When we got home that night, we thought a lot about the lesson and decided to do everything we could to change the things that went wrong and do the best we could the next time. So yesterday, we had another lesson and this one was solid. The spirit was there, we were explaining more clearly, Tomikosan could feel it, and we were understanding all her Japanese and felt so calm. We had had a baptismal date with her a little earlier, but that had to drop for a few weeks because of some situations she was dealing with. But, yesterday we were able to make a really solid baptismal date of August 3rd for her and we are excited to all be working toward that together! 

Alright family. Sorry this week was random and scattered and all over the place. I blame the fact that we are running around trying to get things taken care of with it being the last week of the transfer. But thank you for the pictures and wedding details - and have a lovely week!

愛しています！-I love you!

フレーク姉妹    Flake Shimai

PS - sorry I am emailing a day later than normal - it is transfer week (aka Tuesday pday) so we will be getting our calls anytime. maybe while emailing, maybe later this afternoon - I am not sure. But stay tuned for next weeks letter!

So much to do. 6-8-14

My contribution to the wedding flowers

                                                                              Our primary kids

Konnichiwa, kazoku!

This week was insane. So many things going on. I will just start from the beginning and try to plow through so I can let you know some of the things that happened!

Monday - once a month we have a big FHE with our Saijo group and investigators and such. We decided to do a fun international themed FHE, where we had everyone go around (because every person in the room spoke at least two or more languages) and teach everyone how to say "hello" and "how are you" in another language. We ended up with about 15 languages! It was way fun - just a few of the languages were arabic, french, russian, tagalog, korean, buhasa, swatswano, chinese, etc... the list went on. It was a lot of fun, and we all learned a lot from each other! 

Tuesday - awesome lesson with Lisa, the sister from Malaysia with the two adorable kids that we are teaching AB lessons to right now. I don't know if I ever told you some of the huge miracles with this family, but here it  goes. Before they moved here, we only had one primary member, Sister Fe's seven yr old daughter, Megumi chan. She was praying for the missionaries to find a family to teach and baptize so she could have friends in primary.  A few weeks later, the elders ran in to sister Lisa on the street and she said she was baptized a few mionths ago in malaysia and had been wanting to find the church! Our primary is now those three kids - a 7 yr old boy, a 7 yr old girl, and a 5 yr old girl. Heavenly Father really is mindful of all of us. He answered Megumi's sincere prayer! (I will try to include a picture of them)

Wednesday - Short fun thing of the day - stew flavored ice cream. Awesome thing of the day = The onion miracle. SO, we realized tuesday morning that we had forgotten to buy onions during grocery shopping on pday, and had reconciled ourselves to the fact that we would not have them all week. This may not sound like a huge deal, but in Japan we use onions in basically any food that we make (think stir fry type of food). Anyway, after our lesson with Tomiko that we had (which went great - we explained the happiness of the plan of salvation) as we were leaving, she said "Wait! I have something for you!" She came out of her house with three huge tied bunches of fresh onions. She said that her friend had dropped by her house the day before and given her a huge box, but she couldn't use them all. MIRACLE! Willes shimai and I just looked at each other and smiled. We told Tomikosan about the whole story, and she thought it was really cool! One thing that is awesome with her is that she has been noticing and recognizing the miracles that God performs in all of our lives a lot since she started meeting with us. Eikaiwa was a party, as always. Our group of students are great.

Thursday - nothing too crazy - out finding, did weekly planning, and went to take our turn translating institute (the teacher is japanese but most of the students are not).

Friday - Ayakosan, one of the investigators we have been having some hard things with will be coming to the baptism on Sunday! It was great to be able to  finally talk to her. It has been a little while.In other news - I am so much better at biking than when I was a bean. Our legs are rocks these days. It is kind of weird.

Saturday - We taught kids eikaiwa and it was way fun. Our class was mostly little boys that were really happy and fun, and it reminded me of my little brothers :) Fun class, kept them entertained as well as learning english. Crazy news of the day - so it was raining all day, and after eikaiwa we were on our way to visit a PI. We were going down a big hill and I was in front, and after I had gone down I heard a yell, looked back, and couldn't see willes. I panicked and biked back up the hill as fast as I could, and she had had a pretty rough wreck. She had hit a rough patch  in the road that was slick from the rain, and it threw her and the bike. Her bike is a little messed up, and her knees got pretty skinned up, and she is covered in bruises. It was really sad. Luckily we were able to call the Lambs (the senior couple) and they came and picked us up and mothered her with an arsenal of first aid stuff, so besides having to change bandages every few hours, she is doing great now. She is a little sore, but a super hard worker so she is going strong.

Sunday - Craziest day of my life. The other saijo sisters had a baptism - Kishitasan! We all went in to Hiroshima for ward conference, and the baptism was right after church. We got to ride the train with lisa and the kiddos which is always an adventure. We have an awesome new investigator - Barbara, from the philipines. Her story is so cool. She just moved to saijo, and a few days ago she went up to her manager and said "I want to go to church. Do you know where one is?" The manager didn't know, but he knew that Fe was religious so he gave her Fe's number. Sister Fe is awesome, and because she is always such a great example, the people she work with know about her beliefs! So Barbara called Fe and asked if she could go to church with her, so Fe picked her up and they came to Hiroshima for church, and consequently Barbara was able to stay and watch the baptism!!!! We are meeting with her in about a week and a half (she wants to learn more but work is pretty busy right now). Huge miracle!

The baptism was great. Willes and I sang a really pretty version of abide with me tis eventide. Crazy thing was this. Tomiko had said she was coming, but wasn't there by the time it started. Durnig the first talk, we realized she had called so we snuck out to call her back and discovered she was really close but not sure exactly where the church was. we grabbed one of the hiroshima japanese missionaries and had them give her good directions, ran out to get her, ran back in, and were able to here the last half of the second speaker! I am so glad she made it to the baptism. It was a really good experience for her. It was also huge because the person getting baptized was an older Japanese woman - and our group is mostly full of younger foreigners. So it was great for our investigators to see! After the baptism, we had to bolt because we were doing service for Ayakosan - we had told her we wanted to go with her to her mother in law's house to clean things up because she said it was pretty awful over there (she lives in hiroshima). We got there and it was one of the saddest things I have ever seen. Ayakosan's husband passed away a few years ago, and I think he was an only child. Her mother in law is in her 90s, living at home, and can hardly move. We cleaned all sorts of things, threw tons of things away, vacuumed up a lot of dead bugs and mouse droppings, and threw away a lot of destroyed futons. Anyway, it was a good experience.

Sorry this was an explosion of information. But thank you for the letter, I hope you have  a great week! Have fun with all of the wedding craziness! I love you all - have a wonderful time!

Happy wedding week!

Ai shiteimasu - 

Flake sHimai 

Summer is here! 6-1-14

Konnichiwa, kazoku!
First off, to answer Logan - I am so happy for you! That is such a wonderful opportunity that you will have for the next two months before your mission. Appreciate it! I was really grateful that I was able to go to the temple every week in the MTC, and I have only gone once so far on my mission but look forward to the next time I can go. As far as tips for your mission go - I would just say try to study a bit of PMG every day, especially the lessons. I am still studying the lessons and trying to improve my teaching every day. 

I am glad that the package arrived! I won:t be there for the wedding, but I hope that helps a little bit :) I was a little scared that customs would open it and ruin some of the things, so I feel better knowing it arrived safely. I will try to answer a few questions before telling you about the week.

We usually have a zone training meeting (run by the zone leaders) at the beginning of every transfer. Then, normally one transfer will be a zone conference, and the next will be interviews, then back to zone conference, and so on - it rotates. But for zone conferences and interviews the APs and President and Sister Gustafson come and we have training from them. 

Sister Willes has an awesome voice - let:s just say comp study hymns are fun these days! Yeah, I have actually done a lot more singing for programs and in church and stuff like that than I thought I would be doing but it has been way fun. And because our group is small, each of the missionaries have little mini callings (one is the usher by the door, one teaches the gospel principles class, etc.) but I think I have the most fun. I am the ward shikisha - aka chorister! We have sung hymns for  investigators or members a few times in teaching, and I love it because hymns always bring the spirit. But as far as teaching goes, I could definitely be more creative with expanding my teaching horizons and doing more unique things! 

That is great that you were able to have a bit of a relaxing week - huzzah for the first week of summer! And happy birthday dad! I sent a letter a little while ago that should be getting there soon.

It has definitely been warming up here as of late but last week it came in full force - it is summer time in Japan! It is hot and humid. Not as bad as when I first got here last year, but starting to creep up on it. Funny thing is, I love it! It makes me feel like a missionary! My first memories of missionary work involve being drenched in sweat and sunburned, so its all なつかし (nostalgic) for me. love it.

So many things to say. Just know that I am sorry I never give you all my stories - I don:t have enough time to email for that and that is what journals are for!!!! I will you fill you in on all the fun stuff at another time, but suffice it to say, the most important news of the week...

Brother Haishan and Brother Sho were ordained to the office of the Melchizidek preisthood this week! Aka we now have the amount of priesthood holders in saijo to meet the requirements to make saijo an official branch. The paperwork is all in, getting sent to salt lake, and hopefully we will be a branch in the next month, two months, however long it takes to get everything sorted out. We are all so excited!!!!! Quick rundown on the week. We had some AWESOME lessons with Tomikosan, and she is really progressing. We have to go a little slower than we originally thought at first with some things for her because a lot of information overwhelms her, but she tells us over and over how much she loves how she feels every time she meets with us and comes to church. She started crying last week and telling us how we are like her daughters, and she is so grateful for the things we do for her. I have never seen an older Japanese woman cry before. It was heartwrenching. She is such a wonderful person. And she wants to bring a friend to church next week!!!!! Lisa, the recent convert that we are teaching AB lessons to is also doing so well. She has a really strong testimony, and it is great to be reteaching the doctrines and answering her questions. The next time I am on a computer that can send pictures, I have  a lot for you all! With Lisa and her kids, tomiko, her friends, and some more people. I will try to do that next week! (this week we are emailing at a community center)

Yesterday we went on a crazy adventure. we had planned on taking the train to a less active:s house, and were going to be back in time for dinner at five ( we had been fasting all day). fun fact is this - the train ended up being about an hour and forty five minutes one direction, longer than anticipated, but she was so happy to see us and we had a great visit, then rode the hour and 45 minute train home, getting home in time to grab some food at 8+45, just before curfew. crazy day but way fun. Japan is beautiful! it still doesn:t get old riding on the trains through the countryside and the cities. I love it here. I wish you could be here with me seeing the things I see every day, and meeting the people I meet! I love you all so much. Thank you for your love and support and I hope you have a wonderful week full of fun wedding preparations!!!!

愛しています！

フレーク姉妹　　より