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
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