Man oh man. It is hard to even know where to start. I can't believe Logan goes in to the MTC this week. I am so happy for him. As I was reading through your email, I have been reflecting a bit and it is incredible to see how much I have changed in these past 14 months. Missions - hardest and the most rewarding. I love them. It is a little hard to realize I won't be seeing him for quite a while, but I am so proud of him and know he will be a great missionary. And as for your question with approaching people - YES. One hundred percent. When I first got to Japan, and was expected to go up to random people on the street and start talking to them about God in their language, that I didn't really speak - that was one of the most terrifying things I could even imagine! It's funny, because when I first came I was just so scared for that with Japanese and such, but now, even though I've been out for awhile, it's doing it in English that is a bit hard. I have been getting more practice with that in Saijo - we meet people from all over here. We've met people from 24 different countries just in Saijo in the last few months. I don't know if I have mentioned it recently or not, but I LOVE working in Saijo with Sister Willes. Last comment with your letter - don't you fret, mom. Bugs flying into our eyes are a normal thing. I don't think you can fully see it in the picture, but it was there, legs and all!
Anyway, on to the week. We had some wonderful miracles, as well as some really hard things as well - but hey, I'm a missionary - that's what happens! Basically, we had 3 investigators drop us this week (Kimura, Suzeni, and Hasuike). They were pretty much all a day apart - basically all three let us know that they were happy with their religion, thought we were really nice but wanted us to know they didn't want to hear anymore about religion. That was pretty hard. I know God has a plan for them. We are just trying our hardest to be instruments in His hands and continue meeting those he has prepared for us to meet! We were able to meet Barbara a few times this week, which was great, but she didn't show up to our appointment scheduled for last night and we haven't been able to contact her, which has us pretty worried. She is really sweet, but also quite Catholic. She has so much faith - I just want her to see how much God has in store for her! But things are good. We will work it out. Tomikosan, our investigator with the baptismal date is doing well. We may have to end up pushing it back a bit again, because she takes a little while to understand and remember principles. We had a big learning experience with her this past week - I think Heavenly Father was trying to remind us that we need to be better with getting member present lessons with her. We went over, wanting to do a simple review lesson, but it ended up being one of the hardest lessons I've taught. She was saying a lot of things we couldn't understand, and Japanese was a real struggle for both of us during the lesson; we couldn't address each others' concerns super well. We learned our lesson and will be doing better with that from now on. But she is doing well, we will just try to have more Japanese joints from now on. :)
Sorry - there is a bit of the hard things that have happened this week - but I have some wonderful news as well! The elders passed Takeda san to us this week and she is incredible. They were housing, and didn't have much time left and had knocked every door in the building with no success. But they knew they had felt really good about the apartment building - and the last door they knocked on was her door. She is really genuine, and has had interest in Christian churches for a long time, but didn't really know where to go to learn more. We dropped by with the elders last week, hoping to set up a return appointment, but she invited sister willes and me in right on the spot and we were able to teach her a lesson. She is young, probably late twenties ish and Japanese. We connect really well, and have really just been able to talk about just about everything. She invited us to come back two days later, and we were able to teach her again. She has a sincere desire to know the truth, and I can't wait until our next appointment this week!
We also had junkai (exchanges) this week with the sister training leaders. It was awesome - I learned a lot. I was way excited - I got to junkai with Babcock shimai, a girl that was in my zone in Fukuoka for 4 transfers (our areas were neighbors so we saw each other quite a bit) and that is one of my favorite sisters in the mission. We had an awesome day, were able to teach a few lessons and do some good finding. Good times.
Alrighty. Sorry this has been kind of a random here and there email - sorry if that first part sounded a bit down - I promise it's not that - we all just have weeks we need to learn from! I am SO happy to be here. I know at first it was frustrating and I wondered how I would ever be able to serve in Japan, but I cannot stress to you enough how much the Lord has shown me over and over and over again throughout my mission that this is EXACTLY where I need to be. I am so grateful for His patience with me and for the things that I am learning here on my mission. I know my life is completely changed. Thank you so much for all of your love and support - I love you so much!!!!!!
Ai shite imasu!
Flake Shimai
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