Go Carps!! 10-5-14

Base ball Japanese Style.  Is that a sushi Roll?

Cheering on the Hiroshima Carps

Sou Shimai and myself at the game

On the train

Konnichiwa, kazoku! 

Thank you so much for the letter - I hope you start feeling a bit better, mom! I'll start off by answering a few of your questions.

Our special training with the Gustafsons and the APs was wonderful - we learned a lot. It was really cool - a lot about using more media, DVDs, movie clips and QR codes and those kinds of things in our every day missionary work.  I think our mission will be getting ipads about a month or so after I leave, which I am perfectly okay with. I love trainings. We always learn so much but most importantly feel so much love from the Gustafsons. They care about each of us so much, even though there are 259 missionaries here. I talked to him about BYU admission stuff and I have permission to figure it out on pdays, but honestly right now that is about all I know. Mom, if you or Devin or Heather could maybe talk to the admissions office for me this week that would be great, and we can both work on this stuff. It would really help if you could get a few things moving and then let me know what I need to do, and I can plan on sitting down and figuring it out next pday. 

Also... I am SO excited to hear that they beat Blue Ridge! That's the best news of the day! Go team!

And with conference - we will be watching it this coming weekend because it gets translated then shown a week later - so we will go to our stake center in Takasu (about 1 hr 20 min ish away) with the whole stake, but while all the members go watch it in the chapel in Japanese, we go to basically the American missionary room and watch it in English. I can't wait!

And more happy news - I got to see the Women's broadcast for the first time since being on my mission- huzzah!

Thank you for keeping Takedasan in your prayers - I really appreciate it! She is doing really well. We had a practice baptismal interview with her this week, and it went really well but she was SO nervous. She is excited to be baptized, but really nervous and scared as well so if you could keep praying for her to feel comfort that would be great!

Lots of stories to tell - ganbarimasu! Okay, so last pday while we were food shopping I smiled and said hello to this random lady in the store, and she looked at me, looked around, then started talking to me in a whisper really fast about how she had a lot of problems in her life. She was recently divorced, and had a stalker, and some really hard things in her life. We talked to her for a bit, and told her how we turn to God when we have things like this and asked if we could meet again to talk about these things. She agreed, and we set up an appointment to meet later in the week at the church. The meeting we had was one of the hardest things of my mission. At that next appointment, we learned a lot more about her situation. She has had a really hard life, and has lots of crazy things going on. We tried to explain to her that through God and Jesus Christ she would be able to feel more peace, and would be strengthened to be able to bear the things she was going through. The moment we started talking about religion, she stiffened up and said no - there is nothing that can help me in this situation. We felt prompted to make some pretty bold promises to her about how her situation could change if she would turn to God, but she refused to even consider it, and just kept telling us it was impossible for her situation to change. As she left the room that day, I just felt so sad that she couldn't see that help or even consider that we have such a loving Heavenly Father. I know that this gospel could have helped her. Maybe one day she will remember. That's what I am hoping for, anyway. I am so grateful that we have the knowledge of this gospel. 

On a different subject - Tuesday was quite the day. We went in to Hiroshima early Tuesday morning for our special training and we were there most of the day. Right after training finished, we walked to Costco and got huge hotdogs (first time I've eaten a hotdog in 17 months) and met up with our investigator, Ayako san to go to the Hiroshima Carps baseball game! It was SO much fun. We went with Ayako san and the other sisters were there with their investigator Naokosan. Funniest thing happened with that. Ayakosan was going to get all 6 tickets and have us pay her back, and we were planning on the cheapest tickets. She ended up entering an auction, and got 6 tickets that were origina\lly more exp;ensive  but at the auction price were pretty cheap. I was blown away when we walked in to go to our seats and just kept walking down the stairs. Our seats were right next to the infield (by first base) on the seventh row. We could hear the players talking we were so close! I'll try to send a few pics - it was so fun. We didn't get to stay for a super long time - we had to leave in the middle of the 4th inning in order to get back to Saijo by 9:00 but it was so worth it. We were there for almost 2 hours though, which was great. AND apparently we were on TV - some members called us and told us. Too good.

We also were finally able to meet with Barbara san, our favorite Phillipino! She brought her roommate Rubi to our lesson, who was really interested and came to church the next day! It is so interesting serving here and having the opportunity to teach such a wide variety of people. Our investigators include older Japanese women that are very Buddhist, phillipinos that are devout Catholics, Brazillians that believe in God and Christ but don't go to church except on Christmas and Easter, and younger Japanese women that don't know quite what to believe - whether to follow their family's buddhist beliefs or find their own. Yay for missions and learning experiences!

I taught Sunday school again yesterday and it was pretty fun. We had a good turn out and everyone was really involved in the lesson, which always makes class a little more fun. :D

We got to see the women's broadcast here at the Lamb couple's apartment with us sister missionaries and a few members. It was so good. I loved President Uchtdorf's talk. So uplifting.

Eikaiwa is fun as always - I'll tell you more stories about that one day too.

I love you all - sorry ythat's all I have time for this week but keep up the great work and have  agreat  week! 

Ai shite imasu!

Flake Shimai