You know you`re in Japan when you
are at a mall, in the food court, and you can leave your bags and coats on
chairs to save your spot, and no one moves or touches them. I love how safe
this place is....everything is incredibly tiny, the food portions, the people, the
stairs...but it`s safe! We took an investigator to lunch on Saturday, she`s 12
and really soft spoken. We asked her what she wanted to eat and she wanted
Subway. So we were standing in line and she looked kind of nervous so I asked
her if she wanted something else and she said, `We should probably save seats
first.`
Her English is
amazing. She lived in Australia for 2 years when she was 9. She also speaks
Chinese and Korean because of her mother, and of course Japanese too. I was
surprised when she said that because I would NEVER leave my stuff on a chair
without someone watching it in America, but she`s from Japan so I decided to
trust her. We found some seats and left our stuff only taking our wallets with
us. When we got back 15 minutes later with our food everything was…right where
we left it! Thank goodness for good, honest people. Japanese people are great
in that way!
This week all our
teaching appointments kept falling through. We`d start the day with about 3
appointments and slowly one at a time, they would fall through. So when you
have no lessons and nothing else to do, you find. Our mission goal this week
was to get 400 people to church for Fast Sunday. So we invited every person we
came in contact with to come to church. In order to get a lot of people at
church we decided to target families. So we made a 2 minute message we could
share with people as we housed and testify about how the church strengthens
families, and then we would invite them to church. So we housed for hours and
hours and finally this guys came to his door (which is rare. They usually have
ping pong boxes and you speak with them through it like a phone so they don’t
have to let you in) and we started our message. He asked if we were talking
about religion and we answered yes. Then he said, `not interested.` We asked
why and he said it`s because he was buddhist. We asked him why he was buddhist.
He was totally thrown off guard. He didn`t even know why he was Buddhist! After
a few minutes he finally managed to say, `Oh, because my parents were.`
He ended up not
accepting our invitation to church, but it was an interesting experience
nonetheless. It wouldn`t be enough just to say I was a member of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, `because my parents were.` Every single one of
us needs to exercise faith and be diligent in nurturing our own testimonies, no
matter how small or how young we are, so that we know who we are, what we
believe and why we believe it.
The next day when
we went finding, we were riding down a really sketchy looking street by
Japanese standards. We were trying to find the nicer newer homes but we
took a wrong turn and rode past this old woman trimming her trees. She saw us
and as always, we said hello. She flagged us down and asked us to look at her
trees. We hopped off our bikes and parked. She took us around her house
pointing out all these things and saying names of plants. It`s at times like that
when I wish I had paid a lot more attention to Dad, his green thumb, and his
love of gardening. I had no idea what she was talking about! I just smiled and
nodded like I always do. She took us to the front of her house by her front
door, (culture tip: Nihon jin are VERY private people. They like their space.
You usually can never get to their front doors.) so I was feeling kind of
thrown off because most people wouldn`t take you this close to their house, and
she started picking fruit off her trees and giving it to us. Colter Shimai and
I looked at each other totally bewildered. We had no idea what was going on. Colter`s
a 4th transfer I`m a 3rd, so we don`t yet know much of the vocabulary this
woman was using. Then she ran into her house and told us to follow her! We
walked in and took a seat on the floor. She came back out with more fruits and
little paper cranes. She started telling us about her life and how she was an
English teacher at a high school 40 years ago. She then taught us how to make
paper cranes. We just talked and laughed and ate fruit with this stranger in
her house. She was kind. We invited her to church but she said she would be
busy. We exchanged numbers and she asked us to visit again soon. Before this we
had been housing for a long time and we had been biking for a while, too. It
was a tender mercy from the Lord to give us a small break and let us chat with
a really sweet old lady. We left her house so pumped to find more sweet people
like her!
Just like last
week, this week we worked really hard to invite as many people to church as
possible (and you remember how that turned out). When sacrament started Colter
Shimai and I had 7 new people there!!!!! The Elders had 5! Not bad, haha. Today
we found out we almost hit our mission goal, as a whole our mission brought 396
people to church yesterday!!!! I`ve really seen how the Lord will bless us if
we`re diligent. When we do all within our power, the Lord will make up for the
rest.
Thank you fam for
the package!!! American toothpaste is waaaayyy better than japanese toothpaste.
I`ve been listening to the Ambassadors CD morning and night ever since I got
it. I loved all the letters...Pua and Becca and Normz`s letters were awesome! Ah,
girl power! I am always uplifted when I get letters from you guys. Sifa`s
letter was funny as always, too. Girl power, jk. Well, I hope the best for
everyone at home, especially Grandpa. Get better, Gramps! Harry, I promise to
get around to writing you soon okay, bud?
Love you all!
Sister Heimuli
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