Anne 9-28-13

HELLLOOOOO from the magical land of Utsunomiya! Where the gospel is rocking!



Yes, I love the work that we are doing here. Even though I feel so small here compared to the tons of people who are around me. Vail Shimai and I are the only sisters in our area. So many people counting on us. It's kind of crazy! Some days are really hard and all of our appointments fall through and you just want to cry but the Lord always pulls through with a miracle after our hard trial. We just have to see the tiny miracles that are happening every day even when things are going terribly wrong. One day last week it was pouring rain and I pulled out my nice rain suit of pure attractiveness and put that puppy on and we had a rough day. I lost my rain coat when we were running to catch the train! I was so extremely upset because it was so nice and I felt like I had wasted a perfectly good coat. I was just sick about it. Later on that day we were looking around the train station for it and dendoing (proselyting) as we did. We gave up and got on our bikes and started to go home and then all of a sudden Vail Shimai yells there it is!!! It was folded nicely on the side of the road! (Japanese never steal. Ever. and they always put things on the side of the road that are lost. Sweetest people ever!) We were both so happy!! But then we saw Noriko right after we picked up the coat! She is one of Vail Shimai's investigators before I was here and she has a baptismal date. We talked to her and found out she was really sick and needed to go to the hospital later on in the week. We talked to her for a bit and helped her have confidence and we rode home thinking how cool it was that the Lord had me loose my jacket so we could be there at the exact time that Noriko needed us. It was awesome!



We had a hard day on Saturday. We went out to eat with our neighbor Shibayama and she just had her husband pass away and we wanted to give her the message of the plan of salvation. But she didn't want to hear it. It was so hard for Vail Shimai because she is such good friends with her. I don't know how she feels about us anymore. But I do know that we gave her our testimonies that she could see her husband again. I made a spaghetti and roasted broccoli for dinner for Fang right after that and we rode our bikes over to her apt to give it to her. She wasn't home and wouldn't answer her phone. We are hoping that she is okay. So we came home on saturday night with cold food completely deflated. You bet I ate that broccoli. All of et.



Let me tell you about Marjorie. Oh Marjorie, she is 16 and we met her in the bike garage on tuesday. She is such a sweet girl and we invited her to our English class on wednesday (we teach english on wednesday nights, thats how you get people interested!) and she came! We invited her to come to church on Sunday and she showed up yesterday with a bright smile and she stayed for all 3 hours and we taught her the first lesson and she completely accepted it. You could totally tell that the spirit was working on her. We extended the invitation for her to be baptized and she started nodding her head before we were even finished. She kept on saying "Hai, Hai, Hai," Which is "Yes! Yes! Yes!" You could just see her fill with God's love as we told her of how god appeared to a 14 year old boy. She knew it was true. She did not doubt for one second. She didn't want to leave us yesterday. We spent the whole day together and we went to the Fukuda family's house for dinner. They are so wonderful! I love what a tender mercy she is to me. She is such an example to me of wonderful faith. Maybe we can teach her family about the gospel soon enough. I love this work! It is so hard but so rewarding!



There are so many things that I want to talk about but I can't write anymore. I love you all and you mean everything to me. Thank you for being such a wonderful support to me. I love you I love you!!!!



Staples Shimai



With Majorie!! She is getting baptized on October 27!





Dinner with the Fukuda Family and Marjorie! The ward loves her!







Dinner with a member family (the father is in the stake presidency) when we went on splits to Koga on Thursday!