I Stand All Amazed

:)

How is my awesome family? You look good. I would know. Because I just saw ya. Maha. It was wonderful skyping with all of you and I really enjoyed getting to see all the darlings running. I hope Claire and Brookie have recovered and happy as can be. I didn't see Reese. Is she okay? I hope she is. I love that sweetie doll.

We have had a marvelous week full of finding great-prepared people and I know it's because of the Lord's hand. We have met so many prepared people. There was a baptism in our ward last night of a family who has been taught by the missionaries for 8 years! It took forever for them to get baptized but the other sister missionaries in our ward finally got them to take that step! It was wonderful! The dad is a less active trying to be active, but the mom and 2 sons were baptized. It was wonderful. The oldest son you could tell was just soaking it all in and knew what he was doing was right. I think that best feelings I have felt while on my mission is seeing some one give their first prayer and their face right after they have been baptized. It's wonderful :)

I will tell ya about some of our new investigators. The elders found Natsuko for us at the eki. She came to the candle mama concert on Christmas Eve and we got to meet her and get to know her. She is wonderful! She said that she was part of the seventh day Adventist church, but she has not been baptized into any church. She kept on saying that she feels bad for not being baptized into a church and she hopes that God can forgive her. I feel like she is so prepared! Whenever we call her on the phone she is always happy and bubbly about talking to us. We invited her to come to the Fujita baptism last night but she couldn't make it. We are determined to meet with her this week.

On Friday we decided to go visit some members, pray with them in their homes, and then dendo around their houses. We went over the river to go see the Yokoyama family (the stake president's family) and we prayed with Sister Yokoyama about finding prepared people. The spirit was there with us as we left her house and she waved goodbye to us from her porch. We made our way to another member's house but the address was incomplete so we had to come up with a new plan. We decided to go to the nearest eki and do a mitsuketaikai. We went to Ichikawa station and did our thing. I remember seeing this really sweet Pilipino woman (Anna) come down the stairs and I handed her an eikaiwa flier and excitedly told her about how fun our eikaiwa class was. She smiled politely, took my chirashi (flier), and walked away. She comes back like a minute later and asks me what I do. I told her I was a volunteer missionary and I told her about the Mormon Church. She said she wanted to meet with me and learn more about it and we exchanged phone numbers. She ended up coming back up to me with some coffee to keep me warm, I didn't have the heart to tell her I couldn't drink it so I just thanked her and put it in my bag. She is darling! She called us during DCS yesterday and told me that she told her friend Rei all about us and wanted us to meet with her too and so we got a referral! This woman is wonderful!

There were lots of other wonderful people that we have met with this week that I am really excited to teach! Aoki, Marites, Jacqulin, Sarala, Anna, Natsuko, and Kanae and others are waiting to hear the restored gospel. The Lord really is consecrating our time. I am so grateful to meet these women and hopefully we can help them come unto Christ and make steps towards baptism.

White washing is definitely a different experience and it seems that we are just getting started on actually teaching people. It's quite a process, I felt like I haven't taught someone a sit down lesson in a really long time, but I think that we are starting to get into the swing of things.

I love you all and thank you for your kind letters. You make me happy inside. :)

Love, Stai Shimai

P.S. Oh by the way on P-day when we went to the Emperor's palace it happened to be his birthday and we got to sign his birthday card! It was sooooo coool! Then when we were walking on the side walks around the palace a whole bunch of black cars with flags on them came next to us and had all of the major world leaders in them! Apparently the emperor had a birthday party and all the cool people were invited. We started waving and jumping up and down like school girls. This lady from Greece totally loves us and was dancing in her car and waving at us as she drove by! I made a point to get the Israeli leader to wave at me. I think I bought scared the turban of that poor guy. We were so happy! I gave Brazil and nice hello. (Haydy) To say the least, it was sweet. I'm just trying to pave the way for missionaries to get into all the countries. Step one: meet all the world leaders and bring world peace. COMPLETED.

Me and Noriko saying goodbye in Utsunomiya.