I Stand All Amazed: Anne 3-3-14

WWHHHHHHHAAATTTTT!?? So yeah today was transfer calls and of course President Budge completely takes us all by surprise! I will try and send you the video of us getting the call. But! Me and Sister Clark are not companions anymore......:( sad day! BUT. We will still be living in the same apartment! Sister Clark and Sister Taketomi(the other Japanese sister in my apartment) are becoming companions, because there are so many sisters in the mission now that they need to put Sister Training Leaders together. I am now senior companion with Sister Owens! I love her! She was in my district when I was in Utsunomiya, and I have been on a couple of exchanges with her before. I am sooooo nervous though; I want the ward to trust me. I have to completely understand our investigator's needs now. I am so scared! Sister Owens is going on transfer 4 and I will be on transfer 5. We will just have to work together. She is so amazing and I have so much to learn from her! We will become companions on Thursday.

Wednesday was a really fun eikaiwa! We were teach every one the words for parts of the body and as we were teaching them we wanted them to make sure they knew and remembered all the words and a thought came into my head, "doooooo the hokeyyyyy pokeyyyyy" I thought hmmmm, divine revelation, I like it! So we got everyone in the class to stand up and sister taketomi went and got her guitar and we jammed out to the hokey pokey! The class we have is full of girls and there is one 70 year old man in it and he about fell over a couple times but he had fun!

Lucy came to eikaiwa (english class) this past week and we got to teach her for a few minutes afterwards and we answered a few of her questions about the celestial kingdom, she was a little worried because she loves she idea of reincarnation and wants to live life over and over again with adventure and fantasy, she like having trials because they make her stronger and she learns so much more, that's great but we wanted her to understand that Heavenly Father grants us the happiness that we want individually in the celestial kingdom so we promised her that she could still have adventure and fantasies in the celestial kingdoms, it is even better there! She says that her test that she taking is taking up a lot of her time so she won't be able have a lot of extra time to have us teach her until April, we are hoping that we both can teach her then. She says that she will come to church and eikaiwa until then. She wasnt able to be baptized on sunday because of her huge high school entrance exam that she has been taking these last couple of weeks and we couldnt teach her everything, its hard that the only way we can contact her is through her just showing up to church. But she will get there!

Natsuko got our package and she absolutely loved it! She was so touched and she came to our missionary party on saturday and had a wonderful time. She really wanted to learn more about joseph smith and we had a good talk about how she is just like joseph smith. Natsuko is in the seventh day Adventist church and she doesn't feel satisfied with it. We told her about the great apostasy and she is beginning to understand things so much more now!

So let me tell you a little bit about Scary Man. I am not going to say his name for privacy reasons. He was Elder's old investigator, but they dont see him anymore because he needed money one time and the bishop gave him some and he keeps on asking for more and more and wont leave the church members alone so the Elders had to telll him that he cant harrass the church members anymore. Sunday night sister clark and I went to the church to update some of our investigators information on the IPads and I had this thought, "we probably should lock the church door" and I just kind of forgot about it, (sister clark later told me she had the same thought) and we were sitting in the back and we hear the man come into the church and we look and saw scary man. This is how it went:

Scary man:"Is the bishop here?..........Are you two all alone?" Creepy smile

WE WERE TERRIFIED.

Me: "Nope, but we do have some REALLY STRONG men in the back of the church working on a project and you should go sit in the foyer and wait."

scary man: leaves the room

Sister clark and I hyperventilate a little and then we cautiously leave the room while I am calling the Elders and we cant find scary man anywhere!!!!!!

He pops out of nowhere and asks where the bishop is in his again and the elders are the phone with me and I keep on telling scary man to sit down and dont go anywhere.

Sister Clark and I are running to the girls bathroom and scary man tries to follow

Me: "SIT DOWN IN THE FOYER NOW SCARY MAN!"----in the most christlike way possible....

Sister Clark and I are now hiding by the baptismal font (obviously for comfort)

The elders are running to the train station to get on the next train closest to church and they are try to stay and calm and keep us calm, they were like "get into the computer room it has a lock!"

So sister clark and I run to the computer room and then of course the other sisters arrive at the church and are like, "uuuhhhhh why is scary man at church?" We run out and grab them and then lock them with us into the computer room.

Next time we go out scary man was gone. Elders (aka our zone leaders) arrive and they are soaking wet (of course it was raining) and red in the face from running and exhausted. We didnt know where scary man went. The other elders in our area arrived (one of them is our district leader) and he was so mad at scary man. They went over to scary man's apartment to talk to him but he wouldnt answer.

Moral of the story is, ALWAYS LOCK THE CHURCH DOOR. And when in doubt run to the baptismal font!

THE CHURCH IS TRUE!!!

Love, SISTA STAPLES

Lunch with Wada Shimai (bishop's wife)