I Stand All Amazed: Anne 4-20-14

This week has been crazy! Saying goodbye to some of my most favorite
people in the world was really hard. I was in koiwa for 3 transfers.
It's the perfect amount of transfers for a missionary to be in a ward
but I could of stayed there the rest of my mission and would of been
happy! It was a challenging couple of days afterwards.

We had a lesson with Aoki at Yamada's Shimai's house on Tuesday night
and we taught her about the temple and eternal families. Aoki has been
the hardest investigator that I have ever had. She is from China and
she is the most stubborn person I have ever met. She has a desire to
come closer to God but because she made a covenant with the Buddhist
church she says that she can never be baptized. I worked so hard with
her for about 5 months and have been determined to not let go of her.
I know that her heart is changing. It is just a slow change. I see it
in her everyday. I am willing to wait on it. I know she will be the
strongest member when she is baptized. When we taught her about the
temple on Tuesday night she loved it. When I bore my testimony on the
temple and how important it is to make promises to God so that we can
live as families forever she just started to cry. I was so surprised
because this lady is a machine. She just cried and cried. She felt
God's love. She told me she was going to miss me so much, I didn't
know that she liked me that much. But she said that she is going
to keep on studying with Sister Owens. It will happen with her!

Wednesday afternoon me and Sister Clark went on splits and we went to
go and say goodbye to Summer. Summer cried and little Anka who I just
barely met was so sweet to me as I said goodbye to her. Summer said,
"I wish I could keep you forever but I know that you are doing the
Lord's work and are supposed to go to Okegawa. Someday I will be a
mormon, but I need to study and pray more before I do that." Sister
Owens and SIster Seamons will be with her. Summer said she is coming
to Utah next summer to visit her friend who lives there. She said that
she wants to go see the temple with me and Sister Clark. ITS
HAPPENING! I am hoping we can go through the temple with her for her
endowments whenever she comes :)

That night we had our english class and a goodbye dinner for all of
the missionaries in the ward leaving (Me, Sister Clark, Elder Simmons,
and Elder Pelfrey) (Oh Ashley! Elder Pelfrey came to Koiwa a little
while after I got here! I think you and maren know his family somehow.
He was also in utsunomiya when I was there) It was a night of
miracles. Almost all of my investigators came. It was so touching.
Fumiko sang some opera for me (she LOVES music) it was so funny. She
is so cute. Natsuko came at the end and said goodbye! All of the
recent converts came and many more people came. I was so touched. I
loved this ward so much. We all cried and hugged each other forever.
The bishop's son came a long way to say goodbye for his parents and it
was so nice. I left Koiwa at 5:30 in the morning on thursday and made
my way to okegawa. It was sad but I love OKEGAWA!

The ward is soooooo nice and everyone is so loving here! They all were
hugging me when I first met them and half the ward is from peru I
swear. We have a lot of different languages going on here. I live in
the ghetto part of town and it makes me happy. People are fun and it's
a different way to dendo. Sister Kinghorn and I get along wonderfully
and we are excited for the miracles we are going to see.

ONe of our investigators, Yuko. Has some shizoprenia (wrong spelling
sorry) and she has a fear of water and men. She has a baptismal date
in august and we are going to slowly get her used to the water. She
wants to be baptized so bad! We are going to start it out with putting
our feet in buckets of water all together during our lessons and
listening to Mormon tabernacle choir as we do it. It's gunna be fun! I
love all the other investigators too! I don't have anymore time but I
will write more next week. I LOVE YOU ALL.

BONJIA!

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