I Stand All Amazed: Anne 4-7-14

This week has been a wonderful! We have had a couple bumps along the way but overall it's been very good. We have been getting more progressing investigators and our church attendance is going up. I love the bring a friend to church idea that you came up with at mission leadership council. I think we are doing great in Koiwa right now! Sister Owens and I have three investigators coming to church on Sunday and the other sisters have about five so we cover it with just only the sisters! Yay! We have seen many miracles and tender mercies this last week. On Monday when we were dendoing we visited a member and got on the train to go back to our church. Well we accidentally got on the limited express that doesn't stop by the church's eki or our eki closest to our apartment but we ended up in Yawata. We thought for a bit that we should go back and finish what we were doing at the church, but then I thought for a second, maybe we were supposed to get on the wrong train. So we decided to stay in Yawata and go visit a member and hopefully see a miracle on the way, and we did! We met Yumi! We were just about to find the members house we we said hi to a lady on a bike and she seemed kind of curious. She looked at our tags and she started to smile and she said are you Christian? We told her that we are missionaries who teach about Jesus Christ and she said , "oh good! I want to study about him really bad! Can you teach me about Jesus Christ? I love his teachings!" It was the first time I had ever heard that from a Japanese Buddhist! It was so wonderful! She came to our that we did with the ward on Saturday. She had a wonderful time as we sang popcorn popping under the cherry blossom tree

. And she is coming to church! She is so prepared and we are so excited for her!

We taught Fumiko on Wednesday and she is progressing now and we love her so much. Her dog died in October and she has been having a hard time getting over that because she truly believed that her dog was not a dog and it was her daughter. So she is still mourning over her dog. We taught her the plan of salvation that day and told her that god loves all of his creations and wants everyone to be happy in heavens and she could live eternally with her family and see her dog again. So we explained everything to her and she said she doesn't understand what it is like to be happy and she doesn't understand the living happy eternally concept. We want to have more genki and happy lessons with her. She came to our English class after our lesson and we all went around the room and said in English what our most favorite place in the world is and Fumiko said that her favorite place in the world is in this church. My heart went pitter patter.

Thursday night was crazy. The missionary mom (basically) in our ward Yamada Shimai had her birthday on Thursday and we wanted to show our appreciation for her by throwing a birthday party for her and bring our investigators to it. We had the elders make tons of pancakes and Sister Owens and I decorated the church. Yamada Shimai felt so special and that made me happy. She always takes care of us and is always trying to help our investigators. After the dinner Sister Owens was not feeling well at all and she was having some severe pain. I was looking up on the health guide what was wrong with her and we couldnt figure it out so we called the mission doctor and he said that she needed to go to the hospital. She went the next day and she found out she had an infection in her digestive system. We had to take our proselyting time a little easy for the past couple of days. She says she just feels a little off now but I think she will be perfectly fine by next week.

While Sister Owens was resting I went through all of our contacts on our phone and on our area book and tried contacting as many people as I could. We got in touch with 2 investigators! We have called one of our investigators everyday for the past month and she has never answered. She finally answered on friday night and she said that has been feeling so sad lately and that she doesnt know what god's plan is for her. The only family she has is her mother who has dementia and she visits her often. She said that saturday was her birthday! So Sister Owens and I put a cake together for her and jumped on our bikes for a 45 minute ride up the steepest hills ever and we made it to her house. She wasnt there when we knocked on her door and we just waited and she came around the corner on her bike and smiled at us. We sang happy birthday to her and gave her the cake. She was so happy! She opened up to us and told us all about what she is going through right now, we sang "A Child's Prayer" to her and she just was overcome with God's love, you could tangibly see it. It was just a wonderful experience standing on her porch and singing to her the word's that The Lord would have us say to His child.

We had an Ohanami...or we went to look at the blossoms with all of our investigators saturday afternoon and we had 3 investigators come and they all became such good friends. We had a wonderful time singing primary songs in english together under the cherry blossoms and they had such a fun time learning english and about God's beautiful creations. I love this beautiful land that I am serving in.

Love you all!!

Love, Sister Staples! / ステイ姉妹

on the way to the denist. All of the painters on the sidewalk...