June 2nd

this week summer began. it is so hot and the humidity hasn't even
gotten crazy yet. but I'm not miserable. we are enjoying the sunshine!
but I realized I mostly brought winter clothes...
we spent our week with goals to work with and strengthen the members.
our ward has interesting history and isn't super united so it's been
great to get to know the individuals and visit less active members.
one of my favorite visits from this week was with Masui kyodai. he was
the bishop of the kichijoji ward ten years back. we stopped by his
home and he was so happy to see missionaries. he spoke pretty much
perfect English. we spoke of his conversion and he shared some stories
from his mission. We wondered how his English got to be so fluent. He
explained that he was enrolled in the English course in the premortal
existence and half way through the course he got sent to Japan! I told
him that I must have taken Japanese before coming to earth. He agreed
that I definitely learned Japanese before. This is perfect... I'm
already fluent in Japanese.. I just have to remember what I learned.
And then find all my friends that knew me in heaven and knew I was
taking Japanese so that I could come share the gospel with them! Haha
he is such a great man with a great sense of humor. He is mostly kept
from activity in the church because of his wife but he has hope that
he will be able to return if he endures this trial right now.
We tried to visit this other less active lady. We followed the address
and ended up at an assisted living place where you have to call the
person you are visiting so they can let you in but we didn't know her
room number. We decided to play "find the kanji". We looked at the
post office boxes to find which sets of kanji could possibly be the
ones for her name. Luckily her name is really easy... Futaki. 二木 (two
trees). We were able to find her room number and let in by the people
who work there after the doors opened and then closed three or four
times for us. Yeah, we were a little confused. The doors opened but no
one said we could come in and we didn't know if we had to put on
slippers. Turns out she wasn't home but we felt like it was a miracle.
We left the conference edition of the liahona and will try to visit
again this week!


Talent show in Machida with Moeka. She was the STAR! 

 So there is this other lady we've been working with... She called us
this week and invited us to dinner. She asked what time was good for
us and we settled on 6 on Saturday. We show up late and really hungry
after biking to find her apartment with the wrong address. She lets us
in and proceeds to tell us that she would love to take us to dinner
sometime. She asked us when would be a good time but kept telling us
that those days weren't our p day and we were too busy. Anyway, we
taught a lesson and then she gave us some grape juice.
We had lunch with Saito Shimai on Friday. She is my favorite ever. She
is so sweet and loves the missionaries so much. She is a beginner at
English but loves throwing in the random English words she knows. She
is totally understanding that we aren't perfect at Japanese and she
knows we are trying so hard. We went over to her house and ate
delicious food and had the best conversations. She is a return
missionary and super strong member so she really understands our
purpose. Our conversations were focused on strengthening the ward, our
investigators, less actives, and other aspects of the work. She came
to an investigator fireside and really fellow shipped our friends. She
is so amazing and Christlike!
The lesson this week in relief society was about charity and loving
others the way Christ does. We split into groups and shared
experiences and thoughts about how we have strengthened relationships
through service, how we can love someone who is hard to like at first,
etc. after the lesson I saw sister Hathaway speaking with a sister in
the ward who had criticized my Japanese before. Because of the lesson,
I felt like I needed to join the conversation and try hard to love
those who think I'm an idiot. I walked over and pretty quickly she
begins to make rude remarks about my Japanese. It was awkward and she
pretended that she liked my outfit. But I'm going to pray for her :)
any ideas of how to love and serve her?


Buddhist temple (:

 On Sunday we had just a couple hours for some finding. It was hot hot
hot. But we made it fun. We started with a goal of talking to 100
people. With each conversation we counted down. Time ran out and we
still had 77 more people to invite but our outrageous goal kept us
motivated.
Saturday we traveled an hour by train and 30 min walking in the
blazing sun to the Machida stake center for a talent show. Our
investigator, Moeka, performed and sang the climb by Miley Cyrus. She
did so well and performed so confidently! There were tons of people
there and each act was seriously amazing! One of the best talent shows
I've been to. One of the performers was Jett Edwards who apparently is
a Grammy winner. He was an absolute hit. One of the songs was called
reach out and take a hand. He explained in English that we were to all
stand up and make a circle and reach out to people we didn't know and
follow him in a dance. Of course no one understood it because there
was no translation but sister wells and I got up and initiated for the
audience to join us. It ended up being so fun dancing with everyone!
The show was a defining moment for Moeka. She loved that we would
support her and come to the show just for her. She loves that we
always welcome her at church activities even though she is not a
member. She has so many friends from all the activities and just had
so many people to talk to after the show especially because she was
the star! President Wada gave us a ride back to kichijoji. It had been
awhile since I had been in a car. I got so car sick. It didn't help
that we went on the craziest highway. We had to drive through shibuya
which is like huge and crowded so the Japanese are genius and built
the freeway underneath the city. It spirals down into the ground at
high speeds until it becomes this huge tunnel that goes on forever.
When you exit you drive up the steepest hill and back into the
sunlight. Crazy. But we made it back just in time to hop on our bikes
and head to a less actives home.

 
            Playing Hokey Pokey in English Class
 
 Earlier in the week we met with a referral from the elders! They met
this lady who was super good at English and wanted to do English
lessons.  We met with her in the morning. As we began to teach we
explained the deal: 30 min English 30 min gospel, she wasn't super
excited but she said she couldn't refuse it because it was Free. When
the 30 min of English were up she promptly reminded us that it was now
our time to talk about the church. We were just going to introduce to
BOM to her but then she had tons of questions for us! We mostly taught
lesson one through answering her questions.  We tried to end right
after our thirty minutes but she said it was ok if we continued
because she wanted her questions answered. She is not religious and
says she can't believe in God but she said this was our chance to
persuade her. She didn't accept the Book of Mormon because she
admitted she would never read it because she has lots of other books
she would rather read. We asked her to pray at the end of the lesson
and she quickly agreed! It was a really good lesson and we set up an
appointment with her for Friday with intentions to meet every Wednesday 
and Friday for six weeks. We also had plans to cook together
and learn some Japanese dishes. Our friendship was short lived.  On
Thursday she called the Elders and told them she didn't believe that
religion and English should be taught together so she didn't want to
meet with us anymore. We called to confirm our appointment and she
said she couldn't meet but wouldn't tell us why. She just told us to
"ask the boys". We were pretty bummed but maybe she will change her
mind!
We also had a lesson with Pinko on Wed. Oh my her lessons are
always... Interesting. It is super frustrating because she does not
understand English or Japanese hardly at all but she wants to study in
Japanese not Chinese. We had to explain things over and over and we
don't understand her responses so it is always a mess.  We got pretty
frustrated and we couldn't feel the spirit so we ended it but we are
going to do it again next week and try again. Never thought I would
have this kind of language barrier. :)
Thursday was a white day! We had lots of time to dendo! Our favorite
thing ever! :) but really it was great! We were on our way to find a
potential investigator's house when we happened upon tokyo Women's
Christian university! We didn't even know it was there! This is where
we met our friend Airi.  She is so cute and wants to learn English so
of course we invited her to eikaiwa and switched phone numbers. And
then we parted ways. We were texting her the next day and decided to
invite her to president Wada's questions of the soul fireside. She
came! And had a great experience. She was able to meet a few of the
single adults and lots of the other members and missionaries really
reached out to her. We will see her again this week at eikaiwa and
sports night.

 
The Sato family took at the missionaries out to dinner! 

 Scripture of the week: Alma 6:6
Fast and pray for those who don't know God. We are a part of a
marvelous work and a wonder... Bringing the gospel forth to all
nations and people! A gospel of peace and happiness! The work is
hastening in the Lord's time and we are witnesses and builders of the
kingdom :) how cool is that?!
Anyway... Love ya! Miss ya!