Kenzie Says "Kon'nichiwa": November 16th

Hey family!

Here's a little update on this week. First off... My companion and I got pretty sick this weekend so we have been in bed for like 3 days. Pray for us!

On Tuesday night we had a cooking activity at the church. It was Choi shimai's idea... All 4 sister missionaries came and we invited a couple ward members. Choi taught us how to make a Korean dish. It was yummy. Then each sister missionary shared a mini devotional about missionary work. It was a really good defining moment for Choi Shimai and allowed her to use her talents and make friends in the ward.

Wednesday I went to Tokorozawa on exchanges with Merstrand Shimai! It was such a good day. We studied, then went to a beautiful park for finding. Lots of the leaves had changed colors and it was a gorgeous day. We talked to tons of people! Sister merstrand is a really bold missionary and I really admire her. We met with one of her investigators for a lesson as well. She is this cute and sort of crazy old lady, Kimiko San. She put the picture of Christ that the sisters gave her, as well as the Book of Mormon on her Buddhist altar because she knows they are really important things. We taught her about the Spirit and invited her to come to church on Sunday. She said it will be her first time going to a church in years but she hoped it would take away some of her worries. Then we taught Eikaiwa together. We taught the advanced class and that's always fun because they are usually basically fluent in English. Sister merstrand likes to send her students with a challenge or question to ponder each week. The question they answered this time was "what do you want you friends to remember about you when you die?" I was really surprised, that most of the answers given were that they didn't care if they were remembered.

Thursday: We went to visit a less active who has now missed her appointment with us twice in a row. :( We planned a really good message for her about the role of women and were really sad we weren't able to share it with her. We went to visit a member for her birthday. It was fun because I had never met her before and she was home and we were able to sing to her!

Friday: We had district meeting in the morning. I was asked to do a training on teaching the plan of salvation. We paired up with another companionship and were to teach a simple overview of the lesson in 5 minutes. We met Okuno Shimai for a lesson. We talked about the temple and she said she wants to have an interview for a temple recommend so she can go and do baptisms. We will teach her about other temple ordinances next time. We had a lesson with Choi Shimai and Asada Shimai about obedience and prayer and scripture study. We watched part of Elder Scott's talk from conference. Asada Shimai was perfect... Really good fellowshipper and friend. She shared powerful testimony of prayer and how obedience is the way to be free. Then we met with hirata Shimai for a lesson. We watched the last part of president uchtdorf's talk from the women's conference and read scriptures about the blessings coming after tribulation. And we watched a mormon message about trials called "mountains to climb". Hirata Shimai really appreciated the lesson and said that she felt God's love through us.

Well. That's all for now! Love you.

Love,

Sister Kinz