KAZOKU

It is great to be writing you again! I hope everything is going well for everybody!

Japan is perfect for me. I do not know if I was made specifically for Japan, or if Japan was made specifically for me. All I know is that I love everything about Japan! Maybe one reason for this is that Japan is actually a lot how I expected it to be. We go down the street and there is a little old Japanese grandpa riding his bike with an umbrella attached to it. Then we go further down the street and there is a group of school girls dressed up in their school uniforms with violin cases on their shoulders. It is so cute!

When I first arrived in Japan, I was thinking if I were to design a city, it would turn out exactly like Japan. The architecture and the layout and the weather and everything just seems like something my brain would come up with.

Another thing that is perfect about Japan is the clothes. Oh my goodness we went to the mall last Monday so I could get my dendo back, and wow. Wow wow wow! You know how I never liked shopping? Well that is because I had a hard time finding exactly what I wanted. Well this mall had 5 floors, and in every single store, everything was exactly something I would LOVE to walk around wearing! I LOVE the style here in Japan!! It is SO CUTE!! Anyway, I am a missionary so I got a little simple dendo bag. But I might just fly to Japan every year for my Christmas shopping.

Tuesday was a day based completely on FAITH. In my apartment there is me and sister Dobson and then another companionship of a sister who came to Japan with me and the other sister is from Japan. Well sister dobson and the japanese sister are the sister training leaders, so on Tuesday they went to the mission home for training, and sister Griffin and I were left on our own! We were two girls who had arrived in Japan less than a week before and could not speak any Japanese and we had ALL day to make the best use of the Lord:s time! After study, we set out to work. We went to a college, because we figured we could hand out english class flyers and they would be excited about that. Well, they were not really excited about it. People really tried to avoid us. In fact, one person read our name tag and saw that it said Jesus Christ and she ran away! I have noticed a trend with the people here. When little girls see me, they get excited and wave a lot. When middle-school age girls see me, they laugh. I haven:t figured out why yet. When teenage girls see me, they usually get really shy around me. When anybody older than teenager sees me, they do their best to avoid me. When little boys see me, they just stare. Haha a lot of times they do double takes and then triple takes and then they just stare. When teenage boys see me they just go crazy. Kind of like in America. Anyway, so Sister Griffin and I were on our own, and we could not really talk, so we left the college. We went to the trainstation and tried to talk to people, but not one person wanted to talk. We just kept telling each other that even though we could not talk, we had dendo fire, and the Lord was aware of our efforts and he would step in and make up the difference for what we could not do. We spent a LONG time housing, but we still did not have one person who wanted to listen to us. After dinner, we went back to another trainstation. This time a few people were slightly willing to at least listen to us, but because we had no practice with anything past our introduction, we usually did not know what to say so we ended up throwing out some Japanese words and giving the people english class flyers. Around 7 30, we were expecting Dobson Shimai and Murayama shimai to return, so we were just waiting around the trainstation trying to get people to talk to us. The coolest thing happened! A girl around our age and her grandma walked out of a restaurant and when we started talking they both got so excited! Apparently the girl had just returned home after a year in Canada and she was so excited to see people who spoke english! So we talked to her for quite a while and got her number and we are meeting with her next week!

Wednesday was a nice welcome to dendo (dendo is missionary work) day. We were biking to an investigators home when it suddenly started raining. And when I say rain I mean pour. It was pouring rain SO SO hard! And we are biking as fast as we can and there is rain splattering off of me, and because I am new here, I do not have a rain coat or rain boots yet. I got SOAKED!!! The investigator ended up not being home, so we decided to go back to the church and get ready for the next lesson. Well it was raining SO hard. And when there are two girls in Japan riding their bikes around town and the one in back is wearing just a little skirt and a little sweater and little shoes and it is pouring rain and she is more wet than she even gets in the shower, she just has to laugh. So of course I was laughing really hard. I always say konnichi wa to everyone I pass as I am biking, and I got more hellos and his back on that day than ever before! I think I might just never buy a raincoat or rainboots because I think it was good missionary work!

Thursday we had a super interesting lesson. THe investigators are a 13 year old boy and his mom. They had only had a couple lessons before (about God and prayer) and they did not believe it at all. THe boy only kept meeting because he wanted to see if there were any connections between religion and science, and the mom just wanted to learn about Christianity. Dobson shimai planned the lesson for them before I got in the area, and she had had the feeling to do the First Vision lesson, which is really weird because in Japan that is usually after at least four lessons. Anyway, we got there, and this boy had two of his 14-year old friends over, and his little sister was in the room, so it was CRAZY! THe boys were laughing and talking and the little sister was just yelling and making noise the whole time! CRAZY!! But we showed the Joseph SMith movie, and one of the 14 year old boys was SO interested in it. His eyes were glued to the TV despite the distractions. Afterward, we asked our investigator what he thought of it, and he said that he could not believe it because science does not support it. We asked the mom and she said there is no way she could believe it without actually seeing it. Then that 14 year old boy jumped in and said I believe it!! We were just like REally?? And he said yeah can you teach me how to pray? And we said YES!!! He became a new investigator. The Lord works in mysterious ways, but He is definitely working.

Friday we had a zone training meeting that was really really good. I LOVE my zone! Everybody calls me lauracroftshimai. Haha they are fascinated by my name. We talked a lot about how we have these goals as a mission and we have so many tools to make these goals, so now we need to go to work and access the Lords power and make these goals happen! After the meeting, a few of us sisters went to a sushi restaurant! This restaurant was the coolest thing ever! There are just little plates with sushi and they go around the whole restaurant on a little conveyor belt so you can sit at your table and if you see something you want you grab it off the conveyor belt. At the end, they count your plates and you pay by the plate. It is the most genius idea I have ever seen. I think it would be a huge hit in america. With american food. I must say, the only thing I liked was my little plate of chicken. Haha.

Saturday the Lord really worked miracles through us!! So on Thursday night we received a referral from the MTC. We went to find him right away, but as you know, addresses are extremely confusing in Japan, so we had a super duper hard time finding his house. After going back and forth and asking a lot of people, we finally found where he lives, and it was an apartment. We tried calling him and his phone number didn:t work, and we did not have his apartment room number. By that time, it was time to return home anyway. On Saturday morning we decided to go back during our study to try to find him. We planned on just housing the whole apartment until we found him. We started on the first floor and not one person answered. We got about halfway through the second floor and somebody finally answered! (he answered his little microphone doorbell thing). We gave our little introduction and he said to wait and then we heard him speaking in english in the background and he said they are here at the door right now! I think I will let them in. So he came to the door and invited us in! We actually could not go in because we are two sisters and he was the only one home, so then he went and grabbed his computer and brought it to the door. On his computer he was skyping with somebody and when she saw us, she got SO EXCITED!! She was going crazy!! So apparently she is from the phillipines, she is his english teacher, she is a return missionary, and they are dating! She was the one who had sent in the referral and when she saw that there were two sister missionaries at the door, she went crazy! Anyway, he is a new investigator of ours. I know the Lord made it so we arrived at his door right at the perfect timing so we could meet his girlfriend and have everything work out. MIRACLE. He came to church yesterday and then we gave a short lesson afterward about God. At the end, we asked him if he had any questions and he said, *how can I know for myself if it is true.* THat is a perfect question!! We said *we will teach you taht!* and so tonight we are going back to teach him and we have a feeling he will be baptized really soon!!!

Later on Saturday we had another miracle lesson. We found Mari chan in the area book and just randomly decided to call her, and she said she would love to have a lesson! We met her at the church and gave her the lesson about God, and she was SO HAPPY. She kept saying over and over how happy she was to hear from us and to hear what we were saying. We would say things in our lesson like *we can teach more about that later* or *if you would like to continue meeting with us* and such. Everytime we said something along those lines, she said *please!* Oh I am excited to teach her!! She just got married last sunday though, and she is 20 and he is 44! Crazy!

Last night we had dinner at a member:s home! I:ll send pictures! My favorite thing (the only thing I actually enjoyed) was the Sprite! ;)

Well, sorry my writing is super down hill. Haha i have less time now than in the MTC! But I want you all to know that I love Japan and I love missionary work and I love the Lord and I love you!! Have the best week ever!!

Love,

Kris

Pa* my debit card number is... I love you! And stuff should be sent to my mission home address.

Ma* I found out we cannot go to electronic stores any longer, which means I can not buy a camera here :( maybe an early christmas present??? Anyway, tennis is HUGE here! We ride by a park a lot that has more than 20 tennis courts! And they are ALWAYS busy. On Saturday there was a huge tournament going on with cheerleaders and everything!

Jas and Becca; Thanks for the emails!! BEcca......CUTE!!!!!!!! Ah you are the cutest pregnant person I have ever seen!!! CUTE!!

Peach and Jana+ THanks for the emails! I love the SLC temple too! it rains here too. But to prevent flooding, they have 4 foot deep canals on the sides of the roads.

Ty; I love you!

Saud: Thanks for the email ;) I love you to pieces! Cute sweater! You would die over the clothes here. How is T.P.?  How is school?

Dan: I would rather have at least 5 mosquito bites. Right now i have more than 100 mosquito bites! That is a lot!!!!

Joseph+ good luck in karate! if you want help saying sensei, I can help.

I lov eyou all!!!