Hope is the Anchor

Dear Family!!

KONNICHIWA!!!!!! HOW ARE YOU????

I will begin this letter with my food story of the week. It was on Thursday. We went to drop off a gift (homemade bread) for Ki*** kyo*** for his birthday. He invited us inside, and Kitada shimai made us hot chocolate (it all of a sudden got super cold this week!! i am now wondering why I decided not to pack any of my winter clothes...) and set out a huge plate of chocolates. The chocolates were delicious!!! We were starving because we hadnt eaten for 7ish hours, so we were eating quite a few of the chocolates. But then kitada shimai remembered that Dobson shimai said she likes okonomiyaki, and they ordered okonomiyaki for all of us! Really, we did not want them to do that at all, but they did. I do not like real Japanese okonimiyaki very much because it tastes like Japanese food, so when we got it and I was saying my prayer over the food, I asked for special help to be able to eat it with good manners and to be able to handle whatever tastes and textures went into my mind. I am so glad God listens to and answers prayers, because guess what was in the okonomiyaki...SQUID!! AHHH!!! Nasty. Bleh. Ew. Ha Dobson shimai and Griffin shimai both had to slip their squid onto Murayama shimais plate. I, thanks to God, was able to handle it. But I never want to eat okonimiyaki again. We were stuffed by the end of the okonomiyaki, but of course, Kitada shimai kept feeding us more and more! You all thought I would lose weight in Japan, but the members are making it extremely difficult to do!

The Lord is blessing us so much here in Mikunigaoka! Agan it was a long week of finding, but this week, we found people! Yay!! On Tuesday morning, we visited Reira san. She is somebody we found from the area book. She is from the Philipines, so she does not speak English well and her Japanese is pretty basic. She had a couple lessons from the missionaries at the beginning of this year but then got too busy to meet again. In the lesson, we asked if her sister wanted to join, and she did! However, she does not speak Japanese or English. So we taught setting the table in Japanese/English, and then Reira san translated to Johna. It was honestly a pretty interesting experience because I recognized some of the Tagalog words and they definitely were not talking about what we had been talking about, and there were some things we said that Reira san could not understand in English or Japanese. BUT they both said they want to meet again and learn more! So we have a lesson with them again this week, and they both became new investigators! That tripled our investigator pool haha. 

Wednesday night before Eikaiwa, we had about 20 minutes, so we decided to go walk around our church and the eki and see if we could find anybody. I have to admit, I was not expecting anything great to happen. For the past 3 weeks, we had been streeting and housing and trying to find people all day long, and we had not found anybody and so I figured this 20 minutes would just be another 20 minutes of going out and doing that. I still had faith that the Lord would definitely lead us to people or lead them to us at the right time, but I guess I figured it would not happen during that short 20 minute period of time we had before Eikaiwa. Boy was I wrong! Right outside our church, we stopped somebody and started talking to her. We found out she goes to a Christian college right now, so we asked if we could teach her more about God, and she said no. Then we suggested that we could do a really fast free church tour, and she accepted on the condition that it would just be a fast free church tour. At the end of the tour, we sat in the chapel. Dobson shimai and  I sang *I am a Child of God* for her and testified that we know God loves her and she is a daughter of God. Well, she said she wanted to learn more, and we set up another appointment for Saturday. Saturday we taught her Setting the Table. It was one of my very favorite times teaching that lesson for multiple reasons. First of all, I finally have it solidly memorized, so I did not have to worry about looking at my notes! Also, she just barely turned 19 years old, and so did I, and she likes music, and so do I, and she likes to eat, and so do I, so I felt a lot of connections with her! Most of all, the lesson really had an impression on me because as we asked her if she has ever thought about her relationship with God, it really surprised me that she had no idea she was a daughter of God! As a 19 year old girl, I really rely on that knowledge and use it as a HUGE source of comfort and hope. So I truly truly desired for her to feel Gods love and learn of Him and form a relationship with Him. And I guess my prayers for the Spirit to be in that lesson really worked because she said she wants to meet again, and she set up the appointment for Tuesday! That is a miracle in and of itself because it is hard for us to meet, especially with teenagers, more than once a week, but she seems anxious to learn more, and Tuesday will be our third lesson in a week! Yay! I love her! 

Yesterday at church my mind was blown out of the water. God is a God of miracles. Let me rewind. On Tuesday during study, we received a phonecall at the church, and it was somebody looking for the American missionaries. Well she found us! She said that she had met the missionaries a while ago and she said she went to church last week but it was all locked up and nobody was there (ahh general conference!!) and she wanted to know when to come to church. WOW The Lord really does lead the prepared elect to us. Her name is Fukushima san, and so all week long we actually thought it was the Fukushima san we had previously met, and we were super excited about it. On Sunday we got to church around 9:30 and walked into the chapel, and there was a lady sitting in there who we did not recognize. We introduced ourselves and found out that that lady was Fukushima san! (A different one than we were expecting...but still we were excited to meet her!) She said that she met the missionaries a couple years ago and she remembered going to church and feeling something, and she wanted to feel that feeling again. Wow! We taught her Setting the Table before church and she said she definitely wants to learn more so we are meeting again next Sunday. And she said she felt GREAT at church! Yippee!!!! What a miracle! 

And to finish off this week of miracles, here is one more HUGE miracle!: We have really had a hard time knowing what to do with our investigator, Yamauchi kyoudai. He has not been progressing, and after a lot of pondering and talking about him, we thought that maybe he is actually not a sheep, maybe he is one of those goats. So for the past week and a half, we have not contacted him. We just wanted to see if he would ever contact us and say he actually wants to learn more. Yesterday we definitely were not expecting him to come to church because he only comes when we call him, and we did not call him. Also, it was pouring rain, and he hates the rain and does not come to church when it is raining. But about 15 minutes into sacrament meeting, in walks Yamauchi kyoudai!! We had not contacted him, it was pouring rain, and on his own, he decided to come to sacrament meeting! There really is something special about him! We do not know what to do for him still or how to help him, but we are praying so hard and we know that with Gods help, he can definitely enter the waters of baptism!!

I learned SO much about Gods love and power this week as these miracles were happening here in Mikunigaoka. 

I love you all!! Have a great week and good luck with all your endeavors!

Love,

Crofts shimai