KYOTO BOUND

Christmas gifts from ward members

delicious dragonfruit!

 

"that stuff in the bowl. it is rice. with chicken. and fish. and a raw egg on top.  and it is delicious.  i promise!"

District on church roof

Dearest Family,

Merrry Christmas! I could not have come up with a better way to celebrate Christmas than by doing missionary work! It was a pleasure to spend my day serving the Lord! And it was SO GREAT talking to you!!!! I am glad you are all doing well!
What a week! Every one of our investigators was busy this week, which made meeting with them difficult. We had six lessons cancel on us! It was rough! But despite those cancellations, we still had more douseki lessons than we have ever had in a week. We were able to teach two people from the area book and they both became new investigators!
     Also, our lesson with Sota kun went really well this week. He is our 11 year old investigator...he reminds me a lot of Danny. When we picked him up for his lesson he was having a Super Smash Brothers party with his friends, but when we came he told them to go home because he was going to the church with us. Amazing! In October, he was completely ready for baptism, but he could not get permission. His mom wants him to wait a few years before he can be baptized, so lately we have just been teaching him to help his faith continue to grow. However, last time as we were planning for him, baptism seemed to keep coming into our minds, and as we changed things around, we ended up just doing a simple baptism lesson. We were able to read out of the childrens new testament book and do a game to help him understand the Holy Ghost. After the lesson, he told us it was really easy to understand and (without us even asking) that he is going to talk to his mom again about baptism and ask if he can be baptized sooner. To me it is amazing that an 11 year old can have so much faith!!
     We were not able to meet with Mai chan this week as many times as we had planned, so we ended up having to teach all of the commandments in one lesson! We were concerned because we want to make sure the lesson was a spiritual lesson, but with putting all of the commandments into one lesson, we thought that would be difficult! However we planned and mogied and replanned and remogied her lesson, and the lesson ended up going really really well! We had a douseki there who was able to explain the commandments well, and she was baptized when she was 18, so she had some good experiences to share that Mai chan really related with. The commandments are actually going to be difficult for her to keep, but she wants eternal life and she wants to be baptized and she believes God will bless her, and so she is willing to keep them all! It was a wonderful lesson!

     Lately, I have learned more what it means to LOVE your investigators. Of course I desire for them to be baptized, and I have always loved meeting with investigators, but lately, I have really felt LOVE for my investigators. When I saw Mai chan smiling and happy inside her home, it filled me with so much joy! And when Yamauchi kyoudai got mad at us and told us he would never be baptized, I was sincerely sad for him and for his life. I honestly do not know how to develop this kind of love for investigators, but I am grateful that the Lord has blessed me to be able to feel this love. When I truly love the investigators and the people here, missionary work becomes even more wonderful!!! I LOVE missionary work! I LOVE being a missionary! And I LOVE my Savior. What a privilege it is to be serving Him!

     Have a happy new year!! Enjoy all the celebrations this week!

Love,

Crofts shimai

YOROKOBI (JOY)

メリクリスマス！！

Dear Family!! How are you?

Merry Christmas!

I am so excited to talk with you on Thursday! There are so many wonderful things happening here in the Japan Kobe mission!!

We had a fabulous Christmas party on Saturday. We had four investigators and five other potential investigators show up! It was quite the turnout! They served a really nice American style (kind of) dinner and the youth put on a nice little program. The ward gave me and Griffin shimai each a HUGE sack full of presents from the ward! Slippers and tights and lotion and tons and tons and tons of food. Including salsa. Yay!! The best part of the night for me was seeing Matsuzaki kyoudai there. He was helping out with the food and participating in the program and having a good time...he is just like a member now! He blessed the sacrament for his first time yesterday. Sadly, yesterday was his last day in this ward because he is moving back home to Tokyo for his job. It was such a pleasure to see him move through the converstion process the way he did!

IT SNOWED ON FRIDAY!!!!! And whoever thinks weather in Idaho is crazy, you should try living in Japan! It was like a blizzard, and then completely sunny, and then a blizzard, and then completely sunny again for about an hour! There is no grass here, so the snow did not stick. But it was so fun! Definitely brought in the Christmas spirit!

Celebrating Christmas in a place where people do not know anything about Christ is definitely different. In fact, for merry christmas they say kurisumasu here (クリスマス）　, but Christ is kirisuto, （キリスト）so it is not even the same! It is sad! And Brandon, I am currently on the hunt for a Japanese nativity. I have seen nativities here, but I do not think they are Japanese.

For the most part, people do not have work off on Christmas. However, next week almost everybody will have work off! Today we did a big deep cleaning of the church, and one of the shimai was telling us that because it is the end of the year people get work off and they all deep clean. I guess that is their Christmas tradition here. And they eat Christmas cake.

Interestingly, we had 3 investigators come to our deep cleaning! We did not invite them, they just showed up!! Mai chan continues to inspire me by how GOOD she is. She is such a happy, helpful, faithful person and I am inspired by her every time I am with her! She came to the Christmas party and I feel like of all the Japanese people, I can be myself easiest around her. We had a good time joking and laughing, which is fun, but then when we teach her, I can always feel God so near. I know He is working along with her right now and helping her find her way to Him. What an honor to be working along with her too!

A few days ago we were streeting by the high school and another man came up to us and asked if we were for the Mormon church. I do not know how people recognize us! Maybe because we are foreign and we wear long skirts and have name tags. Anyway, he came to Eikaiwa that night, and then on Friday he called us and asked if he could come to our worship service, and on Sunday sure enough he came! We taught him after sacrament meeting, and he said that he came to church because he has an interest in learning about God and he want to know what Gods plan is. Every week we have moments like these that make it so clear to me that this is Gods work and He is the one who leads us all. We definitely did not do anything to find this man, he was just put right in our path at just the right time! What a miracle!

Serving a mission at this time of year makes me think a lot about miracles. Christs birth was the beginning of many many wonderful miracles. Today, I see these miracles as the light that comes into peoples eyes when they find out that God is their father, or the smile that comes onto their face when they pray to God and feel something for the first time. These kind of miracles are my favorite! Most importantly, the reason I am doing what I am doing, is because of the miracle of the living Christ, and the joy that can come into each one of our lives as we come unto Him. Thank you for your wonderful example...have a wonderful Christmas season!! I love you so much and I am excited to talk to you!!!!!!!

Love,

Crofts shimai

Dad and mom: happy anniversary!!! i did not forget. well i did, until wednesday night. but happy late anniversary!

Pops: I know you always talked about how every day of your mission you ate beans and salsa. Or something like that. Well today, because we got salsa for Christmas, we are celebrating our *monday before christmas mexican dinner* by eating salsa. It is a special treat for us! We have not found tortillas yet, but we still are going to look more today.

Mom:, to add on to the discussion about families. I think people have families because that is their duty and that is what they do, but showing love is not really something people do here. They hardly ever say I love you. And hugging is weird to them. And fathers for the most part do not participate in the childs rearing at all. They just provide the money. But I feel like lots of people still have families, and there are tons of young couples!

Also, the colorful tape....they use it for everything! Whatever you may want to tape or decorate, just use that colorful tape. And chopsticks...yeah I use them all the time and I still have not quite figured it out. Just practice :)

I love you!!

Jason and Becca: you have the most beautiful baby in the world.

Peach and Jana: enjoy Christmas in Texas! happy kind of anniversary.

Ty: feliz navidad!! i love you!

Sarah: if we see people walking down the streets holding hands, we know they are rebels. PDA is a no no here. Also, once we saw people kiss, and it was the most disgraceful thing I have seen since coming to Japan.

Dan: I love ya!! I would want a hat that turns me into a snowman.

Joseph: ho ho ho!!!!

Happiness is being a missionary AND an AUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear Family,

CONGRATULATIONS!! I was brought to tears for the first time since being in Japan today when I saw the pictures of sweet Cameron. What a wonderful wonderful blessing! I had a lot of exciting things happen this week, but what compares with a newborn baby?? Congratulations Becca! Thanks for the pictures...I am a proud aunt!!

Also, thanks for the fabulous PACKAGE! I was thrilled to receive it! You have no idea how much I love everything that was in it...but more than that how much I love all of you! I have been living in those black fuzzy clothes...they are so warm! And I loved seeing all the pictures and reading the letters...I love you all so much!

Anyway, the work is moving on here in Mikunigaoka and I LOVE it!

Mai chan is becoming our really good friend and she is progressing so well. She came to church yesterday and stayed for the whole thing and even stayed for a mini fireside afterward about cleaning our church building! Ha and there were only two members there and then us! But she wanted to stay, so we did. On Saturday, (Izumi) Arisa chan was baptized. Not our investigator, but the 8 year old in our ward! Mai chan came to the baptism. I am so impressed with how well she can feel and recognize the Spirit. She said it made her excited for her own baptism!

About 45 minutes before the baptism, our ward mission leader asked if I would speak. I could not say no. But right after he asked me, Mai chan showed up for her lesson, so we taught her (the Restoration--I LOVE teaching that lesson!) and then we went straight to the baptism and I was the first speaker! Zinke Kaicho puts a lot of emphasis on preparation, and I have never been more grateful for that. I already had little statements and testimonies prepared, so I was able to mix a few of them, pray a lot and speaking ended up being a spiritual experience rather than a stressful one. I was grateful because almost our whole ward was there and investigators were there and other nonmember friends. Preparation is key! (In addition to the Spirit...)

I also played the piano at the baptism for the special musical number. But the piano was actually an organ and it was on the weirdest stops but once I began playing I could not stop and change them, so it was like that for the whole musical number. Sometimes I wish they would just hand me a violin instead!

Arisa chan (our investigator) unfortunately was not able to be baptized this week. We had a really good lesson earlier in the week about faith and Gods power and she even received a Priesthood blessing, but she still did not receive permission to be baptized. However, we met with her last night and her faith is still so strong and she wants to continue meeting with us...we rescheduled her baptismal date for her birthday which is in July, but we all believe that she will be able to receive permission before then and be baptized sooner!

Yamauchi kyoudai keepings changing more and more...but I do not really understand in what way. We just keep pushing baptism more and more and he used to get upset every time we mentioned baptism, but now he is wanted to meet with us more than ever! Last time we asked him about baptism almost the whole lesson and then that night he called to set up a new meeting! We do not understand, but he has been taking the lessons for almost two years now and we are ready to see him in the water.

Our lesson with Masumoto san this week was good again! She is always really excited about the fact that she completed her homework. The problem we have had with her is that she can not focus on her feelings or thoughts. We will ask her how she feels about something or what she thinks, and every time, she says *I have never thought of that before!* We will say, *but NOW,

how do you feel?* and she just says again *I have never thought of that before!* Well in our last lesson, we had a member couple there, and the brother did not let her get away with that answer. He was saying *no NOW, in your heart, from what they are saying,* and on and on. Eventually, she finally came up with a feeling in her heart! She said it was a nice, gentle feeling. YAY! We were happy that she was finally able to focus in on her feelings, because we know true conversion can happen once she feels and recognizes the Holy Ghost!

A few days ago we were walking around a high school handing out Eikaiwa flyers to all the students getting out. An older man stopped us and asked if we were for a church of Jesus Christ. We said yes, and he said our faces gave it away. I am so grateful for the light of Christ and the opportunity I have as a missionary to share that light with others! One of the sweetest parts of being a missionary is watching that light grow brighter in people as they come to know God.

I hope you all are enjoying this wonderful season with a wonderful addition to the family! I love you all so much!!

Love,

Crofts shimai

Shinjite

Kristen's family had the wonderful opportunity of meeting her trainer, Dobson Shimai and her family.  Dobson Shimai spoke about light, and the source of light in our lives.  She interweaved many missionary experiences into the talk and the Spirit bore witness of the things she taught.  Dobson Shimai is a perfect example of someone who radiates the light of Christ and Kristen was very fortunate to have her as a companion and trainer.  

DEAR FAMILY,

Merrry Christmas!!!!

Good morning family! This email is coming from all the way over in Japan!

It was so great to see the pictures of you with Dobson shimai! Ahh I love you all!

I wish I could express through email how much I absolutely LOVE being a missionary, but words would not do it any justice. Let me just tell you, I love being a missionary!

This week, again, the Lord blessed us SO much!! Our week was a little bit not normal at first. We decided that in order to show the Lord our faith and be prepared for our investigators, we would completely plan for and mogi for all of our investigators before we went out housing or streeting. Well, we were inside A LOT this week, and we did A LOT of planning. The interesting thing is, our numbers were almost higher than ever! We still were able to teach A LOT of lessons this week!

The main focus of our week has been on Arisa shimai. Her baptismal interview was on Friday, so we were preparing well to help her be ready! On Monday, we had the most wonderful lesson I have ever been in. We taught the commandments like Law of Chastity and Word of Wisdom, so you would not think it would be a super spiritual lesson, but as she willingly accepted the invitation to keep all of these commandments, and then described why it would be so easy because of her desire for eternal life, the most wonderful feeling entered the room. If everybody in the world could have felt what I felt that night, everybody in the world would HAVE to believe in God and would want to be baptized, I am sure of it! She also explained how she can feel that she is closer to God as she meets with us and does the things we invite her to do. It was amazing! Unfortunately, because Arisa chan is under legal age, and she could not get permission from her parents, even though she passed her baptismal interview, it does not look like she will be getting baptized this week. We have been praying our guts out for her and we are still hoping for a miracle to happen though!

Meeting with Mai chan was also a highlight of the week! Mai chan came to the Relief Society activity on Saturday. We were sewing bags for some humanitarian thing. Let me just say...cutting and measuring and folding...all of that stuff does not go under my list of talents and abilities. Especially when I hear all the instructions in Japanese. Anyway, Mai chan came and she fit in so well with the members! Our Relief Society is just like 10 old grandmas, and then she was there helping away..it was amazing! She also came to church on Sunday and stayed for all three hours. It was a little unfortunate that our Relief Society lesson was all about Joseph Smith because we have not taught her about Joseph Smith yet. But she still seemed to handle everything really well and the members just love her! I absolutely love teaching her. When she tells us about her feelings and experiences, she just acts like it is all so natural, and of course she is supposed to feel warm and good when she prays because she is talking to her Heavenly Father and of course she wants eternal life because she knows she will be completely happy. Everything we teach her just clicks. Working with people like Mai chan and Arisa chan make me love missionary work so so much because I can see how much the Lord is preparing these people for the gospel!

Most of our other investigators are still having a hard time understanding/accepting/applying our message, and so for a lot of our lessons this week, we started back at point one and talked about God. Over and over this week I was able to testify that God is our Father. What a wonderful truth to be able to testify about! My hope is for these people to really be able to feel that!

Yesterday at church we had six investigators come! It blew our minds because we were not expecting that many to come! We each were sitting with two investigators and then two of the other investigators were taken in by the members. It was so great!

Also, I just love Japan. It is beautiful here and the people are so nice always and I feel like its some sort of happy wonderland. Haha I have never been happier. Missionary work is the best!

Have a happy holiday season! Oh p.s. I bought a mini speaker for my ipod at the dollar store so we have been listening to Christmas music! and a Jenny Phillips song that we have in Japanese...we stick it on repeat during our meals haha.

Anyway, I love you all more that you can know!! The church is true!

Love,

Crofts shimai

Pops: How was the Christmas devotional? How is work? Do you still run? Do you ever go biking in the winter? Have you gone skiing yet?

Mom: I do not really know what they do for mutual. There are two young women and one young man though. I hear music all the time!! Cars have music on their megaphones and all the stores have music. But it is not regular music...it is like annoying kid video game type music haha. Also the garbage trucks play music. It is noisy here!  And we have 2 different flyers...one for eikaiwa and one just for church. We do have pass along cards but I do not pass them along as much as I do the flyers.

Jason: the fall leaves are beautiful here! I do not know why but they remind me of you.

Becca: How are you feeling?? Congratulations again, just in case.

Peach and Jana: I hear your apartment is way cute! Happy Holidays!

Tyler: Congrats on the investigators at church! It is always a relief to me when I see investigators walk through the door. They get to participate first hand in the gospel of Jesus Christ at church! What a wonderful blessing!

Sarah: The only thing they really do to celebrate Christmas here is play Christmas music and eat Christmas cake. They do not even get work off. Sad huh? Anyway, you looked cute in the pictures! How are you?? What have you been doing? Is your life still super busy?

Danny: What is up?? We played would you rather at Eikaiwa this week. It was hilarious because they do not play that game here and they thought it was so fun. We also taught them head shoulders knees and toes. I could sing it faster than all of them.

Joey: your church outfit looks really good! Do you still bear your testimony?

A Heart Full of Thanksgiving

Check out how I celebrated my half birthday! I ate almost all of them too! Except the two nastiest looking ones in the front haha. BUT raw fish really is not that bad at all! If there was not so much wasabe on it, I think I really would have liked it!

Our most delicious thanksgiving dinner! We had to make it super duper fast, but we did it, and it was ever so delicious. A shout out to Dobson shimai for the wonderful turkey gravy packet.

Family,

Happy Thanksgiving! AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY JASON!!!!!! And I am so happy to hear about your head!

I never knew I could love missionary work so much! Every day is the new best day of my life. I could go on forever talking about wonderful blessings from the Lord that came to the Mikunigaoka area this week, but I will only share a few of my favorite ones.
Masumoto san is such a fun investigator to have. She has been taking lessons from the missionaries for quite a while, but she never seemed to be progressing or applying anything to her life. However, two weeks ago when we taught her prayer, she prayed for the first time in the lesson! Last week when we arrived at her apartment, she was thrilled to inform us that she had prayed every night that week! She is in such a good position now for the Lord to speed up His work with her...I am excited to see how she can progress even more.
Yamauchi kyoudai is also progressing even more in every lesson. It definitely has been a slow process working with him, but the `by helping him` training plan has really made a difference. He does his homework assignment every time, and reading from the Book of Mormon is helping him so he is starting to understand our lessons, and now we never call him to set up an appointment because he always calls and asks for another one! In fact, last week we had to turn him down a lesson because he only will come to the church twice a week, (he lives far away) and we wanted to make sure he would come to church. And he did come! He was excited at church to report that he is working on his next Book of Mormon homework assignment! Yay! He is really beginning to understand and apply things now...I just hope that he can feel it to, because I know that is when he will be willing to make the bigger commitments (like Baptism!)
I am amazed at how many times the Lord has led us to Fukushima san. She can not take lessons from us during the week, and she has not been able to go to church for a couple of weeks, so last week we decided to drop off a letter at her apartment. We did not know where she lived, and when we put her address in our GPS, it would not register exactly where she lived, so we only knew a very general area. We decided to go to that area and do our best to figure out the address. Well, as we are biking down this street, there are hundreds of apartment buildings. Seriously on both sides of us down this huge stretch, there is just one building after another. SO MANY APARTMENTS. And I just turned down one street because I tho

ught it would be a good street to turn down. Then I looked back and told Griffin shimai I thought it was somewhere close, so she turned down another street, and we went up to a random apartment and checked the postbox for the room number we had, and Fukushimas name was on it. God is a God of miracles!
Kurosaki san...ha this may not have been my favorite part of the week, but it was definitely interesting. We usually teach her every Wednesday after Eikaiwa, but this Wednesday, she left right after Eikaiwa! We tried to talk to her but she said she had to go and could not talk. We called her later that night and she informed us that she was only meeting with missionaries because she thought Murayama shimai was a great friend, and then when Murayama shimai left she said she was meeting us because she thought we could not understand Japanese, but once she realized we could understand what she was saying, she did not want to meet with us! It was the most bizaar phone call! To be honest, we really do not understand much of what she says...we just pick out some words here and there and then nod our heads. But she came to church this week too, even though we never contacted her or invited her!
Mai chan is AMAZING. She is the other one of our yakusokushas (investigator with baptismal date). She is also 19 years old!!! We have not been able to meet with Mai chan for a couple of weeks because she was really busy with tests and then last weekend she got sick. Two weeks ago, we were not able to contact her at all, so we were shocked when we saw her walk into church! We really knew she was somebody special. But then this week when she was sick, we just assumed that she would not be able to come to church, but a few minutes after sacrament meeting started, in walked Mai chan!! She was sick, she never even committed to come, yet she still came to church! Really, that is nothing but the Lord working miracles with her.
Our week with Arisa chan this week is what makes everything about missionary work so worth it. We have gotten to the point now where all we need to teach her is the commandments. We know that this is the point where her baptism either happens or it does not. So at the beginning of the week, Griffin shimai and I were honestly very nervous. However, after some very earnest prayers and studies and pondering, we both came to the conclusion that this is the Lords work and everything is in His hands and He works miracles according to faith, and through the help of our Savior, our fears turned into faith. We were actually excited to teach her commandments! We decided to teach simply and boldly (which we honestly can not to much differently with our language abilities) and we knew that the Lord would take care of the rest. On Friday, we had to RUSH back after zone tai kai to get to her lesson on time. We were teaching her sabbath day, and we had mogied the lesson a few times, so we felt ready. We got the the church right when Arisa arrived there, we talked for a while, then we did our Sabbath day lesson, and when we committed her to keep the Sabbath day holy, she said yes without even blinking. Miracle! At the end of our lesson, she brought up the fact that she has work on Sunday. She asked us what she should do, and we talked about a couple of options with talking to her boss and changing her shift etc. She seemed really nervous about doing any of those things, but we told her that we knew God would help her, and she agreed. She said she would pray for help and that she would do what she could to get work off on Sunday! She has the most amazing faith. She texted us later that night and said she was praying for help! We still have not heard back from her about it, but with our prayers and her prayers and the Lords help, I am excited to see what will happen.

Thanks for all the wonderful emails this week! I am glad you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving! (Do not worry, my thanksgiving was WONDERFUL. We had a fabulous meeting with our ward mission leader...he taught us how to write hirigana better and we planned Arisa chans baptism! And we made sweet potato kabocha mashed potatoes for dinner. Yeah it was fabulous!) Thanks for being such a GOOD GOOD family! I just love you all so so so much!!!

Love,

Crofts shimai

Father: thanks for all the weekly updates! Did you make pie on Thanksgiving? I love you!

Mudge: How are you?? Do you exercise a lot? I love you so much!!!

Jason: I am so happy to hear that your head is better! Happy birthday!

Becca: Congratulations on giving birth to the most beautiful baby in the world! (I am just congratulating you in advance just so I dont have to give a late congratulations next week...)

Peach and Jana: sorry to hear about your feet. I am glad you had a fun thanksgiving break and a fun car ride home! Good luck with finishing out the semester!

Ty: I just love ya so much!!

Sarah: WHAT is UP?? How are you?? I love you!

Dan: Thanks for the email! Are you going to play on a real football team?

Joe: You are great!!  I wub you!