Because of Him--イエスキリストのおかげで

(shout out to Jana for giving me the title to this email, for inspiring me with her testimony, and for being a wonderful Sister-in-law. I love you!)

Dear Family! 

HAPPY EASTER!! 

Easter week is a great week to be working as a missionary for our Savior. I pondered a lot this week about the Savior and His resurrection and what the *The Living Christ* truly means to me. I think it was summed up very well yesterday at Yamaguchi shimais baptism. Two months ago, Yamaguchi shimai was a simple Japanese person, just doing what all the other millions of people here are doing, going to work each day with no purpose and no friends.  However, this week in a lesson with her, Yamaguchi shimai explained to us the change she has noticed in herself. She said she can not see garbage on the ground and not pick it up. She can not see a job left undone at work and not finish it. She can not have somebody get mad at her and not forgive that person. She was sitting in our lesson saying over and over, *I cannot do wrong things anymore. I just cannot do wrong things.* It was amazing to see how Christ-like she has become (especially because I thought she was very Christ-like when we first met her)! But it was not very surprising or shocking to me, because she has been diligent in praying and reading the Book of Mormon and she has exercised faith and developed that relationship with Christ. Of course doing those things would help her become so Christ-like. Seeing her baptized yesterday felt like a very natural step in her progress. She did seem to be pretty nervous before her baptism. Afterward, she bore her testimony and she talked about her fear for water. Apparently she will not go to pools or lakes (I am not sure what she does about the bath...), and she was very nervous about having to go under the water for her baptism. However, she said that when Fukui choro lifted his hand and began to talk, that fear went away. She said she felt as if God was reaching out to her, and she felt the same warmth and love that she felt the first time she prayed and felt Gods existence. Of course hearing this and seeing the new light in her eyes were unforgettable moments. One of my favorite moments though was at the end of the service. As people came up to congratulate her, she broke into tears. The ward members were hugging her and giving her gifts and she was crying and crying. This normal, lonely Japanese person became somebody with not only a new purpose and motivation and light, but also a whole family of friends. That is what the Living Christ can do for someone.

      But I realized that she is not the only one who has changed through the Savior. I am sure I have changed as well as my testimony of the Savior has grown deeper and my faith and my desire to gather the elect are stronger than they have ever been before. I owe a lot of that to being in such a wonderful mission with wonderful leaders and a wonderful mission president. We had interviews/training again this last week, and all I can say is I do not know why the Lord blessed me so much to be in this mission. Our leaders are training us to be true disciples who rely on the Lord to work miracles and gather the elect. They are wise, inspiring people and I am so grateful and humbled to be here learning from them! 

     More than anything, I am grateful for the opportunity to be learning from and changing through my Savior. I know that Because of Him, I have the strength to work harder than I thought possible every day. Because of Him, I can overcome bad habits and become that missionary I am expected to be. Because of Him, I have the privilege of seeing others find brightness and hope in their lives. Because of Him, I get to live with all of you in complete happiness forever! I know that He is our Savior and Redeemer. I know that He lives. 

      Love,

Crofts shimai 

For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.

Dear Kazoku!

This week, I went on the most beautiful bike ride of my life, smelled the most fresh spring-time aromas, and felt the most deep love for those who are around me and for my Savior. What a wonderful time to be a missionary!!

Yamaguchi shimai is such a precious daughter of God. On Tuesday we met with her, and we had a chapter from the Book of Mormon planned to read with her, but she had so many of her own favorite scriptures to share with us, that we hardly got to the chapter we planned. She taught me so much as she shared her thoughts/questions about what she was reading. She had favorite scriptures from all throughout the Book of Mormon too!  What impressed me probably the most was that all of her favorite scriptures had something to do with loving others, or charity, or service. She is so Christ-like. We decided that we might as well get her baptismal interview out of the way, so we just texted our district leader and he came over to the church and she passed her interview that night! On Saturday night, we were surprised with a text yet again saying she could come to church! We watched General conference at our stake center, which is about an hour long 5 dollar bus/train ride away, but she gladly came. And she was completely blown away. In a place where religion is not well known, and especially where the church building is an old sushi building and about 30 members come each week, for her to see the conference center and the choir and all the people...she was amazed. And she loved it! Of course, having Yamaguchi shimai at General Conference made it definitely the most wonderful General Conference of my life. With every single talk, I was thinking about how much Yamaguchi shimai must be loving it, and it made me love it that much more! 

One theme I loved from conference was that of discipleship. Obviously, there was a huge theme of obedience, but in addition to that, there was much talk about loving others as the Savior would. The Japan Kobe mission theme is *true disciples, one and all* and that is the focus of all that we do. This conference gave me a lot of added insight into what that truly means. Each day I pass thousands of people who have no idea that they are children of God, or that God loves them, or even that there is a God at all. As I felt the Spirit and heard the messages during conference, my love for each one of these people grew, and my desire to love and serve them better grew as well. 

I am grateful to have been blessed with the gift of love for the wonderful Morii family. This is the family we were led to who has a strong interest in religion and English. Lately, we have been teaching the mom Chiaki san and the daughter Chisa chan. I sit in their home and just feel the warmest love in my heart for them. Oh the blessings of being a missionary! I am impressed with how well they can recognize the Spirit. Chisa chan, who is 10, has mentioned to her mother on multiple occasions that she feels so calm when we are in their home. And Chiaki san said she has noticed that she treats her family members more kindly and thinks more positively since meeting with us. That is incredible to me because we honestly have not taught very much about the gospel at all. They just began to pray last week and this change is already happening in their home! This gospel is wonderful! 

Just wondering, have you learned anything new from studying Preach my Gospel lately? I would encourage you to read the last section of chapter 10. It describes much of what I focus on. It is a wonderful privilege to be working among people who do not have a background in religion, because the change and light that comes into their lives as the Spirit testifies to them is a sight to behold, and I feel blessed every day to be here! 

I love you bunches! 

Love,

Crofts shimai

p.s. the church is true!! 

"By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another"

My "Flower Lady" friend

It's cherry blossom time!  People come from all over the world to see these blossoms and they only last 5 days!!!!  Pictures absolutely cannot depict the beauty or (of course) the magnificent smell of these blossoms.  

Dear Family,

Hello!! How are you? How is America? And more specifically, how is Idaho? Well I will tell you, here in Kyoto Japan, things are going wonderfully! There is not a better time to be doing missionary work!

We had an announcement this week: sister missionaries now have a new role. We are putting 100% of our efforts toward helping less active members. That means we will stop going to train stations to find people, and stop knocking on doors to find people, and stop everything with non-members--ALL of our efforts are now toward helping the less active members come back to church! Everything about missionary work is going to change for us! Let me explain a little bit why I am THRILLED to be doing this! There are about 120,000 members in Japan, and about 5% of them are active. We received a ward list last week, with about 20 names on each page, and only 1-2 active members per page. Every night as we do our planning, we stare at the map of Kyoto. It is an old map from Elders a while ago, and it is covered in yellow stickers with a few blue stickers here and there. We always wondered what the stickers were and assumed they were for potential investigators/real investigators. When we got the ward list with the addresses, we found out the yellow dots are all the less active members! The map is covered in them! For my whole mission, I was under the impression that it was the ward members responsibility to help the less active members, so I did not think much about it, but when I saw that list of less active members and then looked at them scattered across our map, my heart went out to them! I wanted to spend my time helping them! This was at the beginning of the week, and on Friday at Zone Training meeting we received the announcement about sister missionaries now working to rescue the less active members.  I was SO excited. I feel like this is an opportunity for us to really act as Christ would to go out and search and rescue the lost sheep. I think of the hymn *Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd.* We are to go inside the less active members homes and just give them an outpouring of Christs love. What a special opportunity! (we have not started yet because we do not have the less active member information, so for now, we are doing missionary work how we normally do, which is wonderful.) 

Heber J Grant made a prophecy in about 1903, in which he said that this mission will start out slow at first, but it will eventually be one of the most successful missions in the church, and that it will astonish the world. I believe that completely. As the less active members begin to come to church,  the members will begin to be involved in missionary work, and their friends and family members will also have opportunities to come into the church,  and as the missionaries rely on the Lord to receive His power and guidance, I see things happening here in Japan that really will astonish the world. 

The Lord astonishes me every day. This week, I noticed how when we put our trust in the Lord, things just happen. It started last week on Preparation Day, when we went somewhere to buy Hunt shimai an electronic dictionary, but when we got there, we found out the zone leaders did not give us permission to go inside the electronic store, so we were just walking around talking to people. We stopped somebody and asked what she was doing. She said she was just walking. She asked what we were doing and we said we were just walking too! We were all hungry, so we went to Ramen together, and she is AMAZING! She is a college student who loves to compose music, she speaks fluent English, she has been to church before and she said she would love to go with us!  

That was just the beginning of things just happening. *Things just happening* led to us finding many strong potential investigators this week. One of my favorite things that *just happened* was on Saturday night when we were planning for Sunday. We received a text from Yamaguchi shimai saying she could come to church!! She talked to her boss and he said she could take off her morning Sunday shift and come to church!!! We were SO EXCITED. This means that next time she comes to church (Which is April 20, she has that day off!) she can get baptized!! On Sunday when we announced it in the missionary meeting (forgot what they call it in English) our ward mission leader was so excited too! But the person who was most excited was Yamaguchi shimai! She had to leave right after church, and as we were walking with her to the train station, we told her that the next time she comes to church she can get baptized, and she just went speechless. She started crying tears of joy! She was SO SO SO EXCITED!  The reason we are all so excited is probably because she is so prepared for baptism. She has been a golden investigator all along, and it is clear every time I am with her that the Lord has been working so closely with her. It will be a special experience when she gets to enter the gate at baptism! I love missionary work!

Last night was freezing. It was like a February rainy day here in Kyoto. And that is COLD. And we were tired and hungry, but we made the decision to go out and show the Lord our faithfulness anyway, so we cheerfully went out to work. And another wonderful thing *just happened.* We were housing, and a man came to the door and said he was part of our same church! We were caught off guard, but after talking, we discovered that he is a less active member. He had a work accident which makes it very difficult for him to walk, and he has not been to church for years. He seemed to be very very touched to have a visit from the missionaries. He asked if we could pray together, and then he told us his schedule and all the days that he is just sitting around his apartment. My heart went out to him immediately...I want to do everything I can to help him! I think it was perfect timing for the Lord to lead us to him yesterday, because prior to this week, if I met a less active member, I probably would have just said *please come to church!* and moved on. But because of the role we are now playing with less active members, we stayed and talked  for a while with him. We learned a lot about him and I felt so much love for him. We have plans now to go back and visit him again. It was such a blessing to be led right to his door! 

These are just a few of the things the Lord did for this area last week. Everyday I see His hand in the work, with the people here and the ward and with my own self too. He is the light and the life of the world. He is the Almighty God. And He is hastening His work...what a joyful privilege to participate in it! 

I love you all! I hope you learned a lot at general conference and enjoyed the weekend together! Have a great week!!

Love, Kris