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!

With An Eye Single To The Glory of God

Dearest Kazoku,

Konnichiwa!!

This week was the shortest week of my life, and at the same time, the longest week of my life! 

I LOVE BEING COMPANIONS WITH GRIFFIN SHIMAI!!!! She is wonderful! She is so good at Japanese and at planning/teaching lessons and at doing all the things missionaries have to do. She is amazing. Because it is just the two of us, we combined our investigator pool, so now we have 18 investigators! For two sisters who do not speak Japanese and who do not have a lot of experience, that is a lot of responsibility!! In a way, you could look at our situation and think there is no way anything good is going to come out of that companionship. BUT the Lord is wonderful, and this week, SO many miracles have happened!!! 

    On Monday night last week, we began our journey by calling our investigators. I called Yamauchi kyoudai, and this is what happened: he started talking, I had NO IDEA what he was saying, I said *do you want to meet at the church for a lesson on Wednesday at two?* and he said something, I was hoping yes, and then we hung up. Well, on Wednesday at two he showed up at the church for a lesson!!

     The same type of thing happened on Tuesday. We went and visited a potential investigator, and we really did not know at all what she was saying. Eventually she came out of her house and was talking to us face to face, and we could sort of understand, but still, it was kind of like the following: she said something, griffin shimai looked at each other and then back at her and mumbled a few random words, she said something back, and we did the same thing. Eventually though, we were able to figure out that she wanted us to come back! She gave us a specific time, so we are visiting her at that time this week! 

     On Tuesday we also visited another potential investigator named Leonard. He is from the Philipines and he speaks English! Yay! We tried to teach him a lesson, but he was just talking and talking and talking and we had the hardest time taking control of the situation. BUT he has so much faith! He was just talking about how he is having a hard time because he does not speak Japanese and he does not have a job and he does not have any friends here, but he wakes up every morning grateful to the Lord and he knows good things will come to him as long as he keeps serving the Lord. He even offered to help us out by going around the apartment and knocking on the doors for us or talking to people on the street for us haha! We are going back to teach him tomorrow and we are hoping to get a few more words in this time and then teach him about where he can find the full truth! 

     Wednesday was a day full of lessons! I taught more lessons this week than ever before on my mission, but this week, I did not have my trainer there to tell me what to say the whole time! However, the lessons this week all went REALLY well. We taught Masumoto san on Wednesday morning. We retaught the prayer lesson because when Griffin and Murayama shimai were teaching it to her before, she got up in the middle to answer the door and they were never able to finish the lesson. So we redid it and at the end of the lesson we asked if she would pray for us. She said no, which Griffin shimai said was normal because she would never pray for them. But then because we do not know much of the language, we just kept sitting there smiling and nodding our heads, and eventually she gave in and prayed!! Yippee!! And she committed to pray everyday and she asked us to come back again! 

     After Masumoto san, we went to visit Taniguchi san ( a potential investigator) but she was not home. As we were about to leave, we received a referral, so we stopped underneath somebody:s driveway cover to find out where they lived, in case we could visit them right away. It was raining super duper hard and we were freezing, and after navigating around our gps for a long time, we figured out where they lived...FAR AWAY!!!!! super far away. Ha it was on the other side of our area! And that is a story for another time, but right now I want to finish Wednesday. 

     We taught Yamauchi kyoudai on Wednesday. Again, we have no idea what this man says when he speaks to us, and he has heard all the lessons over and over again,  so we did not know what or how to teach. We taught about the holy ghost in the lesson, but we ended up mainly talking about the gift of the holy ghost which lead us to speaking about baptism. He really does not like when the missionaries speak to him about baptism, but we were just trying to follow the Spirit. So we were talking to him about baptism and the douseki was really nudging him toward baptism. We thought he was so mad at us after that lesson. But then Friday he called us again and said he wanted to meet us at the church the next day for a lesson! We taught him about eternal life and how we need to follow Jesus Christ in order to receive eternal life and how baptism is one of the steps to following Jesus Christ. He said he wants eternal life and he wants to follow Jesus Christ and he knows he needs to be baptized, but he does not want to be baptized. It confuses me. Anyway, he called again and set up another appointment for a lesson this week.

     Wednesday night after Eikaiwa we taught Kurosaki san. You would love this lady! She really is a hoot! She lives right across from the church, so she visits us all the time. She is a talker!! She talks and talks and talks! Griffin shimai and Murayama shimai would always try to teach her, but she would mainly just talk the whole time. Also she never makes commitments, so she would never promise to meet them for a lesson again, she just knew it would happen. But on Wednesday, she listened to our whole entire lesson, then when we tried to set up a new lesson, she agreed to a specific day and time! It was crazy! 

     Thursday we went to find the referral. It took us 3 hours to find the house!!! And we only got lost a couple times. It was just FAR AWAY!!!! Wow we were so pooped by the end of that bike ride. But there were lots of houses with the address that we received, so we had to house them all. None of them were the referral! Even the people who did not answer had different names on their mailboxes. We housed around the area and still we could not find the referral anywhere! Finally we housed a lady who brought us out a map and we looked at all the names on the map, and the referrals name was not on it. At that time, it was about 3:45 and we had a meeting with

our ward mission leader at 6:30 that we still had to prepare for. Because we did not know where else we could go to find the referral, we decided to go back. We had to go FAST so that we were ready on time for DCS. And wow did we ever go fast. We got back in less than 2 hours!! We were SO SORE. haha but I love bike riding. I felt so good the next day. 

     DCS was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The members have all been super helpful and supportive to us, and they really help us out with the language. (Except one member who called us and asked who the new missionaries coming are and we said no new missionaries would be coming and he muttered under his breath *what should we do?* haha.) But at DCS the mission leader was actually being more helpful than ever before and he is offering rides and setting up meetings and stuff to help us out! The ward members have been very willing to douseki for us this last week and they have all been so helpful and involved! Yay!!

     Friday we taught three more lessons, and they all went really well. On Saturday, we taught a couple more lessons, one of them being Arisa chan. I LOVE ARISA CHAN!!!! And I love the Lord for helping Arisa chan so much! On Tuesday we taught her the Restoration, and after it, we asked how she felt and she said she did not really know if it was true or not...she seemed very hesitant. But on Saturday when we followed up, she said she prayed about it and she got an answer and she knows it is true!!! It is such a miracle! First of all, that she even understood us trying to teach the restoration in a language we dont speak. But also, God is working so closely with her! We taught faith on Saturday, and her faith is so strong!! She is receiving answers to her prayers and she desires baptism and eternal life so much. I love working with her!!

     Yesterday at church we had to give two talks!!!!! 5 minutes each!! We gave one in sacrament meeting, and then one at the missionary fireside after church. Phew yesterday was definitely the most nerve racking day of my mission. It was already nerve racking in the first place because we were in charge of helping all of our investigators get to church and we no longer had Dobson and Murayama shimai to speak to the members for us and translate everything for us and help the investigators...we had to do it all on our own! And on top of that we had to prepare two talks! BUT as the Lord had done all week long, He really helped us out! In sacrament meeting I spoke about how God:s purpose is for all of His children to return to Him, and how we (members and missionaries) get to help God with His work! After sacrament meeting, so many members came up to me telling me they were so surprised at my Japanese and that I could actually speak! 

     Through everything we did this week, I learned more than I ever have in a week! Most importantly, I learned that God is so wonderful. He took two WEAK weak missionaries, and allowed wonderful things to happen. Our investigators are progressing well in the gospel, and it is all thanks to the Lord. What a wonderful week in Mikunigaoka!!

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving week! I am so grateful for each one of you and I love you so so much!!

Love,

Kris :)

Joy is the Reward

I started off the day today by sending off my beautiful trainer...she is on her way back to America! Her last week as a missionary was definitely a week full of adventures! 

Monday she was inside packing all day so Griffin shimai and I just went shopping together. 

Tuesday, we spent almost all day long outside finding people. It was the first FREEZING day of the year, and boy was it freezing! But we managed to thoroughly enjoy it. Something about missionary just lets that happen. 

On Wednesday we were able to teach Yamauchi kyoudai again. His lessons have completely changed. We choose simple simple doctrine, teach it clearly from the beginning, and then read about it from the Book of Mormon with him. He understands the Book of Mormon well, and as we read it together and discuss it, he opens up with us and we have been able to learn more about him and he has been more willing to listen to our message. We taught about the atonement and read from Enos together and it was a really powerful lesson. We gave him a homework assignment out of Alma 36, and he did it! In fact he was so excited to share with us what he had written about it, that he called us on Friday and asked if we could meet again! Yay! 

We also taught Arisa chan on Wednesday. She got to the lesson a little bit late and we had to start Eikaiwa, so we were only able to do a little bit of follow up and testimony, but Aiko chan was there (the young woman in our ward) and we had a fun conversation before the lesson and Arisa chan loosened up so much around us. I feel like we are a lot better friends now. 

After Eikaiwa, people were showering the gifts upon us. (upon Dobson shimai specifically.) We had two different students make us cakes! And then one of our students who is from China came with a TON of food to make us homemade Chinese food! She invited everybody in the Eikaiwa class up to our kitchen and we were all making food together. There was so much! And because of that, it was taking a really long time. We did not know what to do because we had a curfew coming up soon but there was all this food and tons of people (potential investigators and investigators included) and we could not just leave them in our church, but we really did have to leave. So we told them we were leaving and everybody started cleaning up super duper fast and they just had to give us a big bowl full of the food and we had to ride our bikes home super fast. But it was SO MUCH FUN. 

Thursday we spent ALL day long inside planning. It was a long day haha.

We were able to teach Arisa chan again on Friday. We taught her the entire plan of salvation, and she understood it all so well. She said she does not know for sure if it is true, but she hopes it is true. After her lesson, we went with Izumi shimai and her son to another all you can eat healthy food restaurant! These restaurants are called Viking. Funny huh? it was beyond delicious. 

Saturday we went to visit Reira and Johna, but they were not home :(. Instead, we spent a lot of the day planning because we had a lot of lessons coming up. We were able to teach Yamauchi kyoudai again. Saturday night, Takayoshi fufu took us out to dinner! It was a bread/steak place. You would not believe it, but I absolutely love steak now! 

Sunday: yay I finally got to Sunday! Yesterday was the best day ever!! It was the primary program, and WOW. I have never been to a better primary program before!! There were only  four children, but when they first started singing I am a Child of God, it was more powerful than any other time I have heard that song! Every single time they sang it was so powerful! and they can all speak Japanese so well. Haha I was sitting next to Arisa chan and dobson shimai was sitting next to Satoru, so it was up to me to get a conversation going with Arisa. I was trying to tell her that I was impressed with the children because they can speak better Japanese than I can, but I could not even get that sentence out. I realized I probably sound like a 1.5 year old to these people. Or less. But Arisa chan was super nice and she is very understanding with my language disabilites. And a good thing because after sacrament meeting, Dobson shimai was teaching Satoru san and I had to teach Arisa chan by myself! The goal of the lesson was to help her feel excited for her baptism because in previous lessons she had expressed her worries. Well, I do not know what I said, but in her prayer at the end of the lesson, she talked about how she was really excited to be baptized and her fears were gone! Yay! The Lord is so great! Also the member might have helped a lot. 

We were also able to teach Fukushima san during church. She really has the saddest life! She talks about the darkness in her life and how she wants to get rid of it. She actually asked Dobson shimai if she could go back to America with her and she was completely serious. But she said that when she prays she can really see Gods light. She wants to go to heaven and she committed to a baptismal date in order to make it there!! The date we felt good about is January 25. That is super soon, and it is a little weird that we chose that date because she honestly does not understand much of what we say...she just nods her head and says yes out of anxiety. BUT I know the gospel can change that in her and baptism can be a wonderful thing for her! I am excited to continue helping her!

After church we were able to teach Matsuzaki kyoudai! Wow it feels so good teaching him! We really went full circle. Dobson shimai and I started out our companionship together finding and teaching Matsuzaki kyoudai. He was baptized. He got the priesthood and he was then able to help us by passing the sacrament to us! Finally, we finished off the transfer together by teaching Matsuzaki kyoudai again about the Restoration. I just have to say, the gospel is so wonderful, and it is so true!!

After church we watched 2 hours of the district! I finished my training!! yeehaw! Then we went to Izumi kazokus house for dinner. They live about 45 minutes away, and when we started our bike ride, the weather was just normal, but about a minute into the ride, it started raining, and about two minutes into the ride, it started down pouring!! and it was dumping buckets on us the whole entire way. When we got to Izumi kazokus house, we were SO WET!!!!! they took all of our coats, wrung out our skirts into a bowl, then just gave us new skirts and tights to put on, and blow dried our hair for us! Ha it was such an adventure. We ate takoyaki!!! Do you know what that is?? Octopus pancake balls. It was actually pretty good!! I am getting good at this Japanese stuff. We had to bike home super duper duper insanely fast after that dinner appointment. Ha we were all wearing the big flowy skirts from Izumi shimai and they were getting stuck in our chains and it was crazy but we did not want to be late!! We got home, Dobson shimai and I began our final planning session, and then Griffin and I finished off the planning by planning for today. 

THis mornign we said goodbye to Dobson and Murayama shimai, cleaned our apartment, and came to check the email to find out about transfers. And guess what! Griffin shimai and I are both staying in Mikunigaoka and we are going to be companions!!! !!! I can not tell you how excited I am!! I absolutely love Griffin shimai!! Because she came to Japan when I did, neither one of us really can speak the language, and neither one of us really knows what we are doing, but we do know that the Lord knows what He is doing and we are so excited to perform miracles with His help. I am looking forward to this next transfer. MISSIONARY WORK IS THE BEST!!!!!

I love you all!!!

Love,

Crofts shimai :)

Dad: congrats on the deck! That has been quite the project.

Mom: your braces-free smile looks beautiful! 

Jason: commandments was definitely hard for Matsuzaki kyoudai to understand. he thinks very logically, not very faith-ily. However, we kept talking about how everything God asks us to do is to help us receive eternal life, and that was enough to get him to keep the commandments. the hard one for people to keep here is tithing. most people have work off on sunday, but they work super hard the rest of the week and they are very stingey about their money. at least that is what i hear--i have only taught one person tithing and he did not have an income.

Becca: i love the name cameron!!! are you sure you do not want him to have a japanese middle name? i think cameron akihiko crofts sounds good. 

Peach: haha congrats on the deck! 

Jana: thanks for the letter. sounds like you are making some yummy food. i hope your feet heal!

Tyler: do you sleep on a bed? now that there are only two people in my apartment, i get to stack the futons and make a mega futon. i am excited!

Sarah: thanks for the pictrues! dont enjoy michael buble too much" i love you!!

Dan: what is up dude. good luck with the piano.

Joey: hey joey! i am teaching people. it is fun!!

Diligent is the Work

SARAH!!! CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!! To be honest it does not surprise me one bit...I was kind of expecting it all week. You are a natural!

It was ANOTHER week full of miracles in Mikunigaoka! I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!!

Arisa chan is progressing so well. We taught her about the Book of Mormon, and she was really excited to read it. In the next lesson, when we followed up, I was amazed to see that she understands the Book of Mormon so well! That is unusual, especially for the Japanese book of mormon, and especially for a culture where people do not even understand what scriptures are. We were also able to teach Arisa chan about the atonement this week and the lesson was so powerful. We just taught super duper simple doctrine and testified of it, and because of her desire and understanding of her relationship with God and Jesus Christ, it sunk right in. It was such a good lesson! She came to church yesterday and she is starting to become good friends with the members. 

Reira and Johna san are also doing really well! We were able to teach them prayer on Saturday. It was a really really neat lesson. Because they are really devout Catholics, they actually already pray every day, but they just give repeated prayers. In our lesson though, we talked about different things they could pray for. Reiras husband has been in the hospital for over a year and she has a night time job with a 6 year old and a 1.5 year old child. Johna is in japan looking for a husband and  a job. Her six year old son is still in the Philipines and she does not speak Japanese or english. BUT we talked about how they can pray for comfort and help. In the lesson, Dobson shimai prayed in Japanese to demonstrate how we do it, then I prayed in English, and then Reira prayed in Japanese/English/Tagalog (she was going back and forth the whole prayer!) and then Johna prayed in Tagalog. Even though I did not understand their prayers, I could DEFINITELY feel Gods presence in that room. When we finished, they both talked about the amazing feeling they had. I love teaching the prayer lesson because EVERY time we do it, Gods presence is so tangible. It is incredible.

We also were able to teach Fukushima san the prayer lesson this week. Yesterday we decided to go to the church early because one of our potential investigators said she would be coming at 9 o clock, but when we got to the church, she was not there. Instead, Fukushima san was there! She was sitting all by herself in the chapel, just how we had found her the first time! We took her to another room and talked to her about God and how she can talk with God. We asked her what kind of help she would like to receive from her Heavenly Father, and she said that she wants to get rid of all the black/dark things inside of her. AHH we have something that can help her! I hope she continues to meet with us because I want to help her SO MUCH. She is a really really nervous/uptight/anxious person, but as she prayed, I could definitely tell she was more relaxed, and by the end of sacrament meeting, she had loosened up even more. I know this gospel can help her so much! 

A miracle happened with Yamauchi kyoudai this week! We have really struggled with knowing how to help Yamauchi kyoudai. He does not understand what we teach him and he is not willing to get baptized. He told us that he only wanted to meet with us at the mall and he would not come to the church. After zone training meeting, we were pretty sure that there was nothing we could do for him. However, on Tuesday when we were out housing, we got a call from Yamauchi kyoudai. He seemed really nervous and he just said *I want to meet with you I will go to the church when can we meet?* WHOA. So we met with him on Thursday! We already had a lesson prepared for him, and it was about steps to reading the Book of Mormon. Before we even began the lesson, something about the Book of Mormon was brought up, and Yamauchi kyoudai pulled out his Book of Mormon and said *I just do not know how to read this thing.* Well, that was what our whole lesson was about! So we taught him about the Book of Mormon and praying to receive answers and things. We read part of the Book of Mormon together with him, and invited him to read a section they way we had taught him. He committed to do it. He said he understood the lesson really well and he wanted to try it. That is a big deal for yamauchi kyoudai! Yay!! He also was at church this week too!! 

Saturday was a really fun day. We had to bike like crazy in the morning from Reiras apartment back to the church to teach Arisa chan. Right after Arisa chan, we met with Hidomi and Satoru. They are two of our Eikaiwa students who come every week. Hidomi is a member of the church and she speaks pretty close to fluent English, but she comes every week with her *friend* Satoru. He is not a member of the church. However, let me back up a bit. Before I got here, Dobson shimai and her old companion ran into Hidomi and Satoru at the bike shop after they had had to carry her companions bike all across town because she lost the bike key haha. Anyway, they ran into them at the bike shop and Hidomi decided that she would start bringing Satoru to Eikaiwa. He is really scared of religion, but as he has been coming to Eikaiwa, we have been visiting with him afterward and we have been trying to bring up religious topics. A few weeks ago we gave him a church tour, and this week, Hidomi felt like he was finally ready to hear more about the church, but she wanted to do it in a casual way, not a sit down lesson. So we got permission and we went with Hidomi and Satoru to a famous mountain thing. There were buddhist statues and temples. THe mountain was BEAUTIFUL! The trees were all red and orange and there were waterfalls...ahh it was wonderful!! We hiked the mountain and then went to an all you can eat low calorie Japanese food restaurant with the yummiest food I have tasted since I have been here. Anyway, we were talking to him about God and he said he has not thought much about him but he is starting to believe in God because he feels like God led us to the bike shop right when he was there and because of that we have been able to develop this friendship. It is hard to explain, but I feel like God has really been preparing him for a while. He was always scared to death of religious things and chruchy things, but now he is beginning to think that God really does exist, and yesterday he came to church!!!! AHH it was such a miracle!!

This week as we were able to be a part of so many miracles, I was again in awe at how much the Lord is involved in this work. Well...it is His work. And he is preparing people and guiding people and I am so happy to be able to participate in this work! 

Thanks for all of the emails! I hope all is well! I love you all so so so much!!!!

Love,

Crofts shimai

Dad: Thanks for the weekly update! Those brownies sound delish. Aren:t you proud of your beautiful pageant queen daughter? I bet you are happy you still have at least one daughter at home. I am sure she adds a lot of spunk to the home. 

Mom: Good work with Sarah. you are the best! To answer your questions: most people get really excited to talk to me at first, but when they find out I am for a religion, they try to get away from me as fast as possible. My ward is one big family. Like there is the grandma and her kids and their siblings and their kids..but really only two main families with kids. There are 3 youth in the ward, about 6 primary kids, and 2 or 3 nursery aged kids. And there are lots of old grandmas. Family history is nothing here. As part of my training, I was supposed to practice doing things with family history but Zinke kaicho just told us to skip that part because it really is nothing. Every body has records of all of their families, but they are stored away in some buddhist temples. We would encourage the youth to do more, but the adults unencourage them to do family history because they are so busy. 

Jason and Becca: congratulations on making it into the law school!!!!! yay!!!!!!!! and wow that is so exciting that you get to live in georgia!! wow! I will miss you. 

Peach and Jana: I hope all is well!!!! Good luck with school and work and running and everything. 

Tyler: I just love ya so much. Your letters are fabulous. Keep up the great work!! :) :)

Saud: ya you are amazing. Absolutely positively amazing. Can I see some pictures? Do you listen to Michael Buble? When are you going to hear him??

Dan: what is up dude? have you seen any good movies lately?

Joey: joey joey joey joey joey joey happy birthday!!!!! i love you!

These cute little preschoolers go by our church every morning.  

After a pretty intense bike ride.

SPECTACULAR!!!

chishiki wa tsuyomi desu

Dear Family, 

     I LOVE the opportunity I have to work with Arisa chan! She is incredible. Last monday, we taught her the gospel of Jesus Christ. It made complete sense to her, she said she believes it all, and she committed to be baptized! We invited her to be baptized on December 15, and she said yes! We also asked her to pray about that date and see if it is when God wants her to be baptized. We gave her a notebook to write down any thoughts or feelings she had. The next lesson we followed up on it, and it was amazing. We asked her how she felt about her baptismal date, and she pulled out her notebook. She wrote a whole page (it was in kanji so she had to read it to us) and it talked about how she prayed to find out if she should be baptized and as she prayed, all of the worries and concerns she had had before her prayer were gone and she felt Gods peace in her heart. She knew that was an answer from God, and she knew she would be baptized on December 15th. Isnt that incredible? I wish you could have felt what we felt in that room. Dobson shimai tried to say something to Arisa chan but she was crying...it was SUCH a manifestation of Gods reality! We are excited to teach her about the Book of Mormon tonigiht.

     We were finally able to teach Reira and Johna again this week! Last week we were supposed to teach them, but Reira was sick, so we just dropped treats off at her door. This week we stopped by again on Wednesday, and they were home (we heard them), but they would not come to the door. Sad. So we left a nice note. We were really praying for the opportunity to teach them again, and on Saturday, we mogi-ed their lesson and made some little changes to it and tried again to visit them. They let us in! But I felt really really bad. Reira was still in her pajamas, her kids were not dressed, and I think Johna was still in bed. Ah I felt bad but she let us in and said she wanted to listen to our message! Because they do not speak Japanese or English very well and they have a strong Christian background, we decided to teach them the Restoration using the pamphlet in Tagalog and watching part of the Restoration video in Tagalog. Besides her kids running around all over the place, I think it went pretty well. Johna does not speak to us at all, we just get everything through translation from Reira, but she seemed really interested in the video and really touched by it. We decided that because they do not speak our languages very well, we REALLY need to rely on the language of the Spirit! It was hard with her kids running around, but we did our best to testify heartfeltfully and boldly. We are going back again this week!

     The Lord really blessed us with a big miracle this week. We have had a hard time knowing how to help one of our investigators, Fukushima san. She is the one who called us and said she wanted to go to church, and when we got to the church on Sunday, she was already sitting there in the chapel. We taught her a lesson and she said she wanted to come back to church and to learn more from us, but she has been calling each week and saying she cannot come to church and she cannot meet with us. We do not know where she lives and we did not know how to help her. This week as we were biking to go house an apartment, we saw her waiting at a bus stop! We stopped and talked to her and she seemed really happy that we were able to visit with her. We left and housed the apartment, and on our way back, she was still there! She was just sitting on the sidewalk with all of her groceries. We asked her when the bus was coming, and she said seven thirty, but it was already eight. It was cold and dark, so we sat next to her and Dobson shimai wrapped her scarf around Fukushima san and we waited with her and talked with her until the bus finally came. We were not able to set up another appointment with her and she was not able to come to church, but I know God was blessing us with the opportunity to show Christlike love to one of our investigators. I know he led us down that sidewalk, and I have high hopes for how He is going to bless Fukushima san.

     We spent the majority of our weekend (as in Thursday, Friday, Saturday, AND Sunday) in our apartment planning for our investigators. We were doing our normal weekly planning session, but with the new mission training plan, we thoroughly thought through our investigators needs and how to best help them. Also, in order to show the Lord that we were as prepared as possible for our investigators, we made a new lesson plan for each of our investigators and mogi-ed it. It was a LOT of planning and a LOT of mogi-ing, but I am excited for this week to see what results come from our preparation!

    On Thursday we had interviews with Zinke Kaicho! It took almost the whole entire day. I LOVED the training we got from Kaicho before interviews. It was all about faithfulness. In the Kobe Japan mission, we do not have a problem with obedience. (From a survey, the church found out this mission is one of the most obedient missions in the world!) But we talked about how that is good, but we need faithfulness on top of obedience. We talked about how Laman and Lemuel were even obedient. They went along to get the plates and the helped with the ship, but they were not faithful. They complained and they doubted and they had to be compelled. Zinke Kaicho talked about relying completely on the Lord, to the point where we never quit early while we are out finding. We never complain or go about doing things merely because we feel like we have to in order to be obedient. We do our missionary work because we know the Lord is guiding and we work so that we can be His tools. Zinke Kaicho is so wise. I cannot tell you how much I loved my interview with him! I feel like the fifteen minutes I was in with Kaicho he answered every question I have ever had about missionary work. It was so wonderful! We also talked about relying on the Lord, and how all the Lord asks of me is to trust Him. From the interview, I felt a lot of relief, and a lot of excitement to help the Lord in His work.

     In case you are wondering, yes I did eat REAL sushi this week. REAL RAW FISH.  Also, the vending machines now have warm drinks in them, and I found a pop can of hot corn, so of course I had to buy it.

      I hope you all had a fun halloween!!!! Have a great week and remember that I love you SO SO SO SO SO SO SO much!!!!!!!! Thanks for being the best family in the whole wide world!

Love,

Krissy

Dad: I will sort out my favorite food for you. THe order is probably: octopus, squid, raw salmon. Octopus being the worse and the raw salmon being just a little bit higher up the list.

Mom: i am happy i got your letter this week! That story about Eli is such a miracle!! GIve Jacks family my condolences (whew I am forgetting how to spell sorry!) How was Halloween?

Jason: otsukarasamadesu! I think becca will make it.

Becca: I love you!!! What is the cutest thing you have for jason jr??

Peach: Happy halloween! we have a cd that we listen to. Ha we all have ipods but no speakers.

Jana: congrats on the homemade bread!

Ty: we have about 45 members in our ward who come to church. apparently it is a lot bigger ward though. Japans members are 90 % inactive!!! thanks for the quote

Sarah: good luck this week!!!!! have fun. you are beautiful. make sure you dont walk like a barbie.

Dan: congrats dude!! you are amazing!!! dont you love kabalevsky?? all the little boys here ride unicycles. do you want to learn how to ride one too? I wake up at 6*15 and go to sleep at 10*30 and I do missionary stuff all day long!! I LOVE IT!!!

Joseph: HAPPY BIRFDAY!!! omedetou gozaimasu!!

I LOVE YOU ALL!

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

Patient is the Soul

Dear Family, 

I was able to watch General Conference this weekend! In English! And it was WONDERUL! Definitely every one of my concerns that I have had as a missionary was addressed. That is inspiration. One of my favorite talks was by Elder Bednar. Not necessarily about the tithing part because I am not even paying tithing as a missionary, but all the other lessons that were learned from his talk were super duper great! 

This week was another week with a lot of FINDING time. With only one investigator, Dobson shimai and I have had some (a lot of) sincere, humble, and faithful prayers this week. Then, we have gone out and worked. We have done street contacting, housing, bike dendo, and area book dendo. We rode all over the place this week! We found some great hills that worked my legs soooo hard. We talked to SO MANY people everywhere we went! BUT we were not finding any investigators!! This week definitely tried our patience and our faith. 

On Saturday, we finally had a lesson!!! And, this one lesson made a whole week of trying finding people to teach and not having any success, completely worth it. It was with Hassan san, somebody from Morocco. We found him from the area book. He speaks arabic and french. He does not speak English well and he barely speaks Japanese at all. He has a six year old daughter, and a wife but she speaks Japanese so they are having a hard time communicating. He had a couple lessons with the missionaries a few years ago but then got too busy to meet again. He is INCREDIBLE. Let me tell you just a few things I learned about him from what he said during the Setting the Table lesson: He loves God so much. Over and over again, he kept expressing how much he loves God. He feels Gods love when he is in the church and when he is with us. He recognizes that there is something missing in the lives of people here, and he believes that is the church. He wants to know where he came from and where he is going and what he needs to do in this life to be the best he can be. He wants to serve the church members and donate money to the church (we didnt say anything about tithing...he just brought it up!) He prays to God and he has SO SO SO Much faith!!!! It took everything I had in our lesson to keep my jaw from dropping. That is how amazing he is. And he wants to be baptized! Yahoo! 

So, we only have two investigators, BUT we are working hard and being patient, and after much consideration, I decided that if I had to choose between quality or quantity, I would choose quality, which is what we have! The Lord has definitely been working closely with Hassan san, just as he was with Matsuzaki san, and it is a privilege to be assisting Him. 

Eww story time. We got a new ward mission leader, so after DCS on Friday, he asked if he could take us out for dinner. Dobson shimai and I had already eaten, but we had to go anyway out of politeness. We went to a really cool restaurant! Each table is in its own separate room and it is down low on the ground and there are grill things in the middle. Well, here is the gross part: he ordered SO MUCH FOOD. They brought us out our food, and it was two HUGE plates full of big chunks of meat!! (uncooked meat. and you know how I feel about meat.) It was huge!!!!! It was fun cooking the meat right in front of us, but they kept piling more and more and more meat on my plate! And I do not even like meat!! AHHH I was SO sick by the end. Actually, I still have not recovered. It was so much foooood!! We figured out he payed more than 200 dollars on that meal. SO MUCH FOOD! 

While we were housing one day this week, this old Buddhist man started talking to us. He was telling us how he lives his faith. He was a very strong Buddhist man. Every week, he walks to Wakayama, which is about an hour long train ride, picking up garbage. Every morning he walks through his neighborhood picking up garbage. Also, it is very important to him to visit Buddhist temples. He does these things because he wants to live the best life possible so that wherever he goes after this life, he will be rewarded according to how he lived here. This is the thing: we talk to so many people who believe the same way he does. The people in Japan are SO GOOD. They give up their lives to serve others. They center their lives on families. They are modest and hard working and spend money wisely and so kind. They are so close to being exactly the kind of people who Heavenly Father wants in His kingdom. However...they are just missing one thing, and that is the gospel! The problem is, they do not realize that. Like Hassan san was saying to us, these people spend so much time working hard and they are diligent and disciplined, and it is all because they are searching for a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction, but they never quite reach that, and it is because they are missing the gospel. I know some day though that the gospel will penetrate this area and once it starts, it is going to spread like wild fire! I am doing my very best to get that fire started. 

Well....the church is true everybody! That is it for this week--I hope you all have a fabulous week!!

Love,

Crofts shimai