Mothers Day!! -- 母の日

McDonalds!

Dear Family,

MOM!! HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!!!! I love you So So SO much! Shout out to being the most wise and wonderful mother, teacher, example, friend, worker, inspirer, and incredible woman in the whole world! I love you and can not wait to talk to you! (p.s. did you get the information for that?)

I am astonished at all the Lord does. He blesses us so so much, even when we do not deserve it at all. And He loves His children! It is wonderful to be a part of His work in gathering them back to Him! 

Meeting with Morii family is always such a joy. I LOVED our lesson with them last week. We are doing the family English program, so we teach English for the first half hour and then do our lesson for the next half hour. However, last week during the English section, everything we talked about seemed to lead right to our lesson! We planned on teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ (eternal life, our obstacles, the solution (Jesus Christ) and how to receive His help).  We asked during English if they had any questions for us, and the question was as church members, what is our main goal? Hunt Shimai and I of course said something to do with eternal life! We asked her if she has any goals, and she said her goal is to read the entire Book of Mormon! Then, she began talking about death and the suffering and unfair things in this life, and she asked where we go for a solution to those. Fortunately, the answer to that question is also in the gospel of Jesus Christ! We decided to just end our English lesson and begin teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ! She seemed to be prepared for everything that was said, and the Spirit helped it to be a powerful lesson. I love walking out of those spiritual oasis lessons. I also love the Morii kazoku so much. There were a few days when we were not going to be able to meet with them because they were busy, but Chisa chan (the ten year old daughter) said she really really wanted to see us, so we were able to go and teach them! I just love her! 

We also were able to meet with Sugawa san a few times. She is the lady who I met with Allred shimai who came to church last week. She talks over and over about how she just wants a refresh or a restart, and she wants to feel clean again. Also when we talked about baptism in our lesson, her eyes sparked up, exactly as Yamaguchi shimais did the first time she heard baptism. I am so grateful the Lord led her to this gospel. I love her so much. 

Hunt shimai and I have continued to be blessed by being led to those who are ready for this gospel. I love doing missionary work with her. She is a great missionary! 

Fortunately or Unfortunately, however you choose to look at it, I am being transferred from Kyoto! I absolutely love it here...the people, the culture, the ward, the zone, my investigators and my companion...it is amazing here! BUT I am excited to be shipped off to the Northwest part of this mission, meet my JAPANESE companion, and serve in Yonago! Missionary work is just the best. Also, this church is true. 

 I will be speaking with you all soon, so TTFN! 

I love you!!!

Crofts shimai

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 

And My Soul Shall Be Joyful In The Lord: It Shall Rejoice In His Salvation

Dear Family,

Shout out to my best friend in the whole wide world! SARAH--is there anything that you do not do simply wonderfully?? Congratulations! I love you to pieces!!! 

Also shout out to dan the man! お誕生日おめでとうございます！HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! I love you! 

Well, things took an unexpected turn of events this week. Through a long course of talking with members and **** chan, we found out Monday afternoon that she never actually talked to her mom about church or the baptism, and that she did not have permission to be baptized. Worse than that, we found out that her mom HATES religion and that **** chan does not have a good relationship with her mom.  We spent all Monday night together with our ward mission leader and **** chan. We came up with a plan to help her, and we visited her mom that night. Yep, her mom hates religion. We did not even mention anything about **** chan joining the church or being baptized, but her mom was against the idea of her daughter having any associations with religion. It was definitely a huge bummer to be standing there hearing her say all of that, but what was worse was seeing **** chan. She looked SO sad and defeated! **** chan is not able to even come into the church any more. We met with her on Tuesday and on Friday at members homes, and her testimony and desires had been weakened. Her mom is telling her that God is not real and if God were real we would not have suffering in this world and things like that. 

In January, we set a goal as a mission to have every companionship see a baptism by the 23rd of Marc. We have been putting all of our efforts toward relying on the Lord, and I did not doubt at all that we would see that baptism! We prayed hard and worked hard and studied hard all week for **** chan. The turning point was on Saturday night when her mother was still just as against religion as ever. I began to think about my efforts and who I was relying on and I think I almost gave into the natural man and self-pitied myself. But then I remembered who I was putting my faith in. I decided to just keep moving forward because this is the work of the Savior. We had 2 hours left on Saturday night and I remembered that we had set a goal to get 2 investigators to church. We only had one investigator in line, so I determined to show the Lord my faithfulness and rely on Him to get somebody else to come to church. We parked our bikes next to the eki and were about to get started when I asked Hunt shimai about a man we had housed into a couple weeks ago. We both felt like we should go visit him. So we got back on our bikes and rode back the other direction to his house. He was very surprised to see us. He said he was touched that we came back to visit him again! He talked about some of his religious questions/concerns for a while, and we testified about church and how we can receive answers/peace at church. He said he wanted to come! Sure enough, he came to church! And he was very pleased with what he experienced at church too! Hunt shimai taught him after sacrament meeting while I was in a lesson with Yamaguchi shimai, and apparently he has been searching for the truth since he was in middle school (and he is old now!) and he has studied the bible and he knows so much about religion, but he has so many questions still. Fortunately, we have the answers! And we think he realized that yesterday. We are so glad God put him in our path so he can finally learn the truth! 

Speaking of church yesterday, Yamaguchi shimai came!!! YAY!! That was the day we have been waiting for for a long, long time! And, it turned out to be even better than we expected for her. She felt everybodys love so much and she recognized Gods love really really strongly and...well she is what you would call the golden investigator. Everything we hope will happen for somebody at church happened with her.  We left the church and stopped by about an hour and a half later to pick up something, and she was still there talking to the members! We had a dinner appointment with her and some members at 6, so we went to the church before then, and she was STILL there. She talked to us about how she does not really have any friends because right out of high school she went straight to work, and she has just been working for the last 7 years! But she was amazed to be surrounded by such friendly people at church, and she said she was so happy.  We set a new goal for her to be baptized at the beginning of May, and even though she does not have specifically set breaks on Sunday yet, she is praying for the chance to be able to come to church enough, and she really believes she will make her date! 

Yesterday we had another good park dendo day. We like to play with the kids at the park in hopes that their parents have a good image of the church, and usually I will quit out after a while and go talk to the parents while Hunt shimai keeps playing. However yesterday, we started a game of tag with 3 other 7 year old girls, and by the time we were finished, there were more than 20 kids playing with us! It turned into a reverse kind of tag though because the kids all wanted to chase us, so we were both just running around the whole park having 10 kids running after us yelling *amerikajin! amerikajin!* haha it was so funny. I love being here in Japan! 

I am excited for another transfer with Hunt shimai. I learn so much with her, and we are both being very humbled together. We have learned a lot about relying on the Lord, and we have high hopes for the next transfer! Also, we will be right here in the center of Kyoto during the biggest tourist season of the year. The Japanese people are getting real excited for it! It should be fun! But more than that...this missionary work! It is the most fun, most rewarding, most humbling, most exhausting, most marvelous work in the whole world. I am SO GRATEFUL to be standing in the front-line of the battle! 

Love you all so so much!

Love,

Kris

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together

One of Japan's most popular buildings:  The Golden Pavilion

Dear Family,

Top of the morning to ya!! Good thing you are halfway across the world, because you would have to pinch me today! I completely forgot about St Patricks day until we were grocery shopping and I am not wearing any green! 

Weather: it is warm!!!! last Monday was a blizzard, but this Monday I am going out without tights and a coat! Yay! Yesterday we were able to do park dendo. We just went from one park to the next talking to moms and playing with their kids. It was a GOOD day! And there were groups of teenagers out and about so we were able to make a lot of Eikaiwa invites and find more people who want to come this week!

 Yamaguchi shimais lessons continue to be highlights for me. This week in our lesson I learned about the power of the Spirit. Lessons with Yamaguchi shimai are always a very nice spiritual oasis. (We keep having people recommend that we go to the bath houses because they say they are very relaxing and nice and warm. Seriously everybody tells us we should go. Well, I imagine they are nothing compared to the relaxation and warmth and AMAZING feeling that we bask in every time during Yamaguchi shimais lessons.) This week, we taught about baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost and talked about the blessings that go along with those. At the end of the lesson, we asked her what she had been thinking about the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and she said * I feel so grateful for God and Jesus Christ. I think Jesus Christ is a wonderful person!* Well, we were talking about the Holy Ghost, not Jesus Christ. We made one connection to Jesus Christ during the lesson, but to be honest, it was pretty insignificant to connections we usually make. But the Spirit was able to teach her what she needed to learn that day, and apparently it was about Jesus Christ. I have noticed that as my testimony of Christ has grown, my investigators testimonies have grown as well, even when I am not talking directly about Jesus Christ. 

I have also had many more opportunities to testify about Christ. There is a program here called the Family English Program where for 6 weeks, we teach a family english for 30 minutes and then teach the gospel in Japanese for 30 minutes. We found a family who is interested! It is a mom with 2 little boys (4 and 2). They are the CUTEST boys in the world. The 4 year old is a short fat little dude and he was wearing his school uniform (little shorts, collar shirt with a badge, and a hat) and it was just so CUTE. Last week, we began the program. When we began the gospel discussion, the mom asked right away what we believe about Jesus Christ. I was only able to get out one sentence and she was struck by it! I said *Jesus Christ is the Son of God.* She had never heard of that before, and she kept saying it over and over and over. I was able to then testify about Jesus Christ and we had a very good discussion!

We also had a sweet experience with Misato shimai on Monday. Sunday night as we were planning for Monday and talking about how we could make it a good day, we decided that really all we wanted was for Misato shimai to feel something in her heart. She has willingly done what we have asked all along, but we know that it is still difficult for her to feel things. So we focused and prayed for the Spirit to touch her heart in that lesson. We taught about the Restoration, and at the end of the lesson when we asked what she was thinking, she said *i am sorry! I am ----* (we did not understand the word.) So we asked for clarification and she had us look it up in the dictionary. Well...the word meant impressed, or feeling emotion. God answered our prayers! It was such a sweet experience! She passed her baptismal interview yesterday and she is looking forward to her baptism next Sunday! Oh. And Yamaguchi shimai is coming to church next Sunday!!!!! I do not know if I have ever been more excited for anything. 

I am off to go see a Golden Temple. It will be a good start to an amazing week. I hope you all have a fabulous week as well! I love you!! 

Love,

Kris

INFINITE--無限

Dear Mums and Pops and Sibs,

I think I will be grateful for the rest of my life and probably for the rest of forever for the training plan we have right now. It is just a two week program--but we are to put all our focus on Christ and do all we can to come to KNOW Him. We have been studying Christ, testifying of Christ, and thinking about Him. The things I have learned and felt over the last week will forever be precious to me. 

As I have reflect on my mission--on the good times and the really good times and the successful times and the not so good times, I noticed a correlation to my trust in the Lord. I think I have had very strong trust throughout my mission. But there was a time without me even realizing when that trust switched from being in the Lord to being in myself. Once I realized that, I tried to change, but I am pretty sure I switched my trust from myself to the results, and not to the Lord. As I have learned this week about how the Lord is in all things and through all things and above all things and He knows all things and can do all things (and it can go on and on..) I realized just how important it is to put ALL of my trust in Him. 

As far as our area is going--Yamaguchi shimai is SO PREPARED. We taught her the Plan of Salvation this week, and she was just as much in awe in these lessons as she has been in the previous lessons. Everything just seemed to click with her, and the favorite part for me was that everything for her seemed to click back to Christ. She said that she has noticed that there is something special about us and about all the members who have come in for the lessons, and after hearing about the Plan of Salvation, she said she knew the reason we are different is because of Christ. She also expressed sincere concern for those who choose not to follow Christ. And she said that she will pray for the missionaries because she realizes now why it is so important to tell others about Christ! I think she might as well get started on her mission papers right now! She still has her huge problem with work on Sundays. We had her over at the Shibata kazokus house on Friday, and they talked with her about  her job. Apparently she is really in a rough situation, and quitting her job/getting work off on Sunday is near impossible. But nothing is impossible with the Lord. Anyway, Shibata Kaicho and Shimai both shared their conversion stories and the sacrifices they had to make in order to be baptized. It seemed to be very helpful for her. All I can say is that I am glad I have been able to focus so much on Christ these last few days, because this is a situation where it really helps to know where to put my trust. 

There is just something about going out for 7 or 8 hours in the rain and wind and working harder than I ever have in my life--and knowing that I am doing it all for the Lord. And not just for Him, but with Him. I am so grateful to be serving with my Savior and I am grateful for the opportunity to give up everything I have to follow Him in bringing others back to our Father. What a sweet privilege this is! I do not know if you are wondering this, but just in case you are, I will tell you again: I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!

Thanks for all the support you give me always. I know the reason my mission is the way it is is because of you! I love you!

Love,

Crofts shimai