Japanese Meatloaf

Konnichiwa minasan!

The week has had its ups and downs, but so does any good roller-coaster I guess.

Tuesday was TTTM (trainer trainee training meeting) was a blast, lots of good things were learned and reviewed, and it was nice to see old friends after millennia of transfers. Pilling Shimai seems to have been very happy with her notes. We had a lesson with Suenaga-san that night as well, and it's starting to look like he doesn't really have interest beyond gathering information, which is very zannen. But we're gonna try one more lesson on some hard-core faith and if that doesn't work, we may have to drop him.

Wednesday we had a koukan with the Kobe shimaitachi and that was way fun. I with with Mauldin Shimai and turns out we have a mutual friend back home so that was cool. We were way busy that day and had several appointments, which was very good. One of which being dropping off a cake we had made for Chi-chan's birthday. Her mom was super grateful because she got super sick that day and was too exhausted to make a cake, so I'm very happy we were able to help. Then Mauldin Shimai came up with a brilliant lesson for our dinner appointment with the Makenzies and long story short we got to all draw together and it was very fun. I have officially won the love of the small 2 year old child that I've been attempting to earn for four transfers now. I feel accomplished.

Thursday, a great many inconsequential things occurred, but only one very consequential thing came to pass. I tried to make okonomiyaki. You see, okonomiyaki is basically a cabbage pancake with various other veggies and things thrown in. But I, in my attempt, decided that throwing a bunch of ground beef in there would be a great idea. It was not a great idea. The result was a vaguely okonomiyaki shaped meatloaf. It wasn't nasty or anything, but it certainly was not okonomiyaki. But you see this is not the worst part. The worst is that my companion INSISTS on telling everyone and their dogs this story and now my entire district (and by entire district I meant Hatchett Chourou mostly) REFUSE to let me forget it. (Notwithstanding the DELICIOUS space brownies I made you, Hatchett 長老!) I'm going to be very cross if this is how I go down in history. 

In other news, a great inconvenience has occurred in the life of Sherwood Shimai. My tablet is now toast. I was trying to Google map myself to interviews on Friday, and my tablet decide it would be a great idea to take a flying leap from my hands and land smack on the pavement. Now it flashes black and fancy colors when you press the home button. Nevertheless, though the great tragedy of my tablet screen becoming straight up toast in 0.03 seconds was both stressful and inconvenient, the Lord has been merciful and there was miraculously a tablet that I'm now able to borrow for the time being. LINE is still impossible though so that's kinda annoying. Pilling Shimai's getting real good at kanji now cos she has to message everything lol. That same day, we had a dinner appointment with the Fukuchis, and we had an awesome discussion about family history and dendo and ways we can more effectively work in Kitarokko. It was very happy. I got to eat taco rice twice in one week. Yatta!

Saturday was way awesome because it was the worldwide day of service and we got to do three whole service things! We cleaned up a hatake for an old lady, who was very confused when we told her we wanted to help her more later and give her cookies and also give her a hug. But it's okay. She'll come around to the unstoppable force of Shimai Love eventually. We also helped Kurose-san clean her house and it was also way fun. There was Christmas music and doughnuts and all sorts of happy feelings. And then after that we made a cake for A-chan's birthday and that one was slightly very stressful because it did not turn out as I hoped it would, but at least she seemed mostly happy.

Sunday was probably the best though because Ooyama-San came to church again finally! We got her to tentatively commit to a baptismal date and it was super happy. She really wants to learn about the gospel and it seems that she feels like she is going to come to the point where she'll get baptized. We're way stoked. Also we had an awesome dinner appointment with the Bishop's family where we taught about commandments and obedience. It was way fun because we used a present tatoe and it seemed like the little girls are really starting to understand the point of and blessings from the commandments. I'm also very proud of Pilling Shimai for eating salad with a bunch of little tiny fish in it. 🎉

Hopefully this next week is only going to go up from here!

愛していまーす！💕
Sherwood 姉妹

1-2) okonomeatloaf
3.) the cake we made for chi-chan
4-5) in Japan they give you dry ice to keep your ice cream cold when you buy it from the grocery store.