Too Much Chocolate Has Been Eaten

Konnichiwa minasan! 

It's been a good week! We've been doing a lot of different things and had a surprising amount of appointments. Unfortunately, we've had to drop quite a few investigators after those appointments, but that's just a way to find new people to teach, I guess.

We've been working with a newly picked up investigator, Iwamoto-san. She's really sweet but she's got this problem where Satan keeps telling her that she doesn't need to be baptized, so that's annoying. We're planning on teaching her more about the understanding and recognizing the spirit, so hopefully that will help her to be able to realize that it's Satan who's telling her that baptism is unnecessary. I really feel like once she understands that baptism is personally critical for her, she'll progress fairly quickly. 

DCS this week went pretty well. Ejima 兄弟, our ward mission leader, brought us Costco pizza so that was super nice. He also went on a small rant about how we need to be using more psychological and emotional persuasive tools in our dendo. I can kinda see where he's coming from, and he's right that we need to be refining our teaching skills, but I'm more concerned about teaching by the Spirit. Thinking about it though has helped me in the PMG challenge for teaching in the Savior's way. I've really been considering how the Savior does teach and how he does not. It's really cool actually, considering how Christ was always straightforward when he taught doctrine. He used tatoes and object lessons, but he always gave the people he taught a clear choice.

This week we also had a koukan with the Hirakata shimai, and I spent the day with McCuen 姉妹. We didn't have any appointments scheduled, so we went and visited some less actives and potential investigators. The crazy thing though is there was this one guy, Oku 兄弟, who'd been baptized ages ago and remembered the church, but because of poor teaching on the part of the missionaries who baptized him, he didn't know anything about Jesus Christ. So we asked him if he wanted to learn about Jesus Christ and he straight up just said "yeah sure please teach me" and so we were able to set up an appointment with him and we even invited him to church. He said he might like to 久しぶり come back and visit. It was crazy. I've never seen a less active in Japan that open to hearing the gospel again. It was also valentine's day so we got to use that in contacting teenagers and kids. It was super fun. 

Other than that, we had a great eikaiwa on Saturday. Taniguchi 長老 and I were working with the more advanced learners' side of the room and we ended up teaching about the law of the fast and how strengthening the family strengthens society during the English part of the lesson. It was super great, and one of the students lined me later saying that she had shared what we taught with her daughter. It just goes to show that teaching how the core of the gospel solves the problems our students face sparks interest in them. I'm super excited about it. 

Also on Friday we have game night with this less active member, Q-chan, and we basically just play random board games with him and other members/investigators who join, followed up with a spiritual message at the end. This week was super great because the elders did a message on family history and they asked me to share an experience from my family history. So I got to share about my great grandfather and how his autobiography has helped me on my mission, and it was super great because Q-chan seemed really invested in the lesson, and the elders are going to try and start working with him to get him to the temple. 

But that's about the general main stuff of the week! Tune in next time to hear all of my probably many thoughts about the Wada 長老 taikai.

愛しています！💕

Sherwood 姉妹

1.) We hiked (and by biked I mean pushed my bike) up a hill and the view was great

2.) I'm 90% sure this tree has cancer

3.) I solved this rubiks cube all by myself

4.) game night! 

Ninja Van

Konnichiwa minasan! 

We went to Nabari this weekend, and it was very enlightening experience. So much so that I don't really remember what happened before Friday and I'm too lazy to go look at my journal. From what I remember, we mostly tried to visit less actives or people with potential interest and also Kitamura Shimai gave us a really yummy lemonade thingy that's like a goop made of lemon and sugar and water that you put in your glass and when you combine it with water it becomes lemonade. It's my treasure. 

But anyway when we got to the Nabari apartment at the end of the day on Saturday after spending the day with Imoto Shimai, I had a series of interesting discoveries/insights. (btw the level of clutter in the apartment is appalling and have decided that I am very grateful to be a shimai and would be glad never to have to step foot in an elder apartment again after my work here is done) Sitting on a swivel chair in the middle of the kitchen area is a little meishi book filled with meishis from leaving elders to incoming elders. It went from the elders of ancient times past (ie 2009) all the way up to, wait for it, Hatchett 長老! Yep! That's right my district leader last transfer used to serve in Nabari! It was really interesting reading the little messages, especially how they changed tone over the years. The beginning is really member fire, and then it changes to more of a "get ready to grind it out here" vibe until it settles with Hatchett 長老's last words, "This place needs joy."  I think that he's really spot on. I think it's true in Nabari and Yamatokoriyama and honestly the rest of the world too. I'm not really sure why people struggle to feel joy, considering that the gospel is the greatest source of joy, but it is a problem and one that I've been trying to figure out how to solve for ages now. I'm not 100% sure what the answer is, but I think I'm on the right track now.

Mom suggested last week that I read "Saints" and "Daughters in My Kingdom" to help with President Nelson's challenge to participate more fully in Relief Society, and little did she know that those books were just what I needed to figure out what to do to help the people here feel joy. As I was reading these histories of the women of the Church especially, I came to a profound realization of the sheer power that lies in the hands of the Relief Society. It seems to me that a major part of the change in the members that President Eyring was talking about is going to be headed by the Relief Society. I've been thinking about President Kimball's prophecy, “Much of the major growth that is coming to the Church in the last days will come because many of the good women of the world … will be drawn to the Church in large numbers. This will happen to the degree that the women of the Church reflect righteousness and articulateness in their lives and to the degree that the women of the Church are seen as distinct and different—in happy ways—from the women of the world.” I really feel that this is a critical part of the changing of the hearts of the members. I'm not sure what will come of it yet, but I feel very impressed to begin working more closely with the Relief Society and helping them remember the heritage of their sisterhood, what Emma Smith foresaw. “We are going to do something extraordinary...We expect extraordinary occasions and pressing calls.” I feel that this heritage of charity, the pure love of Christ, when understood, will help lead the sisters here in Japan to reclaim the joy of the gospel.

So in accordance with this impression, we've come up with a bunch of ideas for how to minister more effectively to the members in Nabari through technology. We can't be there in person, but we can be there for them through LINE. We talked to the branch president and set up a group chat with him and the elders so we can hopefully have a LINE video call meeting with him this week about how we can help Nabari. We also asked him if we can join the Nabari Branch LINE group and post encouraging message/spiritual thoughts the weeks we aren't there so the members don't feel as far away from us. He agreed so we're going to start doing that, and also start seeing if we can't start working with the Relief Society and Elders Quorum over LINE. I really feel like if we as members understand our heritage and identity as Latter-Day Saints, we'll be able to access greater love and joy in the gospel. Through the blessings of the temple and eternal families, all the hardship in our lives is made not only worth it, but sweet in and of itself. As C. S. Lewis said, "[Mortals] say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. … The Blessed will say, ‘We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven." And I feel that the understanding of this is going to come at least in part from hearing the stories of saints who have gone through much the same things as they are, and the vision that they worked so hard to leave us. We'll see where it leads, I guess.

As for Yamatokoriyama, we're doing good! We had dinner with Bishop yesterday and got a lot of awesome direction for where we need to go with the area, specifically with recent converts and family history. I am very excited. Other than that though I don't really remember what happened this week because it was all so eclipsed by the weekend. Slowly but surely the work of the Lord is rolling forward. It's a good time.

愛しています！💕

Sherwood 姉妹

1-3) We went to this castle sorta thing in the city of the origin of the ninja. I think it's just a fancy house made by an old rich guy though. I did not really understand the conversation

4.) ninja van 🗾

Deck the Halls with Boughs of Apostles

Konnichiwa minasan! 

It sure has been a crazy week what with MLC and zone taikai all in one go. I feel like I've been outside my area more than in it! But it's okay because a great many things were learned and a lot of good things happened.

We had a lovely lunch appointment with Hattori Shimai, and it was actually really awesome because I discovered that she is basically me if I were old and Japanese. She's got a lot of awesome insights about the gospel and cares a lot about whether or not people are truly converted to the Lord, or if they're being cold gravy disciples. We had an awesome conversation about what true faith and conversion really is and how to help other people along the covenant path. We're really feeling like the key to the members here is friendshipping them.

Also! We picked up an old investigator this week! Her name is Iwamoto san and she's really cute. We're not super sure how it's going to go or if she'll be ready this time, but I have faith in the guidance of the Spirit so whatever happens it'll be fine.

On Wednesday we taught Los Angela san and her family, and it went very well. Taniguchi 長老, having the superpower of Portuguese, was able to teach the mom and the rest of us were able to help out the kids with English and teach them how to pray. I really enjoy teaching children. They're so pure. So willing to listen. I wish more people were like that. Our problem is that the kids speak Japanese as their first language and the mom speaks Portuguese as her first language, so it's hard to teach all of them together. We're trying to figure out how to set it up to be most efficient, but ideas are slow-coming currently.

Also we had a great meeting with Hasegawa Kyoudai, the family history specialist of the ward. We talked about how to get people to start, and it turns out that most people just have no idea what they're doing and are too afraid to ask, so we've got a plan to start meeting with everyone and teaching them about FamilySearch. Also we learned about how to get the family registers from the government! Because Hayashi shimai is Japanese, she needs to go get hers, and we found out that you can send for it real easy by mail or the internet. Hashimoto Kyoudai gave us a whole guide on how to do it and I sent it to the tech elders because it's actually brilliant and really helpful when trying to help members get going on their family history.

We also had a meeting with the bishop and the elders and got the whole lowdown on the ward vision. We learned a lot about the general state of the ward and where bishop wants us to help move them to. We can tell he's been thinking about this a lot, so we're going to move forward there and try to focus on bringing the spark of the joy of the gospel into the members' lives.

愛しています!💕
Sherwood 姉妹

1.) the garland of Apostles in the abeno apartment and origin of today's title. I want one. 

2.) proof that Japan is stuck in the 90's

A Deer Place

Konnichiwa minasan!

Well I have no time so bullet list miracles/other stuff that happened! 

- transferred to Yamatokoriyama! (it's in Nara and famous for deer) New companion is Hayashi Shimai from the lovely land of Tokyo!

- there's no hills here I am happy

- Got to meet with Jenny again before we left. It was great. She's so cute. 

- Ooyama San came to church! 

- Natsuki Chan said she wants to dendo and plans on getting baptized! She's so close! I love her. 

-Bishop sent me snacks and things I am eternally grateful

-I'm the only American in my area even though there's elders too. One's from Brazil and the other from Germany. It's like a bad joke lol. 

More to come next week when I'm not pressed for time!!! 

愛していますよ！💕

Sherwood 姉妹

Pics of the new house and why I love you, Bishop

Note to Self: Live Somewhere that Allows for a Treehouse

Konnichiwa minasan! 

This week was way fun actually! We've been surprisingly busy, which I'm certainly not complaining about. I like having stuff to do.

Nishikawa 姉妹 asked us to come over to her house and help her trim her trees, so that was outstandingly fun. I'm a real professional at making trees look like giant bonzais now. She was so nice and made us lunch too. There were vegetables and bagels and it made me really happy. And it was really cute because she was so happy that we would take the time to come and help her, and she told us all about different people who might have interest in family history. And then when we saw her on Sunday she was sooooo happy to see us. She's the actual cutest person. And it was really nice to get out and just garden because I was feeling like a bag of gomi left out in the rain, but it's okay because gardening helped.

We also got to go and spend time with Jenny and her mom and get to know them really well. Her mom is the nicest and also makes really good cookies. And it turns out that the mom has a whole bunch of interest in family history and is even working on a book about all the times she's seen the hand of God in her life! Hopefully we'll be able to meet with them again before I transfer bc that would be great.

It also turns out that being 99% sure you're transferring is really helpful in getting people to meet with you because we also got to meet with Kurose san and Nakamura san. Kurose san showed us a bunch of old photos and things from her family history and it was great, and it got even greater because she helped us out by driving us to see Nakamura san. We made chicken noodle soup for him because he's not been feeling well recently and so we haven't been able to meet with him, but he was way happy to see us and get the soup, so we're ureshii about that.

District meeting was also brilliant, as usual, but this week especially because we had a really good discussion about how powerful words are and how addressing your negative thoughts and replacing them with positive, hopeful thoughts is super effective in actually making your life and situation around you more positive and fruitful. It was way good. I need to repent about that bc sometimes I'm too negative towards myself ha. Probably need more sleep.

Also we had a koukan with the Akashi shimaitachi and it was way fun. Okamura 姉妹 and I had a lesson with their investigator Mika san and it went super well. We talked about how much the gospel blesses families and it really resonated with her. It was just way cool to be a part of her conversion process and to get revelation about what she needs together with Okamura 姉妹. She really is a brilliant missionary. We also made brownies for members and it was way good. I'm a big fan of okashi dendo.

Also Ooyama san came to church again finally, and she brought her daughter with her. From the way she talks, she sounds like she's ready to just get baptized already, like she talks about baptism like it's a thing that's definitely going to happen, but she's weirdly flaky when it comes to learning the actual principles. It's an odd situation. We're working on it. But hey, at least she's coming and things seem to be moving, if just a little slowly.

But yeah it that's about the kanji of the week. Tune in next week to see what happens with transfer calls! 

愛しています！💕

Sherwood 姉妹

1.) squaaaaaad I love these guys so much I'm cry

2.) shimai for the win

3-4.) high quality Japanese English homework. It makes me laugh

Didodecahexaflexagon

Konnichiwa minasan,

I'm tired and emotionally shot for various reasons which all basically boil down to the fact that I am an old missionary and my everything hurts. Hopefully the many pictures will make up for it. So a brief overview of what happened.

-finally got to talk with Suenaga san for the first time in forever
-had a lesson with Hara san that was less exciting than expected but she did agree to meet again so hey bonus
-KUROSE SAN AND HER SON BECAME NEW INVESTIGATORS THROUGH THE POWER OF THE HEXAFLEXAGON! Ready? Okay so hexaflexagons are these little origami hexagons that have 3-24 sides you can flip through (hence the flexa part of the name) depending on how you make them. We usually use 6 and we were able to connect it really awesome with the book of Mormon challenge, which we debuted as a test run in eikaiwa and it worked brilliantly and ended in Kurose san becoming an investigator and inviting us over to teach her about family history! And then when we went over to her house, we used a hexaflexagon to explain the godhead to her son Kouhei, which resulted in him asking how he can get guidance from the Spirit. It was BRILLIANT! Hexaflexagons are the futuuuure
-talked to a real nice former investigator who didn't have a ton of interest, but he accepted a book of Mormon and gave us a ramen coupon so hey, good times.

-did a looooooot of family history with less actives and members. And I mean a lot. It was brilliant tho.

But yes this is about all I have the energy for gomen nasai. Hopefully this next week will be better and I'll have more to expound upon.

愛しています！💕
Sherwood 姉妹

1. This sign is me when trying to get nihonjins to listen to our message

2. Hatchett 長老's enormous hexahexaflexagon

3. Squad

4. My miniscule hexahexaflexagon 

5. My less miniscule hexahexaflexagon 

6. Naganuma 兄弟 gave us an inordinate amount of bananas

7. Lunch with Hara san

8. My child on the busiest street in the area

9. My enormous hexahexaflexagon we used in eikaiwa 

10. The general Kanji of the area

No Subject!

Konnichiwa minasan! 

Well as far as astounding adventures on the streets go, this week was pretty uneventful. However! On the side of members, it was quite the brilliantly effective week! Huzzah!

The newly-called ward family history leader invited us over to his house on New Year's Day to have lunch with him and his wife and also discuss the Dramatic Vision of Family History for the Ward(tm). It was super great. They're super duper fire about family history, and they told us all sorts of really cool stories from their own family history. We had a really awesome discussion about how a desire to do family history is inseparably connected with an understanding of the eternal principles regarding eternal families and the temple, and it was just really great because it was like the discussion at the Christmas taikai all over again but in Japanese. We're super excited to start working with them more closely and get the ward turned more towards the temple. On top of that, they really liked the family history bingo chart that Bills Shimai made last transfer and so we've got plans to start circulating it around the ward and meeting with people to start up family history.

Then TTTM was great, and lots of really awesome things were learned. I really loved the discussion on the power and authority of our calling as missionaries. It's always a topic that helps me feel better because sometimes life out here is really hard and it's nice to be reminded that it's not just us all by ourselves out here. This point has been really driven home to me recently due to various stressors, but hey I know my leaders are inspired because they've all been touching on the subject in wonderful ways. I'm super grateful to be blessed to be surrounded by such a spiritually strong district. @Nishinomiya District: 愛している〜

Also! The Mitsuyas invited us over for more Oshogatsu things on Thursday and we got to spend some really awesome time with both them and the Fujikawas, do calligraphy, make crepes, and just general wholesome bonding. And since there were so many youth there, we told them about the Book of Mormon challenge, and helped them learn how to do it themselves with a challenge to each family to give a Book of Mormon to a friend. It was way great.

The best, though, was definitely Sunday. Natsuki-chan came to church, being the wonderful doll that she is, and we got to have lots of really great conversations with the members. I expressed some of my concerns about dendo to Fukuchi 兄弟 and was rewarded with an invitation to go visit less actives with him and Fukuchi 姉妹. Originally we were only going to visit one, but it turned into three plus a potential investigator! And wow was it brilliant! We visited Kondo 姉妹, who I've only met once back when I was with Hattanda 姉妹, and when we stopped by she wasn't there so we decided to write a note and leave cookies. Well, as we were writing the note, lo and behold Kondo 姉妹 comes driving up! She invited us in and we ended up having a really awesome conversation with her about family history and it seems like she has a lot of interest in starting to put her family history together! We even swapped LINEs with her and made a group chat with us and the Fukuchis to discuss family history! (When we told Hatchett 長老 about this during our weekly report he just about sang for joy and said it was the most perfect group chat he'd ever heard of lol) and if it had stopped there, I would have been happy, but no! There's more! We visited the lady we were originally going to visit and ended up having an awesome conversation with her and her non-member husband, which was super great because Fukuchi 兄弟 told us that he'd never had a conversation like that with the husband before. AND THEN! We went and visited the Masons, met one of the sons, and the wife, (now mind you, I've only ever seen Mason 兄弟 in 5 straight transfers) and had a really awesome conversation about what Mason 兄弟 appreciated about missionaries in the past (He said that Dahl 長老 had eyes like Jesus haha) and a bit about his family history (because my bean is awesome and asked about a picture on his wall like a boss) so now we have a much better idea for how to minister to him better in the future. And then the Fukuchis invited us over for dinner and we had ANOTHER super awesome conversation about the needs of the ward and how grateful they were that we pushed them to go minister more. We talked about the importance of focusing on eternal things and unity, and I got to do one of my favorite things, which is testify about the blessings I've seen these past two transfers as a result of being in a super unified and nakayoshii (emotionally close) district that's centered on Jesus Christ and magnifying our callings. (Hilariously, once I mentioned Pionita 長老, Fukuchi 兄弟 got all excited and went on a small soap box about how Pionita 長老 is super pure. It was great and also 500% true.) It was super great though because then they really opened up to us and started talking about the problems they've noticed and their desires to help the ward and help the members realize that missionary work is not supposed to be missionaries supported but members, but rather members supported by missionaries.  It was just a really really good day and week in general. 20/10 would recommend. We're excited to see what next week has in store. 

愛しています!💕

Sherwood 姉妹

Fun quotes of the week. My district leader has some solid one liners:

“Pionita 長老 likes fish. He's a fish boy.” - Hatchett 長老

“I like fish if it's good.” - Pionita 長老

“髪の毛がおいしくないよ” (hair isn't delicious, yo) - Sherwood 姉妹

“髪の毛食べたい” (I want to eat hair) - Kou-chan

“It smells like I've bought the trademark for musk and sprayed it on our apartment” - Hatchett 長老

“I mean you could call it pizza but I would call it an abomination” - Hatchett 長老

“I'm pretty sure Dominoes in Japan is not a need. Our needs are our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, accessing His Atonement, and burning corn and mayo pizza to the ground...with lemons” - Hatchett 長老

“Soup is just fluidous salad. Like someone was making a salad and went too much on the dressing and was like…welp. And that was how soup was born.” - Hatchett 長老

1-2.) I melted my jacket this week rip me

3-4,7.) when we were at the Mitsuyas we played this pizza game so we decided to make a face out of the toppings and then put that face on Kou-chan's face lolol

5.) Pilling Shimai and her fountain of youth

6.) me and Gaby-Chan, the cutest little dachshund ever I love him 

8.) I make a crepe with the skill level of a goldfish