Lice and Love 🐜💕

Konnichiwa minasan! 

Remember how hard last week was? Well we had another lovely surprise this week too. It started off with the awesome bang of a case of lice on my head. Where it came from we still have zero idea. Literally there are no small children in Matsuyama. Weird.... My hair has never seen so much olive oil before in its life. But hey it turns out that meticulously combing through your comapanion's hair for two hours is a great bonding experience. #compunity 5/10 recommend 👍. It also turns out that Japan's lice care leaves much to be desired, so I'm really grateful for all of Sister Smoot's help in getting this sorted out. She's an angel.

Tanaka-san is doing really well. I've never seen so much childlike faith before in my life. He said that before he read the Book of Mormon he didn't believe in God, but now because he read it he believes. He even said he wants to obey Jesus Christ! Like in those exact words! He also asked us if he should buy a car so he can come to church every week. We told him to ask God and also his wife before making a decision like that. We expect him to be baptized next month. We also have plans to try and start teaching his wife, depending on what he says about her next time we meet with him. 

Also we made the Survey to End All Surveys this week with Joe Kyoudai's help on the Japanese. We've lost quite a few investigators these past couple weeks so we put out heads together to create this beast of an survey that leads to the first four lessons or family history depending on what they answer. More to come about that as we start using it. Interestingly, we found that Japanese does not have a good translation for heritage at all. The only word they have means the same as inheritance, but that's not really the same. It's weird though because one would think that because Japan has so. Much. Pride in their culture that they'd have a good word for family and cultural heritage. But nope. That took forever to try and figure out how to say. 

We've also gathered together the combined might of Takeuchi Kyoudai, Yuudai Kyoudai, and Katsu Kyoudai to create the Matsuyama Gonin (5 people) this week. Basically we discussed why Matsuyama hasn't been seeing much success recently in dendo and we accidentally on purpose slapped the kyoudaitachi in the face with the Spirit Alma-style by making them realize that the problem is that no one is showing love. Even in ministering it's still just a box to check off. We asked them three questions:

How often in a day do you think about the people you minister to? 

How often do you pray for them? 

How often do you study the scriptures for them? 

In so doing, they realized that the love was missing and now they're on fire, especially Yuudai and Katsu. We put it into their heads that because there's no elders in Matsuyama right now, they can be our unofficial member missionary elders. They loved it. Mostly because they never went on missions but really wish they had. It's been way good. 

Along those same lines, we have finally lit the dendo kindling in Matsuyama at FHE yesterday. Turns out there's a concerning amount of members in Matsuyama who don't have their patriarchal blessings, so we've been trying to encourage them to go get them for a couple weeks now with mixed success. But at FHE, I don't remember how, but we got on the topic and it turned into a giant testimony meeting about the blessings and power of patriarchal blessings and now finally Katsu is excited to get his! We also had a deep discussion on the true meaning of faith, that is, action on a held belief, and therefore if you don't act, it means you have no faith. It was awesome. But the real kicker was right after we all said the 8:00 Dendo Prayer together. I was prompted to suggest doing that really American FHE thing where you go in a circle and tell the people next to you why you love them. So we did it and the Spirit was so insanely strong. Sumida Kaichou said he wants to do it at every FHE now, and the kaiin who were there all expressed how good they felt because of it. Yuudai and Katsu said that they could feel that we talk and think and discuss how to help and support them all day every day. I wanted to cry. It was so good. It felt so much like we were all a really close family.

And thus we see that telling people how and why you love them is one of the most important things you can do for unity. We had just come from a Relief Society where they talked about how you just can't tell people "I love you" because that's only for couples, to a beautiful FHE where the love was so palpable and everyone felt so much joy together all because they had said "I love you and this is why." The difference is real. I want to stay so badly. They're so close. The fire is lit. 

愛しています！ (*^^*) 

Sherwood 姉妹

1.) zone conference (we've been photoshopped in bc we had to leave early lol) 

2 - 5.)The best FHE in the world. Look at that beautiful smile on Daisuke's face. It's the first time I've ever seen it in a photo ever. I'm so happy

6 - 9.) The best district in the world. We've been through so much together lol

10.) Joe Kyoudai took us out to eat at a fancy place woo

19歳 20歳

Be Careful What You Wish For

​Konnichiwa minasan! It's been a week.

So last week we low-key asked Heavenly Father to let us be like Alma and we're regretting it just a bit. The thing is, we had meant Alma 15:13-14 Alma who can call people to repentance and baptize thousands, but apparently Heavenly Father thought it'd be better for us to be Alma 14:2-3 Alma who calls people to repentance and then everyone hates him. RIP us. ​

See, what happened was we had a wicked awesome Monday and 7/8ths of Tuesday. We found 6 new investigators and taught like four lessons. And then out came the priests of the Order of Nehor. Out of nowhere, Hayato became like a totally different person, dropped us by way of temper tantrum over text (we still don't know what the real reason is. Like what, are you 12?) dropped our other investigator like a bag of hot rocks (also don't know why) even though we all apologized like three times, and the other friend even went as far as prostrating himself on the ground and begging for forgiveness. It was way sad. And stressful. And also very reminiscent of middle-school drama. It's very interesting how people who aren't keeping the commandments can't really progress past that level of maturity. I mean, you can see it in every TV drama ever. It's just middle school nonsense but on an adult scale. Stupid. Stress only.

But it's interesting cos remember how last week we were working on humility? Well it sure is a good thing we did otherwise this whole fiasco could have been a whole lot worse. As it was it was pretty bad, but we were able to be humble enough to apologize quickly and by the Spirit (even though we still don't really know why he's mad at us) and not get all defensive. (Okay maybe we got a little bit defensive but only when ranting to each other and not to him) So thanks Heavenly Father for giving us that keiji (revelation) ahead of time.

Also, to make up for the Straight Nonsense™ of this week we also had a bunch of Straight Miracles™ and it was great. Tatoeba (for example), remember when we went to Matsuyama Castle with Tanaka-san last transfer? WELL...he's been coming to Eikaiwa for a solid year and a half now, and apparently 6 months ago sisters gave him an English Book of Mormon (and only an English Book of Mormon) and he read the WHOLE THING. In a WEEK! So now he has a super strong testimony of Jesus cos he read the whole Book of Mormon, but he has no idea why. We asked him why he's not Christian if he loves Jesus so much and he just went, "Oh...I don't know. I never thought about it. If I want to be Christian, should I get baptized?" and we're just like ???????? Who even is this guy???  He even asked to give the opening prayer at Eikaiwa! So we started doing lessons with him and gave him a Japanese Book of Mormon so he can actually understand it this time. And it turns out he's been to Temple Square before??????? Like??? Most MEMBERS haven't even been! So yeah he's getting baptized next month. It's been wild.

Other miracles more simply put because I'm tired include:
-We set a maybe kind of tentative date for Katsu to go to the temple and receive his endowments. (it's the end of Bagoyo Shimai's and my missions. We told him we'd go with him if he goes by then. So @mom you have to come pick me up so I can hold up my end of that promise and also I wanna introduce you to my angels in Katsura)
-We had a really fun sports event where we got a bunch of really serious Nihonjin to play stupid games with us. These are the only pictures I have this week. Gomen.
-Our district leader, Bailey Chourou, is an angel and we love him.
-We live.
-We miraculously ran into three investigators when we were going out to eat ramen with Katsu
-God protected our lungs as we dendoed these three punks who were going through cigarettes like a family of 8 goes through a bag of Cheddar and Sour Cream Ruffles. It's okay though. They're like baby punks. Not quite fully fledged yet. Only have their little fuzzy punk feathers. There's still hope. They're in culinary school. We call them The Chefs.

​I'm tired now tho. I want tapioca. See you next week ✌️

I Don't Recommend Having Arguments with the Spirit

Konnichiwa minasan! 

This week sure was an adventure! So many things happened, but the biggest things all come down to the journey we've been on this week with humility and pride. We've realized that the world essentially revolves around these two things. (Which is kind of a silly realization actually bc legit this is literally the entire plot of the Book of Mormon.) Let me explain with some experiences. 

Edward: So remember how we gave him that challenge to come up with his version of the Plan of Salvation? Well, it was kind of incredibly disappointing. He only kind of rose up to it. And the plan he did come up with neglected the very most important of all questions: why? (also he broke all of the rules of God but anyway). We taught him about the real Plan of Salvation, and weirdly he had exactly zero reaction to it whatsoever. So we inquired as to why and it turns out that he really hates that question. And as we investigated we found out it was because this kid is caught in the Luciferian Tar Pits of Self-Deprecating Pride. It was so sad. He told us that he doesn't need the gospel because he's already perfectly happy because, and I quote, "I have my art, and my favorite book, and my favorite anime." Bagoyo Shimai and I just looked at each other like wow. The level of sadness in this child's face was astounding. He wouldn't even listen when Bagoyo Shimai tried to tell him about the single most difficult experience of her life, which kind of trumps most people's in terms of sheer difficulty. Needless to say, he's not ready yet. So we dropped him with a parting testimony that God will give him so many more chances in the future. Sad, but it's okay because God loves him and isn't going to hang him out to dry. Poor kid is probably going to have to be hardcore humbled. Rip. 

Nozomi: Our angel beautiful child. He's the literal exact opposite of Edward. It was way interesting. He's like Shinji levels of humble and it was so beautiful to witness. We did the Book of Mormon challenge with him and right away he already had the humility to ask us an honest question that he was worried about. And then when he read the scriptures we gave him, he immediately applied them and began to repent right before our very eyes! It was so beautiful. He's such a sweet soul, humble and pure and good. He wants to travel the world to learn how to better himself and he has a beautifully positive relationship with his family. He even has interest in Lesson 4, the one all about commandments! Aka, he wants to repent and come unto Christ. We're meeting him again this Wednesday. 💕💕💕

But like it's so interesting seeing the contrast between his attitude and Edward's because where Nozomi is so willing to change and admit his faults and lean not unto his own understanding, Edward is very not. So because of this and other iroiro (miscellaneous, but more broad of a feeling) things, we came to realize that we, our investigators, and our branch needs to have humility before we can even begin to start exercising more faith unto repentance. 

So we decided to work on humility. And then at zone conference it was confirmed that we need to work on humility. It was great. We were pumped. And then immediately following that we had our weekly planning session, in which the Spirit told me to do something I very much hate: talking to strangers out of the blue. So I argued with Him for a solid 5 minutes, staring off into the distance as I tried to convince Him to change His mind. Bad idea. I lost. Holy Ghost: 10^10. Me: 0. We're talking to more strangers out of the blue now. But it's okay because we've been able to use this experience to encourage the branch members as well! 

Tl;Dr listen to Moroni and Alma. Be humble. Don't fight with the Spirit. Love God. Your life will be happier. It's a good time

愛しています！ (*^^*) 

Sherwood Shimai

19歳 20歳

udon party! We made the udon from scratch

Hayato makes some bomb fries yo

Omajinai!

Konnichiwa minasan! 

Many things have happened. So many. Highlight reel let's go!

I got to chill with Eyring Shimai and be a trainer for a day. Bagoyo Shimai and I cried over our investigators at a park in the middle of nowhere overlooked by a mysterious giant Buddha statue. I adopted Yuudai and Daisuke as my older brothers. We got to see fireflies. The only magic trick I know (thanks dad it's the one card trick you taught me on a vacation to Palm Springs when I was like 12) got us a new investigator. Katsu made a giant bowl of pudding. I swapped glasses with Yuudai. His vision is bad. We pet a dog the size of Bagoyo Shimai. 

Now for the more involved updates on the investigators:

Edward: So when we first met him he said he kinda had a poor impression about religion and wasn't super keen on us trying to dendo him really hard. But then I had an idea. See, he thinks a lot like me and he loves drawing and writing and all that creative stuff so we gave him a challenge. We introduced him to the six basic perfections of God: perfect knowledge, perfect power, perfect justice, perfect judgment, perfect mercy, and perfect truth. If God ceases being any one of those things, He ceases to be God. So we gave Edward these rules and told him the purpose of God: to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of His children, and we told him to try and come up with a plan that accomplishes that purpose while still maintaining all six of those perfections. And it was crazy because he was like "yeah I've thought about this a lot actually" and long story short he already knows really interesting and important gospel principles, like the necessity of apostles. And he was way excited about writing down his plan We're gonna visit him again tonight and follow up and continue with our "game" where we poke holes in his plan, then we present ours and he'll try to poke holes in ours (which he won't be able to because it's God's lol) and through that we'll introduce the Book of Mormon to him. We're excited.

Hayato: He stresses me out. We learned from our district leader that he's been spiritually eating poop out of the hand of Satan and not following really important commandments, which is both frustrating and explains a lot because Hayato is not very sensitive to the Spirit. He doesn't understand that literally the only way he can ever help anyone be happy in the long run is through the mercy of Jesus Christ. 😢 However, he has agreed to take daily 5min lessons with us, which is a small miracle.  However, ever since we set that up, every time we've gone to do a lesson with him, his shop was crazy busy and we couldn't teach him. Satan is really annoying. We're working on it. With varying degrees of success.

Ai-chan: We taught her the restoration on Friday with Itsuki Shimai. She's golden. I love her. She's praying every day and is coming to church next week. She's literally the cutest person. She's gonna be so good for the ward. I'm so proud of her. 

Atsushi, Nozomi, Hiroto, Milena: So this week we were finally able to set up a daily 8:00 ward dendo prayer and it has actually changed the face of our work. Our own efforts haven't changed very much at all, but this week we found four new investigators way easily whereas we usually only find one or two. The only thing that changed is the prayer. For real, the ward coming together and praying every day at the same time is proving to be an actual miracle. We're so happy. Especially becuase one of them, Atsushi, was this magician we met at Hayato's place who said he had no interest in religion, but when we did the Book of Mormon Challenge with him, he basically did a 180 and now wants to learn about Jesus Christ. All because we answered the question, "how do I get a girlfriend" with a verse from the Book of Mormon. It just goes to show that when the ward comes together and shows God through the works of their faith that they're ready to receive new members, God will lead people to them. Furthermore, the Book of Mormon is the greatest tool we have to bring people unto Christ. And finally, when the members and the missionaries are one, the Lord cannot help but bring miracles to pass.

愛しています！ 💕

Sherwood 姉妹

19歳 20歳

1.) eating dinner at the firefly party. I stole Katsu's hat. Yuudai gave Bagoyo Shimai his.

2.) #aesthetic. Thanks Yuudai Kyoudai!

3.) a fish cream puff and a cream cream puff from Katsu

4.) eating katsudon and ebikatsu with Katsu (aka my oniichan). He took this photo. He added a filter. We still don't know why.

5.) we found a thing. Idk what the thing was. But it was a fun thing. 

6.) the dog the size of Bagoyo Shimai. His name is Cocoa

7.) me, Eyring Shimai, and Hayato

8.) a mystery Buddha. We don't know why it's there

Vegetables

Minasan konnichiwa! 

Just looking at my planner and thinking about making a full report on everything we did this week makes me tired so this will probably be less involved than last week.

We found a new investigator named Edward. He likes art and cooking. He was a referral from Hikaru actually, and we're dendoing him through family history cos he has lots of stories about his family. I got to show him my seven generation fan chart that I laminated and we committed him to filling out the My Family booklet with his mom. We're gonna see him again tomorrow. It's a good time.

Also we've visited Hayato virtually every single day this week and it's been a huge success for his progress. We even managed to do a lesson with him outside his shop for 15 minutes! It was so good and he's doing so well. The only thing is we promised him that if he would make the sacrifice to do a lesson with us outside his shop, he would get a lot of customers that day, but when we followed up with him about it, he said it didn't happen. So we're kind of like ?????? about it because we thought that was the promise we were supposed to make but he didn't see it fulfilled and now we're kinda not sure what to do because when a promise isn't kept, the trust in future promises is significantly lower.... But the weird thing is that when we were following up, he said that being able to do the lesson was a tender mercy so we're just confused in general.

We're really excited about Hayato's progress though. We had a meeting with Smoot Kaichou's first counselor, Nakajima Kaichou on Friday cos he's a part of Matsuyama Branch, and we've determined that the source of all of Matsuyama's (and Japan in general) problems stem from a lack of young people, which makes a lot of sense tbh. He was saying that without youth and YSA to fire up the older generations, everyone is just tsukareta and stuck in Renlund Chourou's problem box of no attitude or effort. Therefore, because Hayato has like a million young friends who he counsels on like a daily basis, if he gets baptized, there will be a wave of young converts that follow him. Thus, we're trying really hard to focus on and work through him, and get our handful of YSA to be fired up about dendo. Most of them have the attitude (sort of) but are generally lacking the effort. Which is really annoying sometimes, because the way to get out of that is to experience the joy of dendo but if they're too lazy to come out in the first place, then we're in a vicious cycle.

But in order to help with that, we've initiated a mission prep class at the blessing of the ward council! We're all making PMG Books of Mormon together and discussing how to better relate the gospel to people so they will see that it really is for them. More on that as it starts going.

But yeah other than that, Ai chan is a literal kinjin and she's just absorbing the gospel like a sponge. The only struggle we're having is that it's hard to set up things with her over LINE, so we're going to try and catch her on her way home from work today to set up an appointment this week. Hopefully Hayato's influence will help her as well.

In other news, Bagoyo Shimai and I spent three hours compiling a list of the best scriptures in the entire Book of Mormon for Suzuki-San and Hayato. As a direct result, we have these amusing quotes:

"Suzuki-san can't handle the meat of the Gospel yet. He can only have milk." - me

"Hayato can have...vegetables" - Bagoyo Shimai

"How many verses are there in the book of mormon?" - Bagoyo Shimai

"So many." - me

Yeah fam that's all I got gomen. Sleep is needed lol. Til next week! 

愛しています! 

Sherwood 姉妹 💕

1.) We gave Hayato the broken guitar that's been sitting in our apartment for who knows how long and he let us write this scripture on it

2.) Hayato did an introduction in English for y'all 💕

19歳 20歳

Ebi Tsuchi 🍤🍤🍤

Konnichiwa minasan! 

This week was so busy I barely remember it all but here goes.

Tuesday: Renlund 長老 taikai (conference)! Woo! Revelation was had. Precious humans were seen. Renlund 長老 is actually an extremely hilarious dad joke person. So much dry humor. It was a good time. I've got lots of good ideas to help investigators and members now. Hopefully we can start using the stuff we learned when we help out members in the coming weeks. 

Also I loved that he mentioned that missionary work is the second most associated action with forgiveness. I read a really cool story about that in the October 1980 New Era, "For Times of Trouble." There was a man named Eli H. Peirce. He was an "old, cigar-smoking, inactive, stern, swearing pool player" who had never read more than a few pages of scripture in his life was totsuzen called on a mission in General Conference by Brigham Young. He then dropped everything, bought a set of scriptures and went on his mission, never touching a cigar again since the day of his call. And he fulfilled a remarkable mission. One particularly interesting story from his mission is as follows. He had been asked to administer to a branch president's dying infant child. But the wife was waaaaay hantai and refused to let them give the baby a blessing, so they just prayed for the baby in a small room in the house. Suspecting they might do this, the wife sent her daughter to go spy on them and report back. They prayed until they felt that the child would be okay. When they arose, the child who was watching said to them “Papa, who was that … man in there?”

Her father said, “Brother Peirce.”

“No,” she said matter-of-factly, “I mean that other man.”

“There was no other, darling, except Brother Peirce and myself; we were praying for baby.”

“Oh, yes, there was;” the child insisted, “I saw him standing [above] you and Brother Pierce and he was all dressed in white.”

And all of this was done for a man like Eli Peirce. Missionary work really is deeply connected with repentance and forgiveness.

Wednesday: We visited Hayato and taught him about prayer cos there was no one in his shop. He's been responding really well to the concept of how the gospel blesses families, like he LoVES the Family Proclamation. So we focused on how prayer has blessed our families, and how daily prayer can bless him. He's actually really good at understanding blessings. And he said a beautiful prayer before we left! I drew him an o-inori houhou (Prayer Instructable) of him praying and he really liked it. As we've followed up with him, he appears to be praying every day! He's been making so much progress.

Thursday: We visited Mary at her new house, and it became very apparent that she needs the principles of the Family Proclamation in her marriage. It's really quite sad actually. She's starting to understand that our church and the Catholic church are in fact different, but she just doesn't care about the details it seems like. She doesn't want to change religions, partially because she's just been Catholic her whole life, and partially because she's socially converted to Catholicism more than the LDS church. So we're going to try to really connect her with one of the members and hope that that'll give her another incentive to start coming to church with us.

We went to visit Hayato again because he responds best to in person visits, and went over how to understand and recognize the spirit. He understands why we want to meet with him outside of his shop now, which is really helpful. Also we ran into Ai-chan guuzen ni at his shop! It was a literal miracle because she had dropped of the face of the planet. She had created a new LINE account so we lost all ability to contact her. But God is good and we were able to swap contact info again so she's still a good, healthy shigansha (investigator with a baptismal date). 

Miracle number two is that Andrew messaged us and told us he could meet that evening. It was insane because we also had to teach TOEIC so we went on splits (miraculously there were shimai who could do it) and we were able to to both. I taught him Plan of Salvation and he liked it, but I think he was really exhausted from work because he had exhaustion and sadness written all over his face. He asked a couple really interesting, deep questions though. Like he asked how we all know about Jesus Christ and how it's possible to be happy even in hard times. I think he has a really hard life. Poor kid. But we committed him to a baptismal date and that's way way exciting, though his schedule is crazy busy so who knows when we'll be able to teach him next. We'll leave it up to God to help us with that one. 

Friday: We met with Itsuki Shimai and talked about how we can help her dendo her friend Yuma. Currently the idea is a taco party and appealing to the fact that she really loves her World Religions class. (#resto amirite) Also we're starting up a mini mission prep class for Miyazaki Kyoudai and the twins in the ward so we can help them get out on missions. We're way excited. Gonna use all the sticky notes ever and make PMG Books of Mormon. Woo!

Saturday: We had a fun service project where we pulled grass from a nearby park with the ward. Idk why we were pulling grass but mah doesn't matter, it was fun. And also I obtained a new nickname: ebi tsuchi. I'm still confused how it happened. See, Katsu Kyoudai (our precious big brother in the ward) has a strange affinity for this shrimp sushi keychain I have on my bag (otherwise known as ebi sushi) and while we were talking at the service project somehow it became ebi tsuchi. (shrimp dirt. Idk. Probably because we were pulling grass and packing dirt and cos sushi sounds similar to tsuchi) And then somehow he decided that this new concept of ebi tsuchi should be applied to me as a human. Wakaranai. But it's a thing now. He calls me ebi tsuchi all the time now. I get back at him by calling him "onii-chan" in an outrageously high anime voice and he and Bagoyo Shimai die laughing every time. Our relationship is weird. 

Also that evening we had a TAKOYAKI PARTY! Woo! (takoyaki is a ball of batter filled with various stuff you can stick into a tiny ball. Traditionally you put octopus in it. Hence the name takoyaki, which literally means "octopus cooked") It was such a good time. Hayato came and it was an actual miracle because he's so busy all the time. He was able to build the Friendship(TM) with Katsu Kyoudai and also he tried root beer for the first time. He thinks it tastes like poultice lol. Typical nihonjin. Hopefully from now on we'll be able to start meeting him outside his shop and he can start making some real progress ✌️✌️✌️

Sunday: We've finally got a Gospel Principles class up and running and Kubo Kyoudai is such a good teacher. We're so proud of him. Things are finally changing. I'm so excited. We're gonna get 10 shigansha by the end of the transfer. ✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️

愛しています！ (*^^*) 

Sherwood Shimai 💕💕

19歳 20歳

1-2.) Takoyaki Party! 🦑🦑🦑

3.) Chilling at Hayato's

4.) service with Katsu

5-6.) more takoyaki party! 🦑🦑🦑

7.) takoyaki 🦑

8.) we found root beer

9.) 8:45pm in the bamboo forest

I like beef. You like beef?

Konnichiwa minasan! 

Well this week sure was an adventure. It was transfer week! I'm staying here in Matsuyama with Bagoyo Shimai! Loving Shimai died (was released from her mission) and is back in Oregon now, living the regular person life again. She was 80% of our impulse control. Who knows what's gonna happen now lol. 

We're seeing a huge increase in the effectiveness of our work because of the portable wifi now. Just yesterday we were able to contact every single one of our investigators and several of the members to set up appointments and follow up on commitments even though it was pouring buckets outside! Furthermore, the kankei (relationship) we've been able to build with the YSA in the ward has increased exponentially because of our increased ability to respond quickly.

Katsu Kyoudai especially is our new BFF. I've been using art to dendo a lot these days, and we've been wanting him to go visit Hayato with us for literally a whole transfer but he kept evading us until we just showed up on his doorstep at like 8:30 on Friday with a cookie and a dumb laminated doodle of him holding takoyaki (he's really good at making takoyaki I'm way impressed) and a crepe. (we legit couldn't find his house until he came out like "i heard you laughing why"). 

So now we're like his annoying little sisters and he's our hilarious big brother and we have a thousand hilarious inside jokes from our conversations over Facebook messenger. (see: this email's title) and he's a thousand percent more willing to dendo with us. We went from being ignored in favor of watering flowers with a bowl of water to sending dumb rabbit stickers to each other on a daily basis. The moral of this story is that art and cookie dendo is the bomb and is the secret to winning friends and gaining influence. 

And then because that kankei is so much better now (literally 3 days and we're best friends) we've been able to make better progress with our investigators! We've figured out what's making it so hard for Suzuki-san to progress. He's been an investigator for so long that he's kinda forgotten the first lessons. Thanks to the help of the kyoudai who dousekied for us, we  were able to get to that problem's root. So from now on we're going to restart the lessons from the beginning to rekindle that original spark.

Also we were finally able to reach the core desire of Hayato's heart: a family. Poor guy just wants to get married, but as we all know, the world's vision of marriage is not only stressful, but sad and disheartening. We read the Family Proclamation with him and he loved it! Both Bagoyo Shimai and I felt prompted to promise him that if he gets baptized he'll get married, but we also felt like we have to wait until we can teach him outside of his shop before we can promise that to him. The Spirit is just too hard to discern in his shop. But! A literal miracle happened! We visited his shop with Katsu Kyoudai on Saturday and they chatted and got to know each other and it was great. And then when we invited Hayato to the takoyaki and root beer float party we created with Katsu Kyoudai, he said he would come!!! Hayato never comes to things! He always says he's too busy! But this time he said yes!!! Literally this is all because Katsu Kyoudai came with us. What a hero. 

On top of that, Ai-chan set a baptismal date! We're so excited! She's way interested in the Plan of Salvation and loved the idea of getting baptized. Brownie dendo is real yo. 10/10 would recommend. Food makes the tummy and spirit rejoice. 

But yeah we're so excited about this upcoming week! We can't wait to see how the conference tomorrow with Elder Renland is going to transform our work!

愛しています！ ! 💕

Sherwood Shimai 

1-2.) drinking really delicious (and expensive) mango tapioca

3.) Katsu Kankei (we're calling him big brother and his t-shirt is the rabbit we keep sending each other on Facebook messenger. He loled at this) 

4.) My desk is a mess and I found a hilarious camera filter

5.) screenshot of planning the takoyaki party with katsu Kyoudai. The stickers are the most important thing

6.) Katsu Kyoudai was guessing Bagoyo Shimai's age. He was wrong. 

7.) walking in the rain with the #squad

8.) Loving shimai says my hair is really blonde now I guess

9-10.) the squad at Matsuyama Castle

11.) in which I am physically incapable of hiding internal turmoil lol. The thousand yard stare remains.

19歳 20歳