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

If You Give a Pionita 長老 a Snowflake ❄️

Konnichiwa minasan! 

It's sure been quite the week! I'm alive thanks to the superb efforts of my district, especially Stein 姉妹's massages of death and suffering and the Book of Hatchett 長老. Being an STL is harder than previously expected but it's fine. Also we're gonna get pants relatively soon so it'll all be okay. 

But even though there has been a significant amount of stress this week, including various items of missionary business, Ooyama-san deciding to not come to church until the 20th of January because of New Year's (still salty about that), and my tiny Canadian daughter getting lost in the catacombs of Amagasaki with Stein 姉妹's daughter, the mini, sassy family that is Nishinomiya District has opened a wide path for miracles and blessings to flow through. Not the least of which is the blessed opportunity of getting to hear Pionita 長老 experience snow for the first time in his life over speakerphone held out for us by our fabulous district leader. (it's a sound more pure than a chorus of baby angels) Pionita 長老 wanted to build a snowman really badly and it's the actual cutest thing on the face of the planet. My heart exploded. He's my tiny baby son. #blessed

Just yesterday, we had a disappointing no investigators at church, but I always like to see times like this as a message from God that one of the members needs my help. And we found the member that needed us. We sat next to her in sacrament meeting, and during second hour we ended up just kind of having a discussion with her about the work right now in the mission and in the area. We told her about how despite the stressors of the mission, our district unity is making it easier to bear and we're able to be more effective because of it. In talking about this, I told her something Hatchett 長老 had told me and Stein 姉妹 when we were stressing out about MLC and low-key feeling like we were failing as STLs. He told us, "Imagine Jesus Christ came to you right now and just gave you a hug. And imagine he just said 'Thank you. Thank you for working so hard and trying your best, for sacrificing every day and giving me everything you have. Thank you for loving these people. Thank you so much. I'm so proud of you.'" Now when Hatchett 長老 had said this to us, I just started crying (as l do) and it helped me a lot, so I shared this with this member. And her response was essentially just "wow what a wonderful district leader" and the conversation moved on to our goals and hopes for the area. We expressed our desire to work more with family history and less-actives, and during that part of the conversation, we asked her the Smoot Kaichou Super Shitsumon of "who do you want most to sit next to you in sacrament meeting" (which by the way is a miracle question that always results in amazing things) and she told us about her less-active little sister. We asked her if her sister knows why she goes to church, and she said probably not. So I asked her to tell us why she comes, and she gave us fluffy primary answers. So then I shared my testimony of church and the power of the sacrament and the support that comes from fellowship in the ward and she got really quiet. Now I, being a Little Miss Chatterbox, decided I needed to take a page out of the listening chapter of the Book of Hatchett 長老 and Stein 姉妹 and just said nothing and let it be quiet. And then miracles happened. She said "this is kind of a question I'm scared to ask but how do I make the sacrament more meaningful? Everyone says they come for the sacrament but I don't think I really understand." and I shared my experiences from that day in sacrament meeting asking Heavenly Father to help me turn my stress and worries about the zone over to Him instead of storing them in my shoulder muscles. And then Pilling 姉妹 shared her experiences and it got really quiet again, and then the member just said "I think I'll try that next week." But it doesn't stop there. It gets better. She followed up that with the question of "if Jesus Christ came down and said you could onegai him for anything, what would you ask?" Pilling 姉妹 talked about asking how to have faith like the Brother of Jared, and I talked about asking how to know Christ more fully and what to do to make my calling and election sure. Then I asked her what she would ask and she basically just told us her entire tragic backstory about how before she probably would have just asked Him to take away all of her bad feelings and struggles and fix her weaknesses, but now she wants to ask Him to teach her what He wants her to do to become better. And then it was quiet again and I felt impressed to tell her that the Lord is proud of her. And then she started to cry and said that when I had told her about what Hatchett 長老 had said to me and Stein 姉妹 about Jesus coming and giving us a hug, she wondered if Jesus would say the same to her. So I just put on my figurative Friendly Neighborhood Missionary hat that Hatchett 長老 taught me how to make and told her essentially everything that Hatchett 長老 had just told us in district meeting a couple days before, and it was such a special experience, and it made the whole day worth it.

If that was the only thing that happened this week, I would have been satisfied, but the Lord is kind and there were lots of other tender mercies too. The ward council is really hyped up about family history and we have a lunch meeting with the new Family History Shunin on oshogatsu about how to get the cool new bingo chart circulating through the ward. And even better, we were given two new less active members to start working with with the Fukuchis, and a former investigator wants to plan a musical number to perform in sacrament meeting hopefully soon because she found out I like to sing and she's been working on a big music project.

And that was just Sunday! Earlier this week for Christmas we were able to spend the evening with the Bishop and his family and we had an awesome conversation about family history and the new mission goals for the year, and he's really excited to start drafting a ward plan to help contribute to the goals. Also we had a Christmas party in eikaiwa that straight up felt like a real American ward activity and ended in a really awesome spiritual message by the assistant dendo shunin. It was great. I'm really optimistic about the work in Kitarokko going forward, despite the fact that the place where our investigators are at doesn't show up in a way that we can report in the form of numbers. But it's okay because as Hatchett 長老 so eloquently put it at district meeting, we're the heroes in every celestial storybook, and the angels are counting our efforts in the records of heaven. I'm confident that miracles are close to blossoming in ways we've never before seen, and I'm ready for the upcoming year. 

愛しています! 

Sherwood 姉妹

Pictures are few gomen

1.) the mtc shimai are backkkk

2.) for Christmas the cute little pink alien friend on the area phone became Christmas themed and it made me happy

🎶Remember Meeeeeeeee Cmon Guys Do Family Historyyyy🎶

Konnichiwa minasan! 

This week has been very very busy for several reasons. We had Christmas Taikai on Tuesday and Wednesday and it was brilliant. I was very pleased with everything that happened, especially that we were able to watch Coco! I love that movie so much I'm so happy I cried like five times. My greatest hope is that maybe finally missionaries will gain some family history fire because of it. We've been considering different ways to boost family history as a district because we basically have a mini MLC (missionary leadership council) in our district because we have the head tech, head family history specialist, both STLs, and the zone family history specialist all in our district. Also Hatchett 長老 is the actual most stressed out person about it ever which is impressive because usually I'm the most stressed person in the district. Poor guy. We all wanna do more family history but figuring out how to get other people on board is a whole other can of worms. I'm very tired of hearing the phrase "日本人だから" because it's always followed by a thousand excuses for why they can't do family history or dendo or any myriad of other things that they should do but don't want to do. I'm frustrated but it's fine. Hatchett 長老, Stein 姉妹, and I also got to perform at the taikai before testimony meeting and it was really awesome, especially considering the fact that we threw three part harmony together in just two practice sessions. I was very pleased. Harmony makes me happy. Also a couple of the districts in the Okayama Zone put together a really funny Christmas video of nonsense that I will attach because it makes me laugh to no end. 

In other news, we got a new investigator this week!!! Her name is Hara San and she lives 0.03 seconds away from one of the members and she came to the ward Christmas party, where we met her and she invited us over to play the ever entertaining game of "wow gaijin let's treat them like dolls for an hour" and pulled out her thousands of dollars worth of kimonos out. It was pretty fun actually. And turns out she's a real religious person, not a fake religious person that just tells us they're religious to get us to go away and she told us we could come back and talk about God and let us set up an appointment so we're very very excited about that. Also her house was so cold I can't even describe to you how cold it was. Like I could barely move my hands levels of cold and I was wearing three layers of kimono. Goodness.

Also 3 whole people came to church this week and it was brilliant because I was already hardcore stressed about the special sacrament meeting because a lot of things were going up a creek without a paddle and I was about 4 seconds away from being unable to keep my screaming internal but it's fine. Ooyama san came and loved it and so did Kurose san and Natsuki chan. Kurose san even cried because of the Spirit. It was awesome. We ended up having to move back Ooyama san's baptismal date, but she says she's pretty sure she's going to get baptized, it's just a matter of when, which confuses me because if you already know you're going to get baptized, you should just get baptized and I even told her Hatchett 長老's brilliant pizza tatoe about how just like you only need one bite of a pizza to know it's a good pizza, you don't have to know everything ever about the entire gospel to know its true. But alas no dice. She's still concerned about a bunch of little things. We're working on it. Hopefully she'll be able to get baptized when her daughter and soon-to-be son in law are in town because that would be great.

愛しています！💕
Sherwood 姉妹

1-5.) we made a gingerbread house with the Tokunous. They're adorable. 

6.) we got to stay at a hotel at the Christmas taikai

7-11.) fun times in kimonos today

12.) Christmas taikai with Okayama, Kobe, and Shikoku Zones

In Which Sherwood Shimai Forgot to Hit Send Last Week So Now it's a 2 in 1

Konnichiwa minasan!

The days are long (except not in terms of daylight) and the weeks are short (except on Tuesday) and it's hard to believe it's already the end of another transfer and the beginning of a new one. 🎉 I'm still here in Kitarokko with Pilling Shimai, and now I'm an STL too with Stein Shimai so there's probably gonna be many more shenanigans to come. 

Last week we went to Costco as a district for P-day and then had a fun koukan with the Amagasaki shimaitachi. I was with Stein 姉妹, who is me but cooler and better at on the spot puns. We learned a lot about understanding and recognizing the Spirit and receiving revelation. She's a boss STL. 💕

The main event of the week was Thursday and Friday. You see, as a district we decided to do caroling dendo and pass out gift wrapped Books of Mormon and pamphlets with bags of cookies. Because I have the greatest knowledge of baking things in tiny toaster ovens in the district, we were assigned the responsibility of making about 100 cookies. So we, having no appointments Thursday evening, decided to make them then. But alas, you see, we overestimated the ingredients required for 100 cookies and what ended up happening was we made a grand total of 333 cookies. We were about ready to defenstrate all flour in our house. Thus, several shenanigans and querious phone calls to the district leader later, we ended up with Far Too Many Cookies, wrapped in cute little Christmas bags ready to pass out the next day after district meeting. Amazingly enough, we ran out of cookies and Books of Mormon in less than 15 minutes. It was wild. We all sang our little hearts out in front of the eki about Christmas things and Hatchett 長老 almost killed his voice by trying to sing bass rip #tenorlife. But it was fine because it ended up being way effective and we still had extra ingredients so we did it AGAIN this past week on Friday. Except this time it was 300 cookies and we were more careful about the Books of Mormon we handed out, making sure the people we gave them to knew what it was, so we gave out four that time. Still way fun. 

Saturday was very eventful as well. We went to Kyoto with Kurose san to visit her father's grave and we got to talk about temples and stuff because Japanese people keep their graves at Buddhist temples. It was wild. I also ate lots of mochi. 

Last Monday was fun, we ate Brazilian food and Turkish ice cream (yes Jones Shimai Turkish man was there and he remembered me) and went to a Studio Ghibli store with the district. But the coolest thing was we ran into Miyazaki 兄弟 from Matuyama on the train there! He was on his way to the honbu to go get set apart cos he's going on a mission and we just randomly met him! #kiseki only. It was super great and happy. He's gonna be an awesome missionary.

But that's about all I can remember rn haha see you all again next week! 

愛しています！💕

Sherwood 姉妹

1.) it's soon to be Miyazaki 長老!

2.) I made pretzels with the famous recipe of Hatchett 長老

3.) eki caroling! 

4.) too many cookies 

5-9.) district Costco adventures

10.) Turkish ice cream