Happy 4th of July! - July 7, 2014

We had our district lunch this past week and when we sat down at the
table, we recognized that everyone on our side of the table was in the
same district!! Cool huh?! Love these missionaries so much and am so
grateful for each one of them and their examples.

This is a statue in Kamata that we took just before going in to Mister
Doughnuts shop. after three transfers together (the longest I've ever
been with a companion), she will be going to Chosei and I will be
staying here holding down fort!!At the rate I am going with changing areas, it
seems like I might only be in two areas my whole mission.

Hey all, so I thought I ought to teach you about the Book of Mormon as
it relates to what has happened in Japanese. A long time ago, but
really probably not too long ago, they came out with a new translation
of the Book of Mormon in Japanese. I guess it was pretty hard to
understand before because they don't use that type of Japanese
anymore.not sure all the details...but...the Book of Mormon is true!! 

Ryuuya kun is doing so wonderful! My testimony of the Atonement was
 strengthened so much as we visited him for our first after baptism
 lesson. It is almost as if his whole personality has changed. He
 listened to what we were saying, he wasn't playing on his phone at
 all, he was very kind to his cousin, and he was smiling from ear to
 ear. It was a huge change and I feel so blessed that The Lord gave him
 this opportunity and that I had the chance to take part in it.

Yesterday we had family home evening at the Suzuki family house. For
the activity, the oldest boy, Haruto kun, worked hard to prepare a
good activity. When it came his time to do it, he said, we are going
to build a temple! It was soooo adorable. You can even see captain
Moroni! Manato kun is the younger one and is quite the hoot. Once we
finished sharing our message we said a prayer to close and then
started to eat Soba, but then he told us all to stop and that we need
to pray. What a wonderful example. I guess he teaches his teacher and
kids at school how to pray as well. No wonder The Lord tells us to
become as little children. 

Well, being in Japan certainly did make it hard to remember about that
day, but I did celebrate it by eating these Japanese crackers with the
red, white, and blue wrapping. Yep, that's about it. Hope you had a
wonderful holiday especially you Grandma Dye...my red, white, and blue
color lover.

I don't think it is a really big thing in America, but the
pets of Mickey and Minnie Mouse are huge here. I guess when they get
sad or lonely, they always rely on their pets. The girls name is
Shelly Mae and the boys name is Duffy.

This week we visited the Sawamura family. They are a less active
family who sleeps during the day and is awake during the night. Pretty
interesting right?! After really building a good relationship and
teaching a lesson geared toward getting the children they are excited
to come back. The Mom said that when they can get their sleeping
schedule back to normal, they would come. We committed them to coming
this upcoming week and are excited to see that dream come true.
 
I have thought about less actives a lot this week. I read a really
good talk that really helped me know how to approach them. It is a
General Conference talk October 2006 "And Nothing Shall Offend Them."
If you haven't read it yet, I strongly recommend it. 

Izumiya ke still plan on being baptized as long as they can get their
 answer by their baptismal date of July 27. They have asked incredibly
 deep questions, very rare for us to get! They want to learn about the
 temple and the Doctrine and Covenants right now! We are finding
 success with them by communicating through email. They came to church
 this week and absolutely loved the old Testament class. I decided
 after attending that class that I should probably know my Bible a
 little better. The only hold up we are having is getting them to
 tell their family about what they are doing. They told us that they
 would be fine if going to church was something they wanted to do, but
 I think they are worried about something. We will continue to work on
 that.
 Kay finally came to church!! I have been working and praying forever
 for this day to happen! And he loved it. It made me so happy. When he
 finally does get baptized, he is going to make the best member ever.
 He seeks for the truth and really desires to be good and do what is
 right.
 This week I had the wonderful opportunity of going on two splits with
 two wonderful sisters.
 On Tuesday, I went on splits with Sister Hall and we did Japanese
 dendou in Senzokuike. We were able to learn so much from each other.
 She worries about her Japanese a lot. It has been so long since she
 did Japanese dendou. But, she is transferring to a new place so she
 will get in the hang of it again. One of the things I like to do for
 my companion during language study is make them a Japanese card. On
 the card it will always have something new, whether it is bunpo,
 kanji, or tango. I will then write what it means in English and the
 give them tatoebas so they can figure out how to use it. I am now
 doing a bunpo card for Sister Hall every day because she that is what
 she wants to be better at. She is so great at being everyone's best
 friend and really makes others feel good about themselves.
 On Saturday, I went on splits with Sister Dopp and we did English
 dendou in the Tokyo 1st area. We went in to the split with no
 appointments or activities for the day but we set our goals high and
 worked hard to achieve them and saw tons of miracles! We visited a few
 less actives and along our way, were able to run into sooooo many
 prepared people. They have now got a lot of new PI's to work with. She
 is a wonderful missionary!
 I feel so blessed to learn not only from the people here in Japan, but
 also from the missionaries. They are so wonderful and I love each of
 them so much!
  That's it for the week. Have a good one!

 山内姉妹より