Monday, June 16, 2014

Hamburger!

Konnichiwaaaaa,

Another busy week that went by in two seconds. Some highlights:

  • Ru passing his baptismal interview. Things are looking good to go!
  • Losing to Ru in an arm-wrestling match. He kept complaining at the start that I wasn't trying hard enough, and just letting him win, begging me to give it all my strength despite my embarrassed confession that I was. Gotta do some more push-ups. Oh yeah and this was right after his grandma told us that he was the smallest kid in all of fifth grade.
  • The rain letting up after Wednesday, but not before we got completely drenched and barely made it home on time to change before Eikaiwa.
  • Meeting some inactive members of our ward who happen to live and work at an animal hospital full of puppies. The ward asked us to visit them a lot and I'm only too happy to comply.
  • Trying to answer a member's questions about the Book of Mormon, particularly the Isaiah chapters. Contrary to popular belief, becoming a missionary does not magically change someone into a scriptural scholar.
  • Wrapping a ton of small gifts with related scriptures (ex pack of tissues with a verse about tears of joy, a piece of candy with a verse about feasting, etc.) for Izu san's birthday. She's really busy and we can't meet super often, so this will help her learn a little every day on her own.
  • Spending an entire day without my name tag on, and of course the one day I forgot happened to be when we went to Honbu for Mission Leadership Council. Tried to make sure my hair was covering my shoulders whenever President Budge was near.


One of the biggest miracles this week was Kai Shimai, who got baptized about thirty years ago but hadn't really been to church since then. We'd met her a few times, asking her to come back, but she was so depressed and thinking that she wasn't good enough to go to church no matter what we said. It pained me to see her so sad, and I knew she needed to come back. So we managed to make an appointment to eat dinner with her and one of the few members she remembered. When we asked the member to come, she said she didn't remember Kai Shimai, so we told her please DON'T say that in order not to offend her. We'd already told Kai Shimai that the member was looking forward to seeing her. So, we all get there, and the member looks at Kai Shimai for like ten seconds and goes, "have we met?" It was a face palm moment but luckily everything turned out okay.

Then, on Sunday, Kai Shimai came! She had a great time and the members were so good at welcoming her and showing love to her. She introduced herself to everyone as "Sister Kai, less-active member" which was kind of funny but I guess she was just taking that day's Sunday School lesson on honesty to heart. People really can change, it just takes our reaching out to them. Patience and love can solve 99% of the world's problems.

Today's picture is me eating a hamburger with a doughnut as a bun - a glorious creation that was made possible by Mr. Donuts making a business deal with a Japanese burger chain. I would just like to point out that, 1) this is not in America and 2) this is my first hamburger in seven years. Actually, there was no patty - some weird sausage thing instead - so I guess the streak's still alive.

Hope everyone's having as much fun as I am! Probably not but it's okay.
Love, Anna

Hamburger with doughnut bun - please don't judge me.

No comments:

Post a Comment