Sister MacArthur (From the O. Family January 12)

Dear Tom and Kathy MacArthur,

How’s the weather there? We had a little snow on weekend and it melted all. It is said that our Niigata District is the coldest place and has much snow in Tokyo Mission. But Niigata is windy place and has a little snow.

We had dinner with missionaries on Sunday. I made curry and rice. We invited a Chinese family but they canceled and I invited my student’s family. While Sister Orton and Sister Crane were correcting my student’s English speech, Sister MacArthur and her companion were playing a game with a 8 years old girl in Japanese. The girl looked happy. After dinner ,Missionaries told good messages and gave a Book of Mormon to my student’s mother.

We had a very good time with missionaries.  

Sincerely yours,
The O. Family

Dinner with the O. Family and friends in Niigata

week 6 in Niigata

Can't believe the last week of the transfer is already here! I remember being pretty nervous to come out to Niigata, but I've loved it and this last six weeks were probably the fastest of my whole mission. I'd be surprised if I transferred next week, but I guess ya never know. I learned my lesson last time when I tried to guess President Budge's plan!

Biggest news this week: Kim's baptism is going to be next Saturday. She had her interview on Thursday, and it would have been kind of hard to put everything together in two days, so we decided on the 18th. Honestly I just want it to be next Saturday right now - I feel like there's a little stress monster kicking the back of my head that won't go away until I see her baptized and confirmed and everything works out.

Anyway, besides worrying about that, I had a great week. Our gas heater ran out on Saturday, so that wasn't fun, but luckily we were able to buy gas and get it working again. But the week was awesome because we got to start it out with Zone conference, which the Budges came to. The Budges are awesome, by the way. Our mission is in the middle of shifting its focus, and we've been having lots of success and seeing tons of miracles as a result. President Budge talked a lot about what we can do to change ourselves, too - you know, starting with the man in the mirror in order to better the world. He said the three most important things a missionary can be are humble, obedient, and diligent. All three of those things are within our control. They are choices, not characteristics we're born with. He didn't say we had to be clever, or outgoing, or anything like that. Sometimes I think of what the "perfect" missionary personality would be - a super smiley, enthusiastic, hardworking go-getter who loves talking to strangers and can remember names and new words with ease. But the truth is that there is no perfect type of missionary. We can all choose to become our best self, because the three most important attributes are within our potential.

After Zone conference we went on splits with our Sister Training Leader, which I love because you always see miracles on splits. It's seriously like someone cast a magic spell on Niigata and suddenly everyone wants to talk to us and be our friend. Both times I went out street contacting, once with the STL and once with her companion, the very first person we talked to wanted to know more about the Book of Mormon and was willing to take a copy and exchange numbers. It was incredible to see how they just wandered right into our path.

We've been working a lot this week to meet as many of the less-active members in this area as we can and build good relationships with them. Our Relief Society president has an awesome plan for how we can help invite them back to church, and it's been great getting to work with her towards the same goal. Basically our job is to visit, bring them a branch newsletter, and see how they're doing. If they have a pretty good image of church members and remember some of them, then we'll report back to the RS President, who will assign them visiting teachers so they can keep having church contact whether or not we have time to visit. Unfortunately a lot of our records are really old so we'll show up to someone's house to find that they've moved, or call a wrong number. So we've been busy cleaning up the out-of-date records.

Usually we prefer to have conversations with individual people instead of just passing out flyers at random, but we decided to spend some time doing kubari this week to increase the number of students at Eikaiwa (we have like 10-15 students now). Kubari basically just means standing in one spot and talking really loud in a mixture of Japanese and English, giving flyers to anyone who will take one. Sometimes I feel sort of ridiculous, like one of the super-loud beer vendors at baseball games, but it's actually pretty fun. Until our fingers freeze, that is. We can't really be outside for more than three hours at a time, and less once the sun goes down. It forces us to be creative with our time when we have days with no appointments.

Some memorable Japanese moments this week:

• I finally succeeded in being funny! Sometimes I feel like I have no personality in Japanese because my language skills aren't good enough to use humor, and sarcasm isn't really a thing here. But I finally succeeded in making a joke, can't really remember what it was but I think it was probably about the Elders, and our district president's wife cracked up. Success.
• One of the families in our branch had an exchange student from Norway, and when he decided to come to church one week, another member met him and was talking to him for a while. He wanted to find out if he was a member, I guess, but since in church we call everyone "Brother/Sister So-and-So" the way he asked was, "are you a Brother?" I don't know why I thought it was so funny, but I had to look away to keep from laughing.
• This one happens all the time, not just this week, but I just thought of mentioning it. It's polite in Japanese to say "I'm being rude" pretty much any time you interrupt someone's previous activity. Before hanging up the phone, or entering a house, or after ringing a doorbell, anything. "I'm being rude." Even if you ask someone to call you, they'll still apologize for being rude when they do.

Life is good here. The only other piece of news is that I'm officially on a diet, trying to make up for all the damage caused by Christmas and New Years. Sister Orton and I are doing it together. We got a good start today when we actually went outside to exercise this morning (rare, in this weather) by jogging to a nearby park with a zip line!

Love you all!
Anna

Making friends in Niigata

Making fiends of all sorts in Niigata

Zip line in snowy Niigata

Happy New Year (From the O. Family)

Dear Tom and Kathy MacArthur,

Happy New Year.  Fortunately it is warm and rainy.  It’s safer than snowy.

My daughter attended her lesson last year and she praised how Sister MacArthur’s lesson was wonderful.  Her talk is very well and it’s very easy to understand her lesson.  She speaks Japanese fluently.  My daughter was very impressed.  We appreciate Sister MacArthur’ service.

Sincerely yours
The O. Family

Niigata Branch Sisters and Elders

Happy New Year!

Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu! That means Happy New Year. And what a new year it's been!

We've seen lots of miracles already this week. To name a few:

• Saying hello to a lady in the bakery who turned out to be a member who hadn't been to church in about 15 years! She wanted to go back, but was scared that she couldn't because it had been so long. She was so kind, and so happy to meet us! I'll say it again: I don't believe in coincidences.
• Getting to plan for Kim's baptism, which is scheduled for this Saturday. I'm so proud of all the commitments she's making and happy that she gets to start out the new year with such an amazing blessing.
• Meeting Cho on the train, who's probably one of the friendliest people ever to have lived in Niigata. People are usually pretty shy here. When I showed her the Book of Mormon I expected her to just look at the cover for a few seconds, but she spent ten whole minutes in silence flipping through the pages and reading. I just watched in awe.
• Finding Mat when we knocked on her door, not knowing that she'd taken the missionary discussions 30 years ago. Both of her daughters died a while ago, and she studied all sorts of other religions, just looking for the one that would bring her peace. She'd sort of given up on finding it in this life, and said she was looking forward to leaving this world and being with her daughters again. My heart went out to her and I wanted so badly for her to understand how she can find joy and peace NOW, not just after death. She was so sweet, and so deserving of this knowledge and truth that's waiting for her to find it.

To ring in the new year we had a special mission-wide 2-day schedule from President Budge: Spent all day on the 31st deep cleaning our apartment, and all day on the 1st reading the Book of Mormon. Both days went by so fast! The 31st was loud and chaotic - cleaning and organizing tend to make things look worse before they get better, and we had stuff piled EVERYWHERE. It was fun to wear our sweats all day and listen to the most upbeat missionary-approved music we had. Then in the evening, we went to the Umedas' house for dinner with all the other missionaries. They're an awesome family in our branch, and it was really fun and delicious. They also gave us some traditional mochi, which Japanese people always eat on New Year's.

The 1st was a more quiet, spiritual day. I loved it. I remember before my mission getting kind of bored if I read the scriptures for too long (okay, maybe super bored) but now I can't get enough. Our study time every day is limited, and since we're always studying things for other people sometimes it feels like there's not enough time to just focus on what I want to read. I'd planned on constantly switching between activities to keep myself awake (reading in English, reading in Japanese, studying specific topics, looking up references from study books, etc.) but didn't really end up needing very much variety. Although we did play some scripture-chase games in our apartment - takes me back to seminary. We thought it would be fun to go out to ramen, all of us Sisters, but totally forgot that since it's New Years' everything would be shut down. So we got dinner at 7-11, which wasn't too bad. We also got some sparklers to light on our balcony, but to our surprise learned that they were actually super loud, powerful rockets. I guess the package probably explained that, but it was in Japanese... so that was exciting. I almost lost an eyebrow, and we hustled back into our apartment when one of our neighbors came out to investigate the noise. I swear, this story sounds like the beginning of something stupid that Elders do and get in trouble. Luckily we stopped before causing any real damage. I'm also now realizing that there's probably a rule against missionaries handling fireworks, but it did not occur to us at the time. We toasted the new year together with Orangina in some flute glasses that were in the apartment... not really sure why.

On the 2nd we had a potluck at the church with some members and our investigators. Kim came, and had a good time. There was all kinds of food, and I brought banana bread made with a recipe Mom sent me that everyone really liked. I love getting to watch members and investigators become friends, because that's where it really counts. Even though we love our investigators, missionaries aren't permanent. It's so important for the people we teach to be friends with members who live her so that after we leave they'll still have a reason to come. The branch here in Niigata seems to have a good understanding of that - investigators aren't really "ours," but theirs. Their future friends and support systems.

On Friday we went to Sanjo for zone training. Niigata is the biggest, most spread-out zone, so it takes a really long time for everyone to travel. We did a blitz in Sanjo afterwards, where everyone went out for an hour talking to people on the street, and I definitely came to appreciate Niigata more. There was almost nobody outside! But we did meet one really nice lady, who was actually on her way to go drink with her friends (wouldn't that be a funny conversion story!) We also met awesome people on the train.

We did a lot of knocking on doors this week, along with more getting lost trying to find people's houses. Google maps is usually pretty accurate in America but not so much here, we're learning. So we ask neighbors for help a lot, which they're always more than willing to do. It's so funny! Knock on someone's door asking to share something that will make their family happier, and they say "no thanks I'm good." But if you need something from them, they'll go waaay out of their way to help. Yesterday two ladies who didn't know each other ended up running around different neighborhoods, trying to help us find a certain house that we never did locate. Eventually we just told them we were going to give up for now, please go back inside your house because it's snowing, by the way here's our number call us anytime. We know where one of them lives so maybe we'll deliver a thank-you cake.

Best for last: Kim!! We've been teaching her some last lessons before baptism, and she's ready. It's such a miracle. She's very forgiving of my bad Japanese, and imperfect explanations, and all the weird things we do. Sometimes I'll call her to see how she's doing, but then not really know what to say or how to understand her response so I just end up rambling and making a fool of myself. But she seems to appreciate it. I love her, and this week is going to be the best week ever.

Hope everyone has the best 2014 ever!! I didn't take many pictures this week, but saw this awesome sign at the train station. Let's all make it a resolution to delight someone.

Love, Anna

Train station sign in Niigata

More Pictures from Niigata Branch (From the O. Family)

Niigata Branch Christmas boxes for each of the 4 sets of missionaries - so generous!!  Zoom in to see a familiar and surprising item in each box.

Niigata Branch members and missionaries carol in a nursing home.

The O. family hosts Christmas eve for missionaries, friends and family.

Hello again!

My first Christmas away from home was awesome! Very fun and very spread out over the week, so I kept getting to celebrate again and again. I have to admit it wasn't quite the same without family, but the people here took very good care of me and I was never sad or homesick. The best surprise of the week was getting the huge "Merry Christmas Sister MacArthur" poster from home - I remember signing those every year for other missionaries when I was little, but never did I imagine that there would be one with MY name on it some day. So surreal. I keep having little moments like that where it just hits me: I'm a real missionary.

After all the caroling on Monday, we decided to keep the Christmas spirit strong by knocking on doors and asking strangers if we could carol for them. One person said yes, but I was a little sad by how many people said no - Christmas just really doesn't have the same meaning here as at home. One man said "if you do it won't mean anything to me," which sort of broke my heart. It made me want to share our message even more - joy to the world, peace, goodwill to men. There is so much happiness waiting for them if they'd just take the first steps towards it!

Because of how busy Monday was, we switched our P-day to Tuesday and all four of us Sisters had our open-presents-bake-cookies-listen-to-Christmas-music party together. It was fun and we got SO MUCH food and clothing from the Niigata branch members - I forgot to take a picture, but imagine two huge boxes big enough to hold a person, filled to overflowing. Of course, Christmas isn't about the presents, but I was touched by how generous all these people were to someone they'd barely known for two weeks. In the evening we went to the Osekis' house, all nine of us missionaries plus more of their friends and family members, for Christmas Eve dinner. It was fun and a little chaotic, trying to figure out how to get all of us home on time. We ended up taking a taxi, carrying bags of leftover chicken in our laps.

The highlight of Wednesday morning, of course, was Skyping my family! That went by way too fast. Afterwards we went out to lunch with two of the ladies in the ward and practiced teaching the first lesson to them. That practice came in handy later that afternoon when we taught the first lesson to Sa. She is so sweet, and has such a desire to learn - she told us that before coming to church the first time, she'd prayed, pleading with God to help her convince her sons to come with her (apparently middle-school aged boys don't think church is the most exciting thing in the world). It worked, and she was so grateful. I sat there in awe as she was telling us this, wondering how in the world I got so lucky to get to teach her. She's beautiful, inside and out, and I can't wait to send a picture of us together when she gets baptized!

Christmas evening we spent with the Eikaiwa students, eating snacks, caroling in English and reading a Christmas story together. A lot of them said it was there first time celebrating Christmas, and it made them really happy.

We got the opportunity to teach Kim about the Word of Wisdom this week, and saw another miracle when she said she'd decided she should probably keep it, and promised to try her best. She was very hesitant to make any changes for so long, but now she's ready. Sometimes the hardest part about being a missionary is finding a balance between being bold and being patient - you want to help people make changes, and not stand idle if they don't, but at the same time it's not about you at all. It's all about their personal commitment and relationship with God, and we can't rush His timing.

I don't have much time left, but the rest of our week was filled with other lessons, powering through our Christmas candy, getting lost trying to find people's houses in the freak hailstorm blizzards, and trying to convince strangers to talk to us. On one of our adventures we found the Goblet of Fire and of course I put my name inside (see picture).

Let's hope that the miracles keep continuing through the New Year!
Love, Anna

Anna adds her name to the Goblet of Fire (somewhere in Niigata - who knew?)

Traditional missionary Christmas card from Eugene 3rd Ward

'twas the week before...

Konbanwa.

Another awesome week. Freezing, but good. The Christmas spirit is in full swing, which just makes everything better. I thought it would be sort of hard being in a place where Christmas isn't a big deal, but the church members have made up for that and more. All of the holiday celebrations remind me so much of home, from the silver bell music performances to the fake Santa Claus at the Christmas party to the little kids dressed up as shepherds with towels on their heads, acting out their surprise when being told by an angel that the Savior of the world had just been born in a stable.

We had a lot of adventures this week that came from being in a new area and not knowing where anything was. Before we visited people we'd carefully map out a route on Google maps beforehand, but it still always took forever to find their houses. I guess it did give us good opportunities to talk to all their neighbors though, asking for directions. Japanese people are always very helpful, but the ones here in Niigata really go above and beyond. We've had multiple people leave their homes and personally walk us to whatever building we're trying to find, just to make sure we understand! Unfortunately, none of my attempts to ask "hey you're super kind, so you probably want to learn about Christ, right?" have worked so far. Shimata! Anyway, I was feeling really frustrated about my continuing inability to navigate, when I came up with a brilliant solution to the problem:  Put Sister Wigginton in charge! So the next time we wanted to visit people, I put her in charge of writing down and remembering all of the directions in our 8-mile, 5-house loop. And it went off without a hitch! Not gonna lie, I was pretty proud of myself for figuring that one out. Until we get iPads I will continue to depend on other people's navigation skills.

Unfortunately only one of the five people we visited that day was home, but she was totally awesome. She spends all her time rescuing sick or injured dogs and cats, then taking care of them until they're well enough to be adopted. I love this woman. She showed us a ton of pictures of past animals she'd cared for, and I almost begged her to let us help sometime. I haven't seen as many stray cats wandering around here as I did in Oyama, and I miss them.

The Niigata train station is much bigger and busier than the one in Oyama, and at first I was a little overwhelmed and unsure how to start. Now instead of talking to any female we see, we only talk to a small fraction of the many busy people walking around. It's weird choosing people out of a crowd - I usually just go for people around my age because they're easier to talk to. Although it's funny, my ability to understand Japanese has seemed to improve a lot since I got transferred, but only sometimes. I'd heard missionaries talk about the gift of tongues a lot before, like not knowing what to say and all of a sudden a lightning bolt of inspiration puts the words in your mouth, or something like that. I hadn't felt like it had happened to me yet. But I've noticed that I'm better able to understand, when it counts. Like in a lesson, or when talking to mission leaders about our goals. I couldn't understand at all when a group of 12-year-olds at the Christmas party were asking me if I had a boyfriend, and probably looked like an idiot, asking them to repeat the question a million times. But does it matter? No. I think divine help only comes when it's important.

We taught our first Eikaiwa this week, which was really fun. Eikaiwa's always great. Here, instead of only 2 classes they have 3, including one for kids! Since we have 4 companionships of missionaries we might add another one next year, because the "beginner" class now isn't really very beginner. I was surprised by how many people here can speak English - it seems like almost everybody at church knows at least a little, and lots of people are pretty good. My goal for this transfer is to have them trust in my Japanese enough to stop giving a quick English recap of everything they say to make sure I understand. But they do that to all the missionaries, even the fluent ones - I think they like getting to use the English they know whenever they can.

Saturday we saw an amazing Christmas miracle. The investigator passed on to us from the other sisters, Kim, met with us for a lesson. She'd been thinking about getting baptized before, but never felt ready to make a decision and kept putting it off. We talked about her fears and ways to overcome them, and she was surprisingly open with us and very willing to try new things and make goals. The member we had with us was also super helpful, and a great example for Kim. Together we set a baptismal goal date, and she's going to work hard and let us help her get ready! It was Sister Wigginton's first "real", sit-down lesson with an investigator, and what an awesome first lesson! Lucky kid. Anyway, we're super happy. Saturday evening was the church Christmas party, which including some musical performances by two local university students. One sang and the other played piano, and it was incredible. Nothing is more impressive than a really well-done O Holy Night.

The miracles continued on Sunday when Sa san showed up at church again! She said she really liked it, and had read multiple chapters from the Book of Mormon I gave her! Amazing. Usually it's so hard to get people to read the Book of Mormon, and they have every excuse in the world, but she did it all by herself. We're going to teach her the restoration on Christmas, and I can't think of anything I'd rather do on that day. She is so sweet. Sunday evening all four of us sisters went to the train station and caroled, three of us singing at a time and the other one talking to nearby people about Christmas. It was really fun and made it less awkward to start sudden conversations with people. Later, I called Sisters Cortes and Taneda in Oyama and got to hear about the two baptisms in Oyama this weekend! Both Miro and Pe, a man the Elders had been teaching, got baptized, and from what I heard it was wonderful. What an awesome way for them to start the new year - a clean slate, and a new huge, loving family to be a part of.

Today we spent the morning and early afternoon with a bunch of members, caroling at a local old folk's home. I thought beforehand that it would just be a couple songs, but they had an elaborate program that they'd been practicing for a while. We sang some familiar Christmas hymns, in Japanese, then a few young kids sang some Japanese kids' songs. Then, the missionaries all sang Jingle Bells and Santa Claus is Coming to Town in English, complete with various musical instruments and our Branch Mission Leader dressed as Santa, handing out cookies. Afterwards we sang some Japanese holiday songs I'd never heard before, so I sang quietly while trying to copy other people and decipher the lyrics written out in kanji on the piece of paper I held. It was really fun, and the rest home people were so happy. We did the whole thing twice, once before lunch and once afterwards, to different groups of people.

Merry Christmas everyone!
Love, Anna

Niigata missionaries and university music performance students at the Christmas party

Niigata branch sister's Christmas tree in the tatami room