Zone Conference

Week 19

皆さんこんにちは！

Wow what a week, as always. This week was a little different than other typical weeks. Isom Shimai was really sick for a couple days and we were told we couldn't leave the house. Lol So basically I just attempted to write letters in Kanji for members and read the book of Mormon for two and half days straight haha. Which btw is a fabulous book, I highly recommend. 

Thursday was THANKSGIVING, Japan, as you can imagine, isn't exactly a huge Thanksgiving celebrating country. BUT our district leader is a really good chef and made us a big lunch with homemade rolls, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, apple pie, wassail, and a huge chicken (we will just pretend it's turkey), but it was great. We all went around and we said what we were grateful for. 

Never did I think that one day I would be in Japan having a spontaneous Thanksgiving, sharing my Thanksgiving traditions with missionaries from all over the world. But it was great. :) After that, we kicked off the Christmas spirit and went caroling as a district in one of the busier areas of Osaka. 

It is so fun doing Christmas related things in Japan because people love Christmas things but doing really understand the point of it, so we are able to introduce the real meaning behind it! And what better way to grab peoples attention than a bunch of Americans singing Christmas songs in Japanese haha. So we were able to find a lot of people through that! 

On Friday I had a companion exchange with Macaspac 姉妹, she is from the Philippines and is the cutest person ever. It was really interesting because we came to Japan at the same time, so we were just two little bean chans running around! We had a lesson with the cutest family, we were both kind of scared because usually we have our senior companions who can help us and take the lead more, but it was really good. Working together we were able to teach them how to pray and explain how they can receive help from God. Even though our Japanese wasn't near perfect, the spirit was present. :) Thank goodness for Heavenly Father's constant help and the spirit, or else this work would be nearly impossible. 

I'm unfortunately out of time, this email wasn't the best.  But because of Thanksgiving, I have to say how grateful I am for everything! Every night my companion and I say things that we are grateful for that day. It's so cool how things that seemed hard at the moment, or something that I wasn't too excited for, end up being something I was grateful for! When we look for the blessings and miracles that Heavenly Father has given us, we will recognize how much he loves us! I've come to realize that his will really is the best way, we just have to trust in him. 

Love all of you, hope you have the best week. 
Love クリステンセン姉妹

Some members bought us Costco pizza for Thanksgiving -  it was so cute.

Poor, sick Isom Shimai, in Japan you are supposed to wear a mask if you are sick.

It's kind of funny. 

Grover Shimai

My first letter for members

District Thanksgiving "dinner" - Fonnesbeck 長老,  Konishi長老, Sanderson 長老 Isom姉妹, Christensen 姉妹, Emerson長老, Macaspac 姉妹, Grover 姉妹

Week 18

I sent you a voice thing, and I am really sorry but I don't really want to send a group email this week. Tell everyone I am sorry haha.

But some things I forgot to mention,

Me and Isom shimai had this realization the other day that we are the youngest companionship in the mission, and have been since I have gotten here, so that is insane haha. I am surprised we are alive and still know what is going on haha. But we love it here, of course, Japan is the greatest place everrr.

Love you guys so much, ill send another voice message thing for Thanksgiving. I am sorry that I have no weekly email, but I mentioned mostly everything in the first voice message, anyways...LOVE YOU 

愛しています

Here are some highlights from her voice memo:

We didn't meet with any investigators this week, everyone here is soooo busy!  Our President asked us to focus on less-actives in the ward.  Sometimes it's hard when you aren't teaching people, you feel like you aren't fulfilling your purpose.  But on Sunday we had nine less-actives come to church! Some of them we had only dropped something off and didn't even get invited into their houses, but they came!  We also went to visit this eighty-year-old woman, her body is so weak she can't come to church.  She made us mochi cakes and showed us this book of letters from some pen pals from Provo from the 1970s.  It was cool to talk to her about her history and it felt so good to know we made her day.  I know that's what I'm doing here in Japan, spreading Christ's love.  It's hard to not get caught up in numbers so I'm grateful when I feel like I am letting people know Christ loves them.

We went District Christmas caroling.  They are already getting Christmas since they obviously don't have Thanksgiving.  Christmas is different here since they aren't Christian.  They just eat cake and fried chicken -haha

The weather is getting a little colder.  Not too bad, I'm in the warmest part of my mission.  I went shopping for some sweaters and they have this amazing self-checkout.  I literally opened the cupboard, put my basket in, closed it and within seconds it registered and gave me the total.  Then you just self-pay with the computer. Japan so efficient.

Isom Shimai has not felt well, but she is selfless and won't take a rest.  I did give her a spinal. The other Shimai that lives with us called it the "Ellie spa".  I'm not used to hearing my first name.  It tripped me out a little.  But that was funny.

One last funny story: We were trying to visit a less active girl so we biked out about 15 minutes from the church.  The address wasn't lining up so we couldn't find her house.  This lady came out told us to hold on, then she went inside for a solid five minutes.  She finally told us to come into her entry.  She was doing all this stuff like printing, then her husband started helping her.  They came out and had printed off six pieces of paper and put them all together and drew out this big map.  Turns out the address got mixed up and it was actually the address to our church!  With a marker, she drew out specific directions to get to the church.  It was so embarrassing, standing there with our name tags pretending we didn't know how to get back to our own church.  Then to top it off we gave them the pamphlet we hand out with information about what we teach and on the back is a map to the church!  Just like the one she just made us.  We were trying so hard not to laugh.  They probably thought we were idiots. 

The mosquitos are ruthless here, and particularly like me. Isom Shimai had some repellant spray and this is what it did to my tights haha. She felt so bad but I thought it was hilarious (they were $1 tights).

   Some lovely selfies

Noe and Kana Chan

Okonomiyaki

Week 17

Hello everyone!

I am really sorry but this email isn't going to be one of my best. I honestly don't even know what happened this week.

BUT of course, Japan is still amazing, life is great, mission work is hard, and there are miracles every day.

One thing that has really been cool to watch is how much our investigators have progressed because of the Book of Mormon. We have been really trying to make that a goal in our commitments. As a missionary, you obviously have a lot more time to study the BOM, and it really is the greatest thing ever. One thing I have found is if you reading with a question in mind or are searching for something specific, you always learn so much more. We had one investigator who had been struggling with having faith in some of the things we have been teaching. But because he has been continuing to read, he has felt peace about it, even if the chapters he is reading have nothing to do with those topics. I promise you there is so much power in the BOM, and if you sincerely read it, you will find that peace or answer you are looking for. 

Some funny stories for this week, 

I had some chicken liver, that was kind of weird. I asked what the spread was on the bread we were eating at this lady's house because it was actually pretty good. I definitely wasn't expecting Chicken liver to come out of her mouth haha.  

During sign dendo, we give people candy as a prize if they can answer three questions in English. There was one guy I was talking to and I was giving him a candy, and he asked if he could take me on a date for his prize...lol. Another group of people asked if I was 25 years old, that has never happened in my life. haha

Sorry that this week was so short, hope everyone is doing amazing!

クリステンセン姉妹

Ellie sent us a cool story on her voice memo this week so I thought I would include it here.  I'll try to recount it as well as she did.  El and her companion got a phone call from some Elders telling them to please meet them at a certain address.  The Elders had gotten a referral and the lady said she knew Sister Christensen.  Turns out an Elder from Ellie's district in the MTC is half Japanese.  He is currently serving in Tokyo.  His Grandma lives in Osaka.  Everything lined up perfectly as his mom flew into Japan from the US and arrived at the Grandma's house at the same time as the Elders.  So the mom was able to make the connection to Ellie.  The Grandma is not a member and wasn't really open to the missionaries until she heard about Ellie.  Isom Shimai and Ellie had plans that night that had fallen through so they were able to go when the Elders called.  Ellie also happened to have some pictures of her and the Grandson from the MTC.  The Grandma now has opened her heart to the missionaries and is allowing them to return.  Lots of miracles that night!

We were biking and then all the sudden it started pouring rain, so that's why we look so bad in the pic haha

Oh yeah I had to go to the orthodontist because my retainer was coming off really bad, but it's all good. They did this really fancy stuff, fixed it and it only costs 7 dollars, so score. 

Facebook post by Miho Bearnson Waldrup, she wrote "Thank you so much for visiting us! It was great to meet you. My son said in his email that you are an awesome missionary!"  

Pictures with the mom and grandma of one of the elders in my MTC district! 

Week 16 - 奇跡の週 (Week of miracles)

おはようございます！

Oh my goodness this week was amazing, I don't even know where to begin. Every single day we see miracles, it is insane. 

So first off, IM STILL IN ABENO!!! And I'm still with Isom 姉妹 and am still living with the other sisters! No one saw that coming, but I am so happy about it! I know this transfer is going to be amazing. 

Some of my favorite days on the mission are when you don't really have any plans and you honestly just pray and let the spirit guide you. It's amazing how it all works out and Heavenly Father puts you right where you need to be. We were riding home from an appointment and we passed this one street and I remembered this lady we have been trying to find but her address was all messed up. But I knew the general area where her house was. I knew it would bother me all day if I just pushed away from this thought, so we took a detour over to her house. Right, when we pulled up to this street this lady was hopping on her bike, about to leave. I hurried and stopped her and asked her if she knew the 姉妹 we were looking for, And it was her! Like what!? If we would've left like 10 seconds later, we would've missed her. We were able to see where she lives and talk to her for a little bit before she left to work! So that was a miracle. 

Another day we were so busy that we barely had any time to go talk to people. We had like an hour to go out and でんど。 So we decided to go do sign dendo which is where we go to the train station and hold an English sign and try getting people to do the 30/30 program (30 minutes of English/30 min lesson). We had a goal to get some people's contact info so we could actually get a hold of them. After one hour we got 9 PEOPLES NUMBERS. That is insane, you have no idea. And 5 out of 9 wanted to take pictures with us and post something. Two girls even took a picture with all of us holding BOM and posted it on her social media. My companion and I just looked at each other, not even processing what is going on. Benefits of being from America. Haha

We had a lesson with a girl named しんじょうさん。 Missionaries have been trying to meet with her for forever, but she wanted to meet with us. In her profile it said she wanted nothing to do with religion, so we were a little scared. But we went over there and she was so nice! We told her that if she had a desire to learn, little by little, she will begin to understand what we are teaching. We taught her who God is and about Prayer. We asked if she would pray and she was like yeah let me see that pamphlet, and she just snatched that pamphlet about prayer and gave the best prayer ever. Like what? It was crazy how much her heart has been softened, and how willing she is to try everything!

We had a lesson with 山野さん, who is a members husband. It was my first time teaching him, and all I really knew about him was that he hates commitments, and doesn't understand the why of the gospel. He's learned the majority of the lessons, but he still doesn't see the point. So we go over there and he told us he read Mosiah 2, as we asked him to, twice! And he remembered everything from the chapter. So that was crazy. For the lesson, we kind of just started from base one and just testified that if he sincerely tried applying our teachings, he would see the difference in his life. In the middle of us sharing our message, he just stopped us, and said: "I want to try it". It was pretty funny because he said everything else in Japanese except for that sentence. But oh my goodness, I was mind blown. He told us he would start praying every day and would read the scriptures we sent him. His wife was just sitting there mind blown. It was sooo awesome. Then after the lesson, he asked me what foods I like in Japan, I told him I love Ramen, and after I said that, he went and grabbed his coat and told us he would take us out for lunch for Ramen! So yeah best lesson and meal. Haha

On Sunday we had an amazing church experience. のえちゃんandかなちゃん came to church! They are two 16-year-old girls, and I love them so much. They loved church and said they could really feel the spirit. We have been teaching them for a while now, and so it was awesome that they could finally come! It was fast Sunday, so I went up and bore my testimony. I honestly don't even remember what I said, but everyone came up to me and told me they loved it, so that's good. Except now they all think I'm fluent in Japanese which is not the case whatsoever. But oh well. This ward is seriously the best. 

Sorry for the terribly long email, but I had to share how much Heavenly Father is looking out for us! The scripture I wanted to share is, Alma18: 32 "And Ammon said: Yea, and he looketh down upon all the children of men; and he knows all the thoughts and intents of the heart; for by his hand were they all created from the beginning."  I know that Heavenly Father is mindful of each and every one of you. He knows and loves you perfectly, and can help you through our Savior, Jesus Christ! 

Hope you all are doing amazing, love you all! 
クリステンセン姉妹

山野さん (Yamano) and 山の姉妹, out to lunch for Ramen

 のえちゃん(Noe Chan) andかなちゃん (Kana Chan) came to church! 

(Kana Chan on the left, Noe Can on the right)

Package from home, delivered by Uncle Jim

Our Food

Some rare Japanese cookies, a member made for us