The Church is True, the Book is Blue

July 18, 2017

The Church is True, the Book is Blue

It's crazy to think that I've been living in Japan for over a month now. So much has happened and the time really has flown by! But here are the highlights from this past week:

-On Monday/Tuesday I went to Kariya area for a companion exchange. I was with the STL of our area, Amada Shimai (a small, cute Nihonjin) and it was really fun. We taught a couple lessons and it was just really interesting to see another area. But! I was really happy when I got back to Toyohashi ^^ There's no place like home.

-We had Zone Conference this past week and I got to see Porter Shimai again ^^ We just talked a lot about working with members at the conference, so I'm going to try really hard over the next couple weeks to serve the members and show them how much we love and appreciate them. Hopefully they'll work with us more, too ^^

-That night we also played minute-to-win-it games at our English class and it was hilarious. They were so confused at first, but then got really into it! I'll send just the best video though.

-This week we went to a place called "Happy Burger" to eat and got burgers and fries and I almost cried it was so good. My burger had a fried egg on it and it was delicious! We also got to talk to one of the workers there and she's Christian! She said she was too busy to meet, but hopefully she will be able to in the future <3

-On Friday we went with one of the members (Matsuzawa Shimai) to visit her friend and talk with her. Her friend is like some really famous flower arranger (I guess?) and had a super nice house (very traditional Japanese). It was really fun to chat with her and then after we shared a little bit about our purpose Matsuzawa Shimai totally took over and talked about her conversion story and gave her a Book of Mormon and it was amazing! We probably only said like...5 sentences but we didn't even care. Definitely one of the best lessons I've been a part of so far <3 Lessons with members really are the best!

-On Saturday night we went and found a past investigator named Watanabe-san. She sounded awesome so we were really excited to meet her. We went on a quest to find her and after almost getting totally lost, found it! She's from China and is practically fluent in English. But she wants to take the TOEIC test (a Japanese test to check English fluency) and has been wanting someone to study with. And then we knocked on her door! She got SO excited when we told her we could study with her, it was so cute <3 And she's totally down for the gospel portion, too! We're really excited to meet with her. And she's going to teach us some Chinese! (So we'll be learning Japanese, Chinese, and Portugeuse!!)

Other than that, it's just been a week of planning and finding. We're really wanting to find even more investigators and try to get some people to come to church. There are definitely rough days, but overall I'm still loving the mission! I advise everyone to read Matthew 14:22-33. It's a great passage on trusting in Christ and having faith!

Thanks for all the emails!

--Armour Shimai