weekly email

Here's another beautiful picture of my area. You see these little
graveyards a lot; they are actually quite beautiful. Loving the
countryside! Although it's been a bit tough because every one of our
appointments live so far away. It takes an hour by the train
sometimes, and we have to take our bikes. Normally, not a problem. In
Japan, unless you take apart the bike and stuff it into a bag you
can't take it on the train. You can imagine how cumbersome that has
become.

Halloween is up and around the corner and the Japanese people totally celebrate it; or at least they attempt to. I dot think they really get it. If kids knew that all you had to do was dress up and go out and collect candy, I'm sure it would be huge. As it is, people are still trying to figure it out. There are Jack-o-lanterns and candy, and you see some ghosts and things on packages at the store, but that's about the limit. Well, it's fun anyways. Last week we got to parade around a bit with a bunch of kids handing out treats to all the workers at the train station. So cute. We went with an investigator who is better at giving us referrals than the entire branch combined. She's interested in the church but always had the feeling it was scary because of some weird experiences. She lived in Australia and traveled Europe via backpacking so she's also fluent in English! We teach together sometimes. The investigator is the one with a purple blanket on the head.

Here's a treat I tried recently. I thought it was just a small marshmallow--was I in for a treat.

This week was funny and a ton of miracles happened. I'll just share one. We went to visit a less active who had moved from the Philippines and lived way out in Sato. Another long train ride. Our member who was going to join us canceled last second; the less active is a woman, so we couldn't effectively teach her without a man accompanying us so we could go into the house (mission rules). So, last second we called another less active we had planned on visiting in the same area. Brother Goe agreed to accompany us to Sister Kikuchi's home. Hahaha two in one swoop! We talked so long we missed our train ride home and couldn't make our last appointment; however, the feelings were good and the Spirit strong as we gave the sister a blessing of comfort and council for her rough life. Her 8 and 12 year old daughters aren't baptized yet, so we'll be coming back to teach them soon. Brother Goe even offered to take Sister Kikuchi to church, even though he himself hadn't been for who knows how long. It was great.

This week I tried conveyor belt sushi for the first time. Hahaha they even had little cheeseburgers on top of rice! Loving it.

So we have a little grill hidden underneath our stoves; it had literally never been used. So I changed things up a bit, and tried my hand at grilling bits of marinated chicken. It was great; would recommend 9 out of 10 to a friend.