From Experience

こんにちわ皆さん！いつも愛していますよ！

私の新堂よと徳島が大好きですよう！いつも徳島に住みたいです！でも、たぶん私和いつか転勤し中ればなりません。

My current companion will sometimes send her weekly emails home, entirely in Japanese because her family can read them...and that just takes way too much time and I would die. So I think that two sentences will suffice. The above says: "Hello everyone! I love you all! I love my new companion and Tokushima! I want to live here forever, but I will eventually transfer." Or at least that is what I tried to say...who really ever knows! It is all Japanese! 

This week was SO amazing. We had the most packed preparation day of our entire lives last week and I was exhausted by the end of it. We went hiking in the morning, biked to email, went shopping at daiso, we need more daiso's in the United States. いつか. And then we went to this cultural center place where we watched awadori, which is the traditional dance on Shikoku and I love it. 

Awadori - the dance that Shikoku is known for. I wish I could send home the video it is legit

The Cake that we "made" for Palmer Shimai's birthday

 English is becoming hard. I just proof-read the prior paragraphs and made quite a few corrections. 

After our packed preparation day, full of biking and tons of fun we went and visited a less active lady who talked to us for about 45 minutes! She was super sweet and invited us to come back, so we are visiting her again tomorrow! It was an insanely busy week. We had a few days where we were gone for the entire day - leaving our apartment at 8 in the morning and not coming back until 9 at night, completely exhausted, slightly tanner and maybe a little bit sunburned and very sweaty. We were able to teach quite a few lessons this week and I just love all of our investigators with all of my heart. Our French investigator this week asked us when she could be baptized, we don't think that she really understands a lot of what we say though...so we are going to continue teaching her at a slow pace to make sure that she really understands why she wants to be baptized. I talked to one of the Elders (the french one from Canada) in my doki this weekend at the Christofferson Taikai (Conference, Elder Christofferson ) and he told me that he could get me some French teaching materials, like the chart, in French, so that was a life saver. 

On Sunday we had a lesson with a girl who has come to a few activities at the church with us, but had not actually become an investigator yet. Basically I love her and she is completely 金人 there is no doubt in my mind about that. I love her so much. We taught her that she is a daughter of God and a little bit about prayer and she asked the most amazing questions. She took notes throughout the three hours of church and made a ton of friends and by some miracle, her off day of work is Sunday. I love this girl. She wanted to know how to pray and if we keep a pray in our minds all the time. She was a little bit confused about why we don't pray to mountains and stuff...but we explained it pretty well. She asked us about experiences that we had had where God protected us, and we both shared experiences from our missions thus far about times when the spirit had warned us of danger, or protected us from crazy drivers while we are biking hahahhaha. 

Some of the highlights of this week were the taikai with Elder Christofferson and one of my follow ups with my zone leaders. Basically, I just really love follow ups. I get to hear amazing stories and miracles from my leaders and they are super inspiring and all of my zone leaders have just been the most inspiring people ever. Anyway, I was talking to one of our zone leaders and he told me about a guy who walked into the church while they were studying and he is going to be baptized soon. Basically, this guy was studying to be a monk or something like that and then the leader of his little shinto sect was on his dying bed and shared this secret with him that he had known his whole life. So the secret was that Christ was really the leader of this shinto religion but they had called him by a different name and so no one knew that Christ was this religions leader, and this little monk guy on his death bed was like: "The truth is in Christ....." or something like that. So then this man began his search for truth and walked into the church while the elders were studying! He was telling me the story and I was like.....this is the craziest thing I have ever heard in my life, but it is so cool.....miracles happen. The Lord sends the people that are searching for truth to us!

And then the Elder Christofferson Taikai. Oh my goodness I just loved it so much. I felt like I prepared myself really well spiritually for this taikai because I did not want to miss anything. I felt like I did not spiritually prepare myself well enough for General Conference and so I did not receive all of the revelation that I could have, had I gone into the conference with a more willing heart and more humility.  So I have been keeping this conference in my prayers for the past...month or so...and I fasted before it and prepared a lot of questions. Every single one of my questions was answered and the spirit was SO strong. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. It was so neat to be gathered with the entire mission in Ibaraki right before Zinke Kaicho and Zinke Shimai (mission President and his wife) go home. They have been so AMAZING...it was so good for them to see the whole mission all together. I have never seen all of the missionaries so well behaved either...but everyone was super quiet and serious and reverent and it was amazing. Pretty much, everyone was there like two hours early and spiritually preparing. We traveled for an entire day, and stayed overnight in Sekime (in Osaka) before the conference and then woke up at 5 am to make it on time. He spoke so powerfully and left an amazing blessing upon the mission. It was beyond words to shake hands with an apostle of the Lord, with a man whose testimony caused the room to essentially catch on fire with a vibrant spirit. And if this mans testimony could make Zinke Kaicho cry (I never thought I would see Zinke Kaicho cry, but he definitely did as he bore testimony to us). And Zinke Shimai cried too. I can't imagine how they feel leaving...because basically I just cry whenever I think about them leaving. Christofferson Choro said that this taikai was the Lord's way of thanking the Zinke's for their amazing service, it was His way of telling them that they have done all they can and done His will. He told us that the Lord sees us as worthy, that we are obedient and that we will see miracles here because we are true disciples of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. There is nothing quiet like getting that confirmation from an apostle of the Lord. His testimony of the Savior was amazing. I noticed two words that he used in particular that I just loved: "I know that Christ lives. I know that He is our Savior. From confirmation and from experience, Jesus Christ is our Redeemer...." 

This weekend was amazing. This week was amazing. And it went by way too fast. Somehow the transfer is nearing its halfway point....and I don't really know how because it just barely started....

Oh and I also translated Sacrament meeting again. And then I had to translate Sunday School. My Japanese is improving and the gift of tongues is real because I can understand Japanese and I don't really know when on earth that happened. And sometimes I can even speak Japanese which is craziness.

Have a great week!

Grundvig Shimai

 I have decided that I am going to take a picture of this rice field every single week on preparation day so that you can see how much time is really passing based upon the growth of the rice. I hope that you enjoy. Unfortunately I forgot to take the picture last preparation day, so this was on Thursday. But I remembered today! Thus the following picture

 

Basically those pictures looked exactly the same.....but.....there will be slow but sure differences throughout the weeks hahahah.

おいしい祖 ("It's Delicious")

I am really sorry, because I don't have very much time at all to write this email....but it was an amazing week!

I sent a ton of pictures that basically describe my week in a nutshell. We did so much! We visited tons of less actives, and most of them weren't home..but we did teach one totsuzen less active lesson this week. And it went really well so that was good :) 

We taught our French investigator from the Congo and she is the sweetest, most beautiful person ever. (Basically I think that about all of my investigators though). Also, we had a lesson with our 80 year old おばちゃん (Aunt) I love her. She is hilarious. She likes to randomly start singing songs about the United States in English during our lessons. 

Some highlights of the week!

I ate sushi roll! It was delicious. I love Sushi Roll with all of my heart and I would like lots of Sushi Roll restaurants to open up in Virginia. Because I love them.

I ate sushi roll for the first time and it is my new favorite food ever. I love sushi so much 

Also, we hiked a mountain at 5 am this morning. We hiked down the mountain with these two old men who were hilarious and kept taking pictures of us.

My Beautiful Tokushima area

Hello Sunrise!

Early morning hike to the top of a mountain

A stop during our Hike

We had a branch carnival on Saturday. I loved it. This branch is so cute and fun and there are so many KIDS! They are all crazy and we had an apple bobbing contest and somehow they all managed to get themselves completely soaked from head to toe while bobbing for apples.

At the way fun branch carnival on Saturday!! 

I translated Church again yesterday. There were two American speakers so it was significantly easier and my translation was more accurate. 

I love Tokushima! 

I am sorry that this email is so short! 

Much love,
Grundvig Shimai

p.s. We biked to the zoo last preparation day and I got very sunburned. :) 

Last preparation day we went to the zoo!! 

Palmer Shimai and Grundvig Shimai at the Tokushima Zoo

The Bird Cage at Zoo

East Osaka to Virtue Island!

I LOVE TOKUSHIMA AND PALMER SHIMAI! MY new area is amazing and my new companion is also amazing and I don't understand why people don't like serving on Shikoku because it is the most beautiful place on the planet earth. Ok, maybe I understand a little bit why people don't completely love serving on Shikoku...but only because we are kind of just our only little piece of the mission. The missionaries that are on Shikoku tend to stay on Shikoku for a long time...and I got here...and I had no idea who anyone was. I am emailing on Tuesday this week because we had a zone taikai yesterday, and it was a strange experience to arrive...and know absolutely no one in my zone. Or have even heard of any  of the missionaries in my zone. My current companion has been on Shikoku for all of her mission except for her first transfer, and so before coming here, no one really knew who she was, and she has never heard of a lot of the new missionaries...but basically she is an amazing missionary and she is really good at Japanese and she is really Christ-like and I just love her to pieces. Also, Tokushima is like a painting. It is basically what I had imagined when I thought of Japan, and it is not even that Inaka! It is a good mix of city and country and it is gorgeous. 

Tokushima Rice Field

  

The Less Active work is actually starting to wind down on Shikoku, because they started first, and so I don't know how much of the less active work I will actually get to do...but my companion is very experienced with it because she has already been doing less active work for about five months, and so that is very nice. Yesterday at the zone taikai, Zinke Shimai asked the Shikoku missionaries for help on how to train the rest of the mission for working with less actives....and I felt very useless...because I wasn't here for any of the work that they have been doing, but it was really neat to hear about all of the miracles and experiences from Shikoku that started the less active work for the rest of the mission. No one has really left Shikoku for the past 4 transfers because of the Less Active work, or really come onto Shikoku, so basically....it is pretty weird to have just transferred here. I think only me and one other missionary came from the mainland to Shikoku this transfer and we both were feeling pretty out of the loop! On Shikoku both the Elders and the Sisters have been doing less active work, so it is definitely different dendo!

Anyway, so a little bit more about Tokushima! My area is the ENTIRE PREFECTURE. I don't know if I spelled that right, but, basically it is HUGE. ALL of the areas on Shikoku are huge. Travel takes FOREVER and it is expensive. I was so spoiled in Higashi Osaka and I didn't even know it. Yesterday I had to wake up at 5 to get to our Zone Meeting....and we took a two hour train just to get to the area next to us! And then we had to rent bikes because the church is so far from the eki. It was the craziest travel experience of my life. In Higashi Osaka, we could bike to the next area in about 15 minutes. The Elders in the area next to us (who I met at the taikai yesterday) did a marathon bike trip and biked 100 miles in one day to go visit a less active. (These elders have the biggest area in the mission). I think my area might be the second biggest). I have biked more here in the past three days than I probably have in my entire mission, but I love biking so it is ok. Also my watch tan and other weird tan lines are ridiculous. Oh and it is SO HOT on Shikoku. And it is only May! The summer here might actually kill me. My first long day of biking and visiting less actives in Tokushima...I got a flat tire! So we had to walk my bike to the nearest bike shop...which was FAR and then we got home rather late. It has been a pretty crazy first few days, but my companion is a champ so it is ok :) The apartment is really nice, and it is right in between two rice fields. I think I have seen like...one rice field my entire mission. But I have seen SO many rice fields in the past few days. The frogs go crazy in the rice fields at night, and so it was really hard to sleep my first night here. Tokushima is beautiful and it is an entirely different feel than the Osaka Zone was. The air is cleaner, the sun is brighter....and it feels so PURE! Which is fitting.

Rice Field next to our Apartment

Oh random cool thing about Tokushima! So Toku means virtue and Shima means island! So my current area is called Virtue Island! I love it!

The investigators here are amazing. I love them already. I have only met a few of them....but they are wonderful. We have a few investigators from the Congo. And we have an 80 year old obachan who is the cutest little genki grandma ever. I love her so much. She is so cute. She told me I was pretty and then she got really worried that I wouldn't understand the word pretty. It was hilarious. The branch is HUGE. It is way bigger than my ward was in Higashi Osaka which doesn't really make a lot of sense. We had 91 people at church on Sunday. In Higashi Osaka we would maybe have around 40 every week. I am super stoked to get to know them better. There is a guy in our ward who just moved here from Michigan, and so my companion has to translate church for him. On Sunday we had our investigator who is from the Congo  (she is this tall, beautiful African woman who mostly just speaks French and a tiny bit of Japanese and a tiny bit of English....) so on Sunday I had to translate sacrament meeting into English for her. MY BRAIN ALMOST DIED. The gift of tongues is real because there is just no way in the entire world I could have ever done that without the power of God, because usually I barely understand sacrament meeting myself. But, this week I understood almost all of it...and I was able to translate it. When I realized I was going to need to translate, I was basically just completely terrified...but when I would hear words that I wouldn't know, somehow the translation would just pop into my brain. It was a miracle. Where there is a need, the Lord provides a way.

We have already seen a lot of miracles in Tokushima! Between people just calling us on the phone and asking to meet with us, meeting less actives on their doorsteps and singing them hymns, to finding lost apartments through the power of prayer. We even had a lady walk up to us while we were outside exercising and ask if we were Mormon Missionaries, and then invite us over to her house for a later visit. It was pretty exciting. I love Tokushima. It is beautiful, the ward is wonderful, biking is fun, rice fields full of frogs are noisy.....and the summer is HOT.

I hope that everyone has a great week!!

Much Love,

Grundvig Shimai

Oh P.S. I should probably write a little bit about my last week in Higashi Osaka...it was basically the best and worst thing ever! I was so sad to leave Cain Shimai and my investigators...but I only cried like a tiny little bit and I don't think anyone noticed maybe? But, I got to say goodbye to some of my most favorite members and lots of people fed us delicious food and gave me presents and I felt really loved. But, my suitcases are going to have a hard time making it back to the United States probably. Also, we met some wonderful less actives who were excited to meet with us and that was great. I didn't get to say goodbye to my 16 year old investigator and so my heart cried but she promised that she would write me....which is wonderful...but I mostly won't be able to read that hahaha. Also! I got to see Daniels Shimai and Violette Shimai at transfers and it was the happiest reunion of my life and I love them with all of my heart  

Leaving Higashi Osaka

Tokushima, Shikoku!

Hello wonderful world! I am experiencing my first transfer! And it is a very strange experience and I am a little bit terrified. But, I still have four days in Higashi Osaka and I am determined that I will bear powerful testimony and do as much as I can do to further the work here in those four days. I am heartbroken to leave these people...and to leave Higashi Osaka because I love this area and these people and just EVERYTHING about this place SO MUCH. But I know that the Lord has work for me to do with Palmer Shimai (my new companion) in Tokushima!! Another exciting thing is that Shikoku is where the less active work began, and so I think that I will be jumping right into it! (All the Sister Misisonaries in Ariana's mission are now responsible for finding and teaching the less active members, those no longer attending)

Tokushima is SUPER Inaka. And I am going from one of the smallest areas of the mission to one of the biggest ones on Shikoku island. My current area is probably 2 hours or so from one end of the area to the other on bike....and I am guessing that my new area is like.... I don't really know but probably approximately 50 Higashi, Osaka's could fit into Tokushima. And that is really not an exaggeration at all.

SO LAST WEEK! It was a week of MIRACLES in Higashi Osaka. We began working with the Less Active members on Tuesday. And it was the most amazing thing. This is changing my mission. This is changing my LIFE. The people I met this week....I AM SO HEARTBROKEN TO LEAVE. I will probably cry in every single lesson this week. But they are all so amazing! They want to return to church, and some of them have amazing faith...but just need a little help and that is where we come in! Anyway, it started on Tuesday. We biked to the church in torrential downpour and it was so cold...and we had morning study! And then we biked home...in torrential downpour...and we got a phone call from Imanishi Kyodai asking us to meet him at the church so that he could give us the Less Active records. So we faced the downpour and met him at the church. He gave us 17 records, and we were able to visit 8 this week. Of those 8 we taught 4, and we are teaching another lady this week! They are the sweetest people on the planet!

And then to add to that, a ton of people started calling us back and we were able to set up other appointments and find new investigators from previous people that we had met on the streets when we were out dendo-ing in the past six weeks.

But, probably my favorite lesson of the week was the first one that we had on Tuesday. We arrived at the first apartment complex...to discover that the home number was not written on the record. So we knocked on all of the first floor rooms...and no one answered any of them...

And we weren't sure how to figure out where this lady lived. So we said a prayer. In the middle of our prayer I heard a door open. We didn't even finish our prayer before it was answered. The lady who opened the door directed us to the Land Lord (I think...something like that..) who told us where the lady we were looking for lived. We knocked on her door, and the cutest old lady I have ever met opened the door. She struggles to walk, but she was SO excited to see us. She let us in, so excited to see Shimai Senkyoshi. It was a very different greeting than I usually get when I knock on doors. She sat down with us and we taught her a totsuzen lesson that mainly focused on what she had felt before when she came to church. She told us that she can't come because she can't really walk...but that she believes as she continues practicing walking, she will be healed so that she can come back to church. I basically was just holding back tears the entire lesson as she recounted her conversion story and showed us the first Book of Mormon that she had read and pictures of herself with the missionaries...and it was the sweetest experience ever. The spirit was SO strong! We talked to her about having the sacrament brought to her home until she can walk, which hasn't been done for a while, and I am so excited that she has people thinking about her more now. Her home teachers were changed to the newly returned missionary and a guy who just moved into the ward, they are both really young and so when they showed up on her doorstep, she thought that they were the chorotachi (The Elders). She was really confused about why they weren't the elders when we came back to visit her later. The ward is being so incredibly supportive and helpful and amazing with our new responsibility and I just love them so much!!

I also had my first experience with all you can eat yakiniku on Saturday night and it was delicious and I ate cow tongue. Who knew that cow tongue would be delicious? I have become much more adventorous in the food that I eat since I came to Japan...I am pretty sure that I have zero fear of eating anything after eating a strange assortment of different parts of chicken and cows and roots and fish eggs and honestly sometimes I don't even know what I am eating...

I hope that you all have a great week! And next time I email I will be on the Island of SHIKOKU!!

Grundvig Shimai

Some favorite Pictures from the week!

Spoked and some favorite Japanese People (Week of April 22-27)

This week in Higashi Osaka was AMAZING!

But then again there is not a single week in Higashi Osaka that is not amazing. One thing that I have learned this transfer is how much I just really love MISSIONARY WORK! Even when we are having very little success. That is not to say that we should ever become complacent when things are hard or not going well...we should always be pressing forward in faith, but sometimes the Lord loves us enough that He wants to try our faith...and so we should do all things with a cheerful countenance! Cain Shimai and I decided that there was going to be a miracle in Higashi Osaka this week (that really is not on our side of the power chart...but we decided that we could just feel one right around the corner). And so on Monday night we went out and Dendo-ed with ALL of our strength and might and vigor and vim and it was an incredibly successful night. We went to Kinki University, a daigaku in our area, and it almost felt like no one could say no to us. We met tons of people and set up a good amount of appointments for the rest of the week!  ...... And every single one of those appointments fell through/ we got spoked. Spoked = Sister missionaries waiting at the church and calling their potential investigator who somehow dropped off the face of the planet! I don't know how they do it...but so many people that I meet here manage to just disappear off of the face of the earth quicker than I knew was possible! 

On Tuesday we met more people who had interest in learning about the Church, one of them who lived in America and worked at Disney World and she is the cutest girl ever! And, she lives RIGHT BEHIND THE CHURCH! I don't know what the chances of that are (we didn't meet her anywhere near the church), but we were really excited. We also taught a totsuzen lesson in the middle of the moat in our area...and at the end of it the girl did not have a phone, or a home phone, or an email address...so that was unfortunate. We do, however, know where she lives. On Tuesday morning while I was running around the park, I had a hilarious moment with two older men who were drinking beer at 6:30 in the morning. Each time I ran around the park they would yell some weird stuff at me in English, and I would say good morning and keep running. Finally, I stopped and put a look of confusion on my face and told them I didn't understand what they were yelling at me. (Which was true...their English was very strange, perhaps it was impacted by the beer). They then assumed that I didn't speak English. So they started yelling at me in Italian! And I told them I was not Italian. They started throwing out countries that I might have come from, and finally, I just told them that I spoke German. They jumped to the conclusion all by themselves that I come from Germany, and then I spoke a little German for them just to add to the fun. And then I told them that I am a missionary and shared a quick message with them. Which, I really don't think that they understood much of...and not only because of my thick American accent.

Wednesday we had interviews and our mission president is the most inspired man ever. We received so much needed counsel. In the training at the beginning of the meeting he talked a little bit about the way we contact. "We need to say something from the start that will allow others to feel the spirit from the moment you start talking to them. We need to say something that can penetrate them...

"Beck Choro, how do you start your contacts?"

 "...I'm from Amerika!"

 "Do you think that they can't tell that by looking at you? Does that allow them to feel the spirit?"

 It was hilarious, and I am totally guilty, because that is how I generally start my contacts....and I have now tried to shift my contacting methods so that I begin with a less obvious statement. (Although, some Japanese people apparently think that I look Italian or something...but maybe that is only 60 plus year old men who are drinking beer at six in the morning).

 My interview with Zinke Kaicho (My Mission President) was so amazing! I received so much counsel for my area and help for Japanese. While it is true that a mission is not about the language, the language is a very necessary tool. Confidence in the missionary skill set often comes from our command of the language. I was talking to Zinke Kaicho about this and he said something very interesting: "So many times missionaries get excited about the new things they learn - but does it really matter if you have a break through on the atonement and you can't explain it in Japanese?" This is a spot on analysis of the situation. Gospel fluency really means learning how to express myself in Japanese in a way that I can fulfill my purpose. And it means constant improvement. There comes a point in Japanese where it is easy enough to "get by" and teach all the lessons well enough in Japanese, to the point that they are understood. I do not feel satisfied with that. As we gain a greater understanding of the language, we gain a deeper access to the hearts of the people. This is truth.

Thursday we had a lesson with one of the investigators that I have taught since I arrived in Japan. It was...both a wonderful lesson and a disaster lesson. She had really been struggling with...well, everything...and through a LONG conversation and follow-up, we discovered that she had a very strange image of God. She was under the impression that sometimes when she prays, God also would like some advice from her. She also feels that He is more like her loving Heavenly Grandfather than loving Heavenly Father...it was an interesting conversation.

Saturday we met a lady on the street who took us to McDonalds and talked about religion with us for a while! She seemed decently interested in us and hearing about what we teach, but is really firmly Buddhist and she seemed worried that she was going to mislead us into thinking that she wanted to convert. The pineapple smoothies that she bought us were delicious though. (She wanted to take us to McDonalds, because she thought it would remind us of home...so that was funny). We also met a lady from Peru who has lived in Japan since she was two years old and recently got married. Her husband is Japanese and they are the CUTEST COUPLE EVER! They have been looking for a church. She grew up Catholic, and so church was really different for her on Sunday, but she still wants to meet with us again and ask us a lot of questions. They recently moved to Higashi Osaka. 

I LOVE THE HIGASHI OSAKA WARD. I don't really know at what point exactly I started loving these people so much. But they are all some of the most amazing people on the entire planet. Yesterday after church there was a ward meeting and I was asked to speak on member missionary work, so I spoke a bit about how the ward could help by coming to Eikaiwa, bearing testimony etc, and really helping with our less active efforts. I closed by bearing testimony of this work and that because God loves ALL of His Children, He wants ALL of them back...not just a few...but all of us. The whole human family. After speaking I was sitting next to one of the sisters in the ward, and she just put her arm around me and said something super loving and sweet that I don't remember and it was the sweetest moment. We had a shokujikai after church and the ward fed us lots of delicious food, and at some point when I was talking to some of the members I had a flashback to my first terrifying Sunday in Higashi Osaka six months ago. I don't know at what point I started loving these people so much...or at what point I started understanding (most) of what they say. But I just love them so much! They are so hardworking and kind and supportive and caring. One lady in particular that terrified me when I first came to Japan is this elderly lady in our ward. And she likes to wear a ton of black. And her Japanese is super confusing. Yesterday I was asking her how her personal dendo (teaching) is doing (she likes to go streeting or housing by herself and also she talks to everyone on the trains about the church. She is the craziest, coolest lady ever) and she told me all about her mission...back when there were only two missions in Japan. As we left church yesterday, I saw her go outside and start inviting everyone that was out on the street to come in. It was the best thing ever. While I was studying Preach My Gospel this week, I read a quote that went something like this: "Our desire and commitment to share the gospel is a mark of our personal conversion." This lady has a deep, true conversion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She knows how lucky she is. She knows that this message is TRUE! That it is the most important thing on the entire planet!! And I just love it so much :)

Have a great week!

Grundvig Shimai