Happy Golden Week!

5 May 2014 Chiba Japan

Hello everyone! 

Happy golden week! And Happy kids day! 

It's a holiday weekend here!!!

Ok so this email will be a little different. I tried to do a little journaling as the week went by but only made it to Thursday. But all you lucky ducks get to read about those three days! 

This week was pretty great. 

Our mission president is always pushing that we need to expect miracles. Well, of course I expect miracles, I’m a missionary.

We see miracles all ye time. BUT this week I decided I needed to actively expect miracles. It was amazing! I received so many mini promptings of where we should go or what we needed to do. One night in the middle of baking cookies I felt like we needed to drop everything and go visit someone. So we did. And although the girl wasn't home, her parents were! And the dad really liked us! (That's a little rare in Japan, usually the women like us and the men are against the church). We chatted with them for a little while, told them about what we did and about the church and they said they'd give their daughter a message for us! They also told us her schedule so we could come back some other time! There were many more little miracles throughout the week. 

Tuesday we got to meet a church member’s friend who she'd been trying to introduce us to for TWO transfers! We ran into a lot of people from eikaiwa out on the streets and in trains and the biggest miracle of all might have been that the sugar cookies I made turned out yummy! Sugar cookies are basically impossible to make here. Not only do we not have a stove but we also don't have some of the ingredients!! But, I prayed over them lots and we received rave reviews about how "oishi" or delicious they were!

Ok...here are the days...

Sports day 4/29

Today was our stake’s sports day. We went not knowing what to expect and ended up having a blast! There were easily a hundred people there too. It lasted 6 hours!!! We planned to leave early but Sato Shimai decided I was the key to victory and we stayed the whole time. Sport games in Japan are completely different than America! Ours pale in comparison. We did quite a few, and I managed to place in both. Haha

I was a steady 3rd in individual sports and in the team sports our team always took 1st or second. Our team being - Oyumino ward. I think there were six or seven wards all together. Ours was the smallest.

Here is our ward team - Oyumino

My favorite event had to have been...I don't remember the name...it's this game where 7 bamboo poles are placed out in a center of a field, the teams line up on either side of the edge of the field and then, when we are given the "go" you need to run and grab a pole, bring it back to your side and then go for another one. Sounds kinda lame right? WRONG! There are only seven poles and you need 4 to win. Our team usually got 3 on our side with no problem; the fourth pole was he challenge. It was only the women playing and the men didn't even get to play! I think they decided it was too intense hahaha. 

There were essentially  fights to get those last poles! People who fall over or hang on to the pole while being dragged by the other team! It was great fun! I actually ended up with quite a few bruises and a couple scratch marks on my fore arms! At one point I was trying to grab a pole and 3 people were pulling against me, we kept inching towards their side, and deciding there was nothing else I could do, I grabbed tight to the bamboo pole and dropped to the ground....only I didn't drop to the ground, I didn't even begin to weigh enough for that to work, and after being held up in the air, feet dangling above the ground for a few seconds, I tried something else. Eventually, back up came, but it was to no avail...the other team got the pole. In my defense one of the other girls I was up against is training for the Olympics. I'm quite proud of the fact that I managed to hang on to that pole for the little bit I did! Oyumino team came in second; her ward came in first in that event.

My other favorite event...well, rather favorite story from the day had to have been the three legged race. Hubner shimai and I were built for it!!! We are perfectly the same height and our hips hit the same place. So it was a three legged relay actually, we got the baton passed to us and we took off! It was so easy! We were doing great! So we decided to speed up, except I think our bodies weren't the biggest fans of that idea. After 5 hours of the-best-performance- we-could-possibly-muster we were pooped. And someone's...or maybe both our legs buckled, hahahaha and I landed on top of Hubner shimai! She has the bruises to prove it too! We tried to get up but we were just laughing to hard. We were probably two feet from where the baton needed to be handed off! Soooooo close! But we couldn't get up!

Finally we gained some control, stood up and promptly fell over again. We stood up once more and hopped to the end hahaha and passed the baton off. It was great. Super funny! And the ward members loved it.

Missionaries at sports day

At the end of the day they announced the winners. And Oyumino came in third!!!! They'd never placed before!!! And I'm going to not-so-humbly say it was thanks to the missionaries!! We joked all the way home about how the ward members can't say we've never tried hard for them now!

The next day....(4/30)
Sooooooooooo sore today. I could barely move. It was horrible! I have a testimony of the section in the white handbook that says to avoid extreme sports now. Demo, that usually wouldn't be considered extreme to me...just goes to show how out of shape I am! Yikes! Hubner Shimai and I both keep discovering bruises in random places as well!

5/1
Today was super fun! We went and delivered the cookies we made to about half of the people on our list. The ones who were home were so grateful! One of the people we visited calls me gaijin San. I think it's hilarious. He's calling me foreigner, but adds a title at the end haha.

Funny parts of the day:
On our way to meet Hana and Miku at Mr. Donuts a man came up to us and said hello in English. We get that a lot. Demo (ed note: but), what happened next was a first! He started babbling away about English but in Japanese. I could barely understand him but I found nods and the occasional "Ii ne" or "so desu ne" worked wonders. I however could understand more than Hubner shimai haha. He kept telling me she was cute but he was afraid she thought he was a little strange. 

After a few minutes, and the man getting closer to me, I could detect the tell tale signs of alcohol. He smelled like it for sure! And his babbling supported my theory as well. I thought he was hilarious, Hubner shimai was a little uneasy. Especially when he flexed his arm and asked each of us to feel it! I couldn't stop snickering. It was so funny. He said good bye multiple times and then would start a whole new conversation. Each time Hubner shimai tried to say we needed to go meet friends he would lean over to me and whisper who knows what about her to me! This made me laugh as well. Finally, after inviting him to tonight's eikaiwa class we were able to make our escape and continued on to Mr. Donuts.

I LOVE Hana and Miku. They are the cutest! One works at Disney and the other did (kana). I'm not sure if she still does or not. We got donuts and chatted about Disney and shared pictures and it was lots of fun. They each took turns telling me I could be a princess in Tokyo Disneyland as well. My response "demo, Tokyo Disney auditions wa musukashi desu ne!" They have complete faith in me though haha. We even got to tell them a little about temples and eternal families. That was fun. I don't think they quite understood, but they listened intently and oohed and ahhed at the temples we showed them.

Eikaiwa was fun. We did emotions tonight. We sang "If you're happy and you know it." It's one of the few songs the kids got into. I'm excited for tomorrow night! Then we combined with the adult classes at the end for a game. We played telephone.

While playing Telephone i was in charge of the sentences. My first sentence "I am very happy today was too easy" so the next sentence I chose was "turtles are cute." Nihonjin can't say turtles! Hahaha so No one got it. 

This is what each team came up with:

Team one said buttrescue
Team two said to be cute
Team three said true heart so cute.

I was laughing so hard. Buttrescue definitely took the crown for funniest. All their faces were great too.

Well, that's all for now. Next week is Mother's Day! Make sure you express your love to your dear sweet mothers. You don't realize how much they do until you're out doing it on your own. 

Be very VERY grateful!

Happy Mother's Day, Mummy!

Here are some flowers for my mother.

Love you all!

Sister Molinari