Short Letter.....sorry!

26 May 2014 Oyumino Chiba

Usually today we would have receives transfer calls. But, due to the two-mission conference we had this week end, we will have transfers next week! I have no idea what is going to happen! Ah!

We have a new investigator!!! She is awesome. She just wants to learn everything and her biggest goal in life is...well second biggest goal is to become more spiritual. Her first goal is to work as a volunteer.

Our first lesson we talked about soooo much. We would just hop from topic to topic. She just had so many questions. It was great, I was a little afraid we were gonna overload her but she couldn't wait for the
next lesson. And we had one the next day!

We had invited her to pray the day before so we asked her if she had and how it felt. She said she felt peaceful, she loved it. She also told us that she didn't say amen. Thank you seemed more polite to her.
Next time, she will hopefully be using amen though... We also gave her a Book of Mormon. We had read out of it and were telling her how much we loved it when she asked "can I get this at a book store?" We told her probably not. She seemed pretty disappointed until we told her she could have the one we'd been reading out of. She was soooo excited and so grateful for it.

She is really amazing. She was an alcoholic but went through a program and hasn't touched it since! Teaching her is amazing too. Gift of tongues is real! I have the ability to understand everything she asks
and can answer most of it. It is soo exciting. I can't wait to teach her again this week.

Funny story of the week: we wanted to show our new investigator the restoration video (it's about Joseph smith) but it isn't on gospel library in Japanese for some reason. So we called a church member to see if we could borrow it. We could! We went over to pick it up and as we were leaving sister Hubner says in Japanese what translated into "probably, once we are done watching it we will give it to our investigator".

The member just looked at her shocked and then said "so desu ne..." I was shocked too! I couldn't believe she had just said that! And so I looked at her and Kobayashi Kyodai looked at her and them she realized what she had said and said oh no! That's not what I meant! And I said sorry Kobayashi Kyodai we are just gonna give your CD away! And he starts laughing really hard. I've never seen him laugh so hard. We said goodbye. He was still laughing as he walked back into his house. And I was still laughing as we rode away. It was soooo funny.

I left my mission this week! We traveled into Tokyo south mission. It was a long train ride. But totally worth it! I got to see my dear Dopp shimai and everyone else from my MTC district. It was a joyful reunion.

And of course the conference was amazing too!

A few missionaries were selected to sing a special musical number at the conference. I was one of them! That was really special! And then...oh actually before that we got to shake hands with Elder Cook, Elder Maynes, Elder whiting and their sweethearts. Then after that we sang and then we got to hear from all 6 of them. Elder Cook started by saying that as general authorities and area presidencies they have to travel a lot. They have a lot of assignments and duties. But when it comes to missionaries he said "visiting missionaries is like dessert". That was very sweet of him to say. And you could tell he truly meant it.

Ok here were my favorite parts:

Elder Whiting: Talked about 2 Nephi 25:17 and said sometimes, as missionaries, we are so focused on the work we forget about the wonder. We need to "rejoice in the wonder."

Sister Maynes: my favorite part of her talk was when she said "the work is demanding but the impact is everlasting. "

Elder Maynes: Was amazing! I loved everything he said. The message was that we need to focus on the one. Because we don't know the impact the one will have.

Elder Cook: Said a lot of great things. And quite a bit of his talk was a repeat from what I had heard in the MTC. I even flipped back in my notes to make sure I wasn't imagining it. But, the crazy thing was completely different things stood out to me this time! What I took out of it this time was that things will happen in the future that you need to be here, now, in order for them to happen. What we do here is directly affected to what will happen in the future. Wow!

Gosh, I don't really have a lot of time. And we had a lot of fun things this week.... We had a music festival and an international night. We met a lot of great people and this upcoming week is going to be sooo busy. It's full of lessons! Yay!

I'm so grateful for this gospel. It has blessed my life in so many ways and now I get to watch it bless others. It's amazing! I know Heavenly Father loves each of us and, whether we see it or not, has a big hand in each of our lives. He cares for each of us individually. And knows us and our needs, hopes and desires.

We are so lucky!

Here are a couple of turtles we saw sunbathing.

If you look closely, here are some cute ducklings we saw this week.

Ok, maybe I'll send a better letter next week! Sorry!

Love, Sister Molinari