Because I have been given much

Yesterday we were surprised when our ward mission leader, Brother
Shiki told us he was driving us up the mountain to eat at this super
delicous restaraunt. He eended up taking the kids on a hike while we
got to bond with his daughter. It was realllly fun. That's his car,
Jasmine behind us.

Hello!

Well, this week was fun/interesting on many levels. I hope you're
getting each week a little feel of what life is like out here in
Fukuoka, but I doubt my penmanship really conveys what its like here.

Well, lets see...we have been doing a LOT of finding recently because
we don't really have any investigators. With that comes suuuper long
days and tiredness but the plus is that we have many new friends and
contacts who might possibly become people we can start teaching.
Yesterday we were really excited to meet a woman named Ginger who is a
teacher at the International school here. We've been biking around
that area a lot where the foreigners are living so we've had more
opportunities to meet people from all over the world.

View of Fukuoka tower from my favorite spot in our area. <3

This week we started talking to this obaasan(grandma) and out of
nowhere she started singing at the top of her lungs! So, of course,
Sister Takabori and Kaneko and I whipped out our hymn books and sang
'Because I have been given much' for her. She loved it and said she
really wanted to come to church to sing with us! We also met two other
older women who immediately jumped at the invitation to come to
church, which is pretty unusual in my experience. Only one of them
ended up coming but it was really a miracle to have that all happen in
the span of just two days!

Driving around on Sunday with the Reelief Society president, Sakata
Shimai to visit all sorts of members and friends.

One really fun thing this week is that we went housing with this 10
year old named Yuai-chan who is the member of an inactive family. She
took us to the doors of some of her school friends and even went with
us to knock some random doors. It was so cute! I wish I would have
done that when I was ten (Not that I really would have gone...haha).

We made these at a member's house. There is a TV character here
named Anpanman, who is basically a superhero bread roll who fights
evil characters like bacteria and whatnot and the only way you can
kill him is by getting him wet, haha. I've never seen it but its super
popular here and sounds soooo weird and Japanes-y.

A cool experience I had while finding this week was I had marked a
copy of a Book of Mormon to give away with some scriptures I liked. I
ended up marking some verses in 3 Nephi about becoming as a little
child, and some others on that same topic and we just so happened to
run into this lady named Mitoma san who was a teacher for disabled
children and the scriptures I had marked were just what she needed to
read! I was so excited to give it to her and she was the one who
showed up for church on Sunday! The gospel is true!

Sorry this email is brief, but I gotta run. I love you all so much and
I really really feel your prayers out here. Sometimes at the end of a
long, hard day I think to myself, 'How in the world have I done this
every single day for the past 16 months!? I really can't comprehend
it, but I know it is because of all of your help, emails, prayers,
support, and mostly through the atonement of Christ. I love this
gospel and this work and I hope you all have a fabulous week!

Love, Tingey Shimai