Another great week in Hokkaido!

Today is sunny and kind of warm. It's wonderful! This last week we weren't able to see any investigators because everyone was busy :( But we were able to talk to them on the phone so that was good. We did a lot of housing,... a lot. Talked with a lot of people. That was fun. We met a couple really awesome ladies on the street who were really interested in the gospel message but they said they're really busy, and we tried but we couldn't make an appointment with them. That was a bummer deal. But hopefully they will meet the missionaries again and take the opportunity to listen to the message.

This past week was pretty calm, nothing to exciting. I fell several times as usual haha. It's getting really slushy and wet now which is kind of a bummer and a whole nother kind of slippery.

We had a lot of member meals so I still have a little bit of a food hangover today haha. We got a new ward mission leader yesterday and he is like my favorite person. He is so cool and his wife was called as a ward missionary! They're so awesome. They served as Tokyo temple missionaries last year. I"m excited! Things are going great!! Sorry not much new stuff to tell.

Hope everyone has a fabulous week!

Love,

Murray Shimai

p.s. Oh I just remembered something that happened. Went to a bar called dee dees, for a private concert by some members in the Shinkotoni ward and taught a member lesson there. Nothing too exciting :)

p.p.s. This message is for Ashley Anderson... so everyone else can disregard. Anyways my mom told me she saw you at Taylor's wedding reception and I was so happy! Sorry this is the only way I know how to send you a message, so I hope you read this....anyways I hope you're doing great! We're long overdue for a hangout session! Hope you have a fabulous day!

Transfer 7!

It's March! What?!!

And it's just as cold as ever haha. But the news of the Transfer is...I'm staying in Teine!  4th Transfer. But I have a new companion. Sister Johnson. She's from Spanish Fork, Utah. She is way fun and we have tons of stuff in common which is fun. She's on transfer 5. I'm actually pretty excited about working in Teine for another transfer. 

At the beginning of last week we met this really awesome young mom while out housing. She was way friendly and listened and talked with us for a little bit and she said we can come back! Yay! I'm excited to meet with her again and she also said she will try and come to church so that's awesome.

Then yesterday Evans Kaicho and shimai had a speaking assignment in our ward so they came to our ward yesterday. And at the Otaru ward christmas party Evans shimai met this mom that lives in Teine and she invited her to church but she never made it. So Since Evans shimai was coming to our ward she called the mom and invited her again and she came part way through Gospel Principles and she brought her youngest daughter with her! She is way awesome! And she wants to come to church again! And her daughter is nine and she loves basketball! How awesome is that! We played a little shoe basketball after sacrament meeting haha. But she wants to come to sports night on Saturday so that should be fun. They're great. And interested in Eikaiwa! Great week.

Life is great. And the music firesides are over so we have real p-day's now! Happy day haha. Hope everyone has a fabulous week!

Love,

Murray Shimai

Each Sunday people bring food to church and put it in a basket or container for the missionaries. We call it our "fruits basket" and it's basically great! We found these in our fruits basket on Sunday. I never thought I could be so excited about a box of mac and cheese and pop tarts!

Riding the bus for transfers.

This week marks beginning of transfer 7!

Lunch with our grandpa friend!

Ohayo Gozaimasu!

What a fabulous week! We met with our grandpa friend and had lunch with him and another ward member. It was really interesting haha. But we talked english the whole time so that was fun. And get this, okay so this guy is in the Teine Men's Cooking Club right? There's 9 members out of the whole city of Teine and we found out that another member of that club is a member of the Teine ward! Whoa. So crazy. So hopefully we'll be able to do some good team ups there.

It was pretty warm this past week. I actually went one day with only wearing a thick sweater. I felt so light and free haha. But then today we woke up and it was snowing again. Because it was sunny for several days the sidewalks are super icy. There's been some really close calls haha. I'm not sure how I didn't fall a few times.

We had our other musical fireside on Saturday night! It was so much fun and the spirit during some of the songs was crazy! The whole concert will be on youtube so you all should check it out because it's

awesome! And Nanjo shimai and Honda shimai came! Nanjo shimai was my trainer and Honda shimai was sister training leader for my first 3 transfers! It was the best surprise ever! But also super weird to see them in normal people clothes haha.

It was a great week!

Love you all!

Murray Shimai

Music fireside

Some members of the Teine ward

THE Miracle Week

Hello Hello Hello!

Wow. This past week I'll just call THE miracle week. Seriously I still can't believe all the miracles that happened. Okay so I'll start with the first one. It was monday and we still had some p-day time so we went to EON (huge shopping center) to try to find some stuff for Kapeliela Shimai. We got there later than we had planned so we were hurrying and we walked in the doors and had walked just like a minute and we saw an old investigator! We knew she worked in an EON but we didn't know which one and Mondays are always her break day so that was an even bigger surprise! We all did like a triple take as we walked by each other and then we stopped and we were actually able to talk with her for a little bit before she had to go back to work. It was so crazy. EONS are huge. Like 3 stories tall and tons of different entrances so it's amazing we ran into her.

Next miracle. We were housing on Tuesday night and we had planned to visit a less active member who was on the ward list and so we got to an area near the less active and I was like okay lets go and we started walking to go to their house but after I took a couple steps I got this feeling and had a thought that we should just stay in the area we already were and just do housing. So I asked Kapeliela shimai if she was okay with that and she said ya and so we went about housing. About the 4th house we knocked at this really nice grandpa answered the door and we talked with him for a little bit and then out of nowhere he started speaking fluent english! I'm pretty sure our mouth's both fell open haha. But anyways he invited us in because he wanted to talk with us some more but he was the only one home so we just talked in the doorway for a long time. He told us that he had gone on a tour of America in 1970 with a few other english teachers (he's a retired english teacher) and he remembered visiting Temple Square! What? haha. But ya and he told us to come back whenever we want and right now his wife is in the hospital from a sudden illness but he invited us to come over for a dinner when she gets home! He's a member of the Teine Men's Cooking Club haha. But ya so that was an incredible miracle!

Next. Saturday morning we're doing personal study and the phone rings. I answer it and it's a lady from the area book that I had called and invited to the musical fireside. And before I finish this part let me tell you that we had actually met her at a members cafe. We were eating and she was there and so we talked with her for a while but we never learned her name so I had no idea it was her that I called.

Anyways she called us on Saturday and said thank you for inviting her to the fireside and that she had a great time talking with us in the cafe and that she had a really good feeling then. And then she said that she still has a Book of Mormon from previous missionaries and she wants us to come starting in March and teach her more about it! Okay. Wow. If any of you don't know--- this gospel is true and God truly guides this work. The spirit truly softens hearts and people CAN change. I feel so blessed to be a part of this work and see the Lord working miracles in people's lives!

Love you all!

Murray Shimai

Yay! Another fabulous week! We had Ongaku no Yube on Saturday night! a.k.a. musical fireside. We've been practicing for it forever, like every p-day and stuff and we finally had the first concert. It was so much fun and all the songs sounded so awesome! Can't wait to do it again in March!

Mission life is still going. We met this really awesome young mom on the street who was super interested in English Class and will probably come this week so I'm excited! We also visited our new friend we met housing and she made us curry. It was kind of awkward because we got to her house and there were two plates on the table and her and her husband are like, please sit down. And then they fed us and we ate at the table while they sat and read the newspaper and every now and then I asked a question because I felt extremely awkward haha. But they're super nice and like, world travelers. Super awesome. And they invited us to go eat sushi with them next time. So that's great. The problem

is teaching is a little bit of a challenge but they ask us tons of questions about mission life and about church so we're able to teach through their questions. We're working on them and praying really hard

that their hearts will soften more to the gospel.

We also met with the elders investigator again. The mom and her two kids. It was so much fun. We played a lot and taught some english and talked about church and it was a great time.

It's snowed quite a bit this past week and been pretty windy so even when it's not snowing the wind blows all the loose snow around and up your nose and down your neck haha. It's great and people are really nice to us when we go housing. People on the streets usually aren't very happy when we try to stop and talk to them haha. 

Love you all!

Murray Shimai

This is the view from our apartment.

The snow looks pretty nasty in some places haha

The weather can feel a bit like being in Siberia sometimes....brrr, brrr.

Yuki Matsuri!!! (Snow Festival)

Yes, all the buildings are made entirely of snow...

Hey everyone!

It was a fabulous week! More snow and a little blizzardy but super fun. We had a big zone conference. We had it with 2 other zones because the doctors from Tokyo came to give us some health and stress workshops and stuff. It was really good. And we got to go to the Snow Festival! It is so awesome. Like it's not just a bunch of sculptures, I mean there are a bunch of sculptures but there's also really awesome stuff. And there are a ton of Gaijin (Foreign, non-Japanese people) there. It was a little weird haha.

We met a really awesome lady on the street the other day who was really friendly and said that she thinks about God every day and is interested in learning more about him but she's really busy right now. Unfortunately we couldn't get her contact information but we told her about English Class because she's also interested in English and she said she'll try to come so I really hope we'll be able to meet her again. We also got a new investigator. She's one of those investigators who isn't really strongly interested in the gospel but she wants to be our friend and wants to feed us. Little steps though,

little steps.

Kapeliela shimai is sick and her throat is pretty nasty. I know because I've looked at it several times. So that's been a bummer, especially because we  have the musical fireside this saturday. Which by the way is going to be so good. You should all be excited to hear the cd in the future. We do the concert twice so it's going to be fun. We've had music practice like crazy. There is no messing around about music with Evans shimai (the Mission President's wife). We have practice schedules for P-day. It's great haha.

But this week was pretty awesome.  Fun times.

Love,

Murray Shimai

When you're sick in Japan you wear a mask. You just do. And I'm wearing one because I don't want to get sick. When you go outside it looks like a bunch of people prepared to do surgery 

are walking around.

We call this one the Tree of Life

Snow Festival and Zone Conference

We love snow!

Hello Everyone!

This week is going to be so awesome. We have a huge zone conference with two other zones because the doctor is coming from Tokyo to check up on everyone and give a health workshop and fun stuff like that, and then in the evening after that we all get to go to the snow festival. So stay tuned for that next week.

This past week was awesome and exciting. So if anyone remembers my first area where I was trained was Kitami. And it was also Kapeliela Shimai's bean area so we always talk about how great it was and how we love the people and stuff. Well this last week we got to go back!! The sister training leaders called us the week before and asked if we wanted to go with them to Kitami to do splits! So that was a crazy awesome unexpected surprise! And it was way awesome because I got to visit a family in the ward and I was actually able to talk and have a conversation with them! It was so much fun. Yippee!

On monday was the FHE at the mission home and Kapeliela shimai and I were asked to give the spiritual message. That was a little nerve wracking. I was really nervous and I forgot about the scripture I wanted to share and so after we said amen I saw the Book of Mormon and was like , oh everyone later read 1 Nephi 17:13, it's a really great scripture! haha and then President Evans was like, well do you want to read it right now, and so I asked someone's investigator to read it. So I guess it turned out ok haha. Good stuff. But it was really fun. We did a tatoe where we started off with all the lights off and talked about how sometimes our life seems dark and we can't see where we should go or what our purpose is. But God loves us all so he provided a way for us to see and to have light in our life. Then we turned a flashlight on a picture of Jesus Christ and talked about him and stuff. Then we sang Teach me to Walk in the Light and Kapeliela shimai played the ukelele so I think it went pretty well. It was really fun.

But life is going pretty great. It's still cold and snowy. February is actually the coldest month of the year as everyone we talk with informs us haha. So we have that to look forward to. Good thing February is also the shortest month :D.

Hope everyone is doing awesome!! Hope the superbowl left everyone in good spirits! ......sorry if it ended differently and this is a tender subject.....:)

Love,

Murray Shimai

Riding the bus for 6 hours home from Kitami. It's normally a 5 hour drive but it was really snowy....

This is looking out the window of the bus.

Again, 6 hours on a bus, haha.

On splits in Kitami