Hey! Life is fabulous!

So remember my email last week how I was sort of

expressing feelings of sadness haha. Anyways this last week we found a

really awesome lady while housing! She talked with us for 45 minutes

in her door. We taught a really short restoration lesson and gave her

a Book of Mormon and she said that anytime we were close to come back

and we exchanged phone numbers. We asked her to read the Book of

Mormon and she asked us if there was a specific area we recommended

her to read and me and Muraoka shimai were like, oh uh yes we do haha.

That's the first time someone asked us for a reading recommendation

so it took a minute but then, thank you Spirit, I was like oh ya,

Moroni 10:3-5. That really awesome scripture with a really awesome

promise. So we read that with her and she was like, mm so desu ne.

Which is like agreeing with it. Then we went back yesterday and

visited her and we talked with her for an hour and a half haha. She

had actually read a couple pages of the Book of Mormon! Yes! She said

she didn't understand a lot of it and we're like well did you feel

anything as you were reading it? And she was like, no not really. I

was reading it while I was watching t.v.....uh haha. But hey God is

all powerful right? The Spirit can do amazing things and I believe it

can still touch her heart while she reads the Book of Mormon even if

the t.v. is on too. We're praying hard for her.

So that was the miracle of the week. A pretty big one. That was really

a testimony to me that if we work diligently and continue to exercise

our faith in the hardest times, when it feels like we aren't having

any success, that's when the blessings come. That's when we see the

miracles. I know that's not just for missionary work but for all of us

in every stage of our lives.

We also ate a lot of really yummy food with ward members. That was

great. Sorry this is a short email, we're busy today. This week is

Thanksgiving! Yay! Next transfer is Christmas! What?!

Love everyone and hope everyone is fabulous!!

Love,

Murray Shimai

BRRRR

So hope everyone is fabulous! Life in Hokkaido is still fun and cold.

We’ve started using the bus to go to and from Teine. The snow all melted and so now it’s just plain cold. It’s kind of a problem when we go to talk to people and our mouths are numb, haha. but this week was pretty much normal missionary life. We did A LOT of housing. We’re really struggling to find new investigators. When we go housing, people will interrupt us after we’ve only said where we’re from or sometimes we can even say the name of the church, but they’ll interrupt us and be like, “I’m not interested!” and then shut off the intercom. We’re really trying to work with members and encouraging them to invite friends or family to church or activities or to meet us. I know there are people prepared to hear the message of the gospel in Teine, we’re just having a bit of a hard time finding them. But we have met some really nice people and the members are way awesome and all the sisters are super excited about us being in Teine and want to do missionary work. I think as we continue to encourage them and as we try our hardest to find people, together will will be able to find people to teach the gospel to.

So I’m just going to get on my little soap box here for a sec and just say that everyone really is a missionary. The full-time missionaries really do need the members help. Knocking on doors for 4 or 5 hours a day is sort of fun and we meet some really interesting people, but it results in very few investigators. When members invite their friends to listen to the message of the gospel they are more likely to accept. Every member can do missionary work! We need your help!  Okay, I’ll get down now.

Anyways, so sorry I didn’t really have anything exciting to write about this week. A lot of walking. A lot of walking. A lady we stopped to talk to on the street at first was like, “Ya, I’m not interested.” But then she kind of leaned in and said “I do have a question about something.”  And we’re like, Oh yay, please ask! And she said, “I received this necklace from my grandma and it’s a figurine of Mary (I think that’s who it was, I don’t really remember.). But she was like, “I want to know what it means and stuff." We’re like, "uh….we don’t really know the meaning…" and she was like, "oh, okay". And then we were like, so….you don’t want to hear our message? haha and she was like, no. So that was a let down. But she was nice and maybe someday she will decide to learn more about the church.

While we haven’t found a solid investigator here in Teine, we have been able to share our testimonies countless times and introduce people to the church and the gospel. Every time we get to do that I feel so great and I just hope everyone of those people that say they aren’t invested or have a religion someday meet the missionaries again and choose to listen.

I hope everyone has a fabulous week! 
Love, Murray Shimai

SNOWWWWWW!! (For real)

Yay for lots of rain!

Hey everyone, it's snowing!!! It started this morning and it's been pretty constant throughout the morning. It's pretty darn chilly outside. So ya life is great. Last week we had stake conference, so yesterday was our first sunday in the Teine ward and it was awesome! The members are super nice. One of the members runs a cafe and invited us for dinner on Thursday night there. Then she brought us pudding to our apartment last night. The best pudding I have ever eaten in my entire life. That is not an exaggeration haha. 

Last week was pretty good. We had splits on Thursday night and Friday and that was fun. I was with a 2nd transfer bean and so I basically had to speak and understand everything.... that was a little scary but it was also fun to dendo with another gaijin. While we were out biking trying to find a house it was pouring and then it started hailing and it was super windy so that was a blast. Luckily it didn't last very long. Then the other day Muraoka shimai and I biked to one of the farthest places in our area to visit an O.I. (it took us 2 hours to bike to the house ;) ) and right away the man who answered the door was like "No, I'm not interested." That was a little disappointing but a lady across the street was outside working in her garden and so we went over and talked with her and she was super nice. That was fun but it gets better. So we're like super far from our apartment right, and my back bike tire decides to go flat. Ya. At first it wasn't horrible so I still rode for a ways because we had a ways to go to get home. Well pretty soon it was completely flat and there was a bump or something on the rim so I was riding, basically dragging the back wheel, riding on the rim and every few seconds "clunk, clunk, clunk..." haha. So we walked for quite a ways and then it was getting close to curfew so we rode for a little while and I clunk-clunked the whole way haha. That was a fun adventure. We're going to be using the bus soon though because of the snow. I guess it could have been worse timing. In happy good news, yesterday we met with a girl that we met on the street! She's so cool. We met her our first day working in Teine and she can't hear but she can read lips super good and she can speak really good. She's 22 I think and super nice and fun to talk with. Yesterday we talked a little about church and stuff but hopefully we'll be able to teach her more. We're still working on finding new investigators but on Tuesday we're going with the Elders to meet a few of their investigators and they'll probably pass them to us so that's exciting! With the snow coming we'll be able to do shovel dendo haha. Carry a shovel everywhere and shovel people's driveways for them and shovel anywhere. Should be fun. I'm excited! Snow!! 
Anyways hope everyone is fabulous! Love from Sapporo!Murray Shimai

This picture is the view from the balcony of our apartment

Let it snow let it snow let it snow!

We love eachother :-)

Okay it's not actually snowing here yet but I saw yuki mushi yesterday and one of the lady's we stopped and talked to on the street last week said it might snow this week!! Yay! Tanoshimi!! Oh oh ya I forgot, transfers were last week. So I got transferred! I'm in Teine now. It's still part of the Sapporo areas and it's an open area for sisters! Ya I'm opening another area but this time I don't have a senior companion to rely on which is a little scary. Oh ya and I'm follow-up training again and oh ya my companion is Japanese again haha. If my Japanese isn't improved after this transfer something is wrong. My companions name is Muraoka shimai and she's also from Okinawa! Ya! My Japanese is probably going to be a little abnormal :) 

 So we actually live in Kotoni with the Kotoni shimai and ride our bikes to the Teine area everyday which is fun. Teine is like at the base of mountains so it's basically a bunch of steep hills that people decided to live on. It's also super pretty. There's the mountains which are super pretty right now and then there's a lot of trees that are all red and orange so it's a really beautiful area to be in right now. 

Muraoka shimai actually speaks less english than Nagamine shimai which is a pretty big feat haha so that's fun. The Kotoni shimai are Hisakawa shimai (mtc doki!) and Johns shimai so when we're all home we like all automatically split to english people and Japanese people and talk like crazy haha. It's fun! Anyways life is great! Last week for P-day we hiked Maruyama yama which was totally fun and you could see all of Sapporo. Super fun! Hope everyone is fabulous!

Love,

Murray Shimai

My mom (trainer) went home :(

Hiking Maruyama yama

Transfer spot!

I love riding a bike in a skirt when it`s freezingggggggg haha

At the ward Halloween party

Hey World! 

First of all I didn't even know there was an earthquake until I read my emails this morning haha. I don't think we felt it. Hopefully everyone in Tokyo is safe. 

This past week was way fun. Two of the sisters came from Hakodate and we did splits with them for wednesday. Me and Johnson Shimai got to go to a yochien which is like a school that`s just for preschool and kindergarteners. We got to play with the kids outside and then we did activities with them in the classroom and ate lunch with them. It was really funny because when I was playing with a little girl outside she fell and her pants got dirty and when we went back inside she pulled some different pants out of her backpack, took her dirty ones off and put them in a plastic bag haha. She was like 4 years old. I was like ya you won't see that in America haha. Anyways it was way fun.

On saturday we hung out with two eikaiwa students all day at one of their houses and she taught us how to make really yummy bread. It was way fun. After that we had the ward halloween party. Chiba shimai teaches english to little kids and a bunch of them came to the party so it was way fun. She told her students to talk to me in english and they would just kind of look at me with big eyes and be like, water, or thirsty haha. (I was serving drinks) It was fun. 

Well sorry this is short we have to leave soon to go to Sapporo. We`re going hiking today! 

Murray Shimai

It's awkward taking pictures with elders

It poured like crazyyyyyy!!!

Chiba Shimai

Johnson shimai

Last full week of transfer 3!

Wo time is flying! I can't believe my third transfer is almost over!!! What the heck? It's getting really cold already haha. Nagamine Shimai is from Okinawa which is like the southern california of Japan. I don't know if she'll live through the winter haha. They have these bugs here called yuki mushi which means snow bug. A short time before it snows you'll see them, like a bunch of them and when your riding your bike they'll just hit you in the face and body haha. Everyday it's really cold we look for them and we think we saw them the other day but neither of us has seen them before so we're not sure if it was them or not. Anyways this past week we had zone conference which was way fun and super good. Evans shimai did a language workshop for the young missionaries and it was so helpful and made me feel okay about the language. Evans shimai is so awesome. We also learned about a new english program we're starting in addition to English Class. This new program is for families we find or friends of members, whoever. And the program is 30 minutes of english class and then 30 minutes of the gospel message. Super fun idea right? I'm really excited to find some families we can do it with. 

Yesterday one of our investigators came to church with her two little boys!! They didn't stay for Sacrament meeting which was a big bummer ( sacrament meeting is last hour) but they came and hopefully felt good and will want to come back. 

Other than that just a lot of housing and streeting and doing fun missionary stuff. We had ward FHE saturday night which was fun. At the moment I literally cannot remember what else happened haha. My brain is a little mushy these days. 

Well I hope everyone has a fantastic week!! Enjoy sunday! 

It`s getting cold here.....

From last week at the Honbu

Dear family and friends!

What amazingly uplifting and inspiring sessions of General Conference! We were able to watch all the sessions this saturday and sunday. I love Conference! It's such a blessing to hear from the Prophet, apostles and other church leaders. As I was sitting in the church building in Shinkotoni I had such an overwhelming feeling of gratitude that I am a member of this church. Just about every talk was about strengthening our faith and keeping our covenants and making choices that will keep us on the right path as the world moves farther and farther away from what is right. It's such a blessing to have the gospel principles and the guidance of our church leaders and the scriptures. Every day I meet people who when we ask if they have ever thought if there is God or where they came from, why they're here, they respond, I don't know, I've never thought about that before. It's the saddest thing to have people tell you that they don't know if God exists and they don't want to learn how they can know or that he has a purpose for them. If God doesn't exist, what is this life for? If I didn't have the knowledge of the Plan of Salvation, I would be so lost in this world. It is so important for everyone to share the gospel with friends and family. Everyone needs this gospel and the peace and happiness it brings with it. The most comfortable I ever feel when speaking Japanese is when I am sharing my testimony. I always feel so happy as I do so and am not concerned about if it's correct or not just that I am able to share with people that there is a way for them to find complete and lasting happiness. It's the best feeling in the world!

So as for this past week. I can't really remember at the moment what happened...but it was a good one. Lots of rain. That's always fun. We lost track of our bikes....again haha. We always park our bikes at a park and then go housing and stuff. Well the other day we parked our bikes at a park and then walked to an appointment and then did some housing. Well as usual we got a little lost and then of course it started to pour like no tomorrow and of course our umbrellas were in our bike baskets haha. So we got drenched walking around trying to find our bikes and we thought we found them but it was the wrong park. There are parks everywhere. We finally found them and it was all good. But ya that was exciting. 

So as senior companion I'm in charge of the cell-phone but the phone is like the scariest thing ever. Every time Nagamine shimai is in the shower or busy with something I'm like, "please don't ring, please don't ring" haha. Usually I'll give the phone to Nagamine shimai or start out talking and then give her the phone haha. But yesterday was a big day. I missed a call from one of our investigators while watching general conference and so after it was over I went to get Nagamine shimai to ask her if she could call her back but she was talking to someone and I don't know why but out of nowhere I just had this sudden burst of courage and called the investigator and totally did the whole phone call all by myself! Boo Ya!! Well and I'm sure the Spirit. 

Well I hope everyone is having a grand ol' time!! Life is fabulous!

Love,

Murray Shimai

Pretty sweet scenery