Sisters' Temple PDay

Dear Friends and Family,

We had a temple PDay on Tuesday, so our PDay schedule was kind of mixed up. Most sisters had time to email after the temple, but all of the new missionaries had a training that we missed at the beginning of the transfer. Instead of doing PDay on Monday, we had exchanges, so here we are on Wednesday finally emailing.

The temple was so wonderful! It was so natsukashii (nostalgic) to go since I haven't been in several weeks. I feel so blessed to be on a mission where we can go every transfer! We were running late, so in my haste I didn't even see the temple until we were right next to it! It's really tall, and it was hard to take pictures of it. The inside really reminded me of the Provo Temple, except for the cool Japanese style art pieces. The temple is definitely the best.

Last week, before Eikaiwa, I prayed that someone new would come that we could teach. I was a little disappointed when no one new came, but our investigator named Mizuki did come back from Sendai, so we visited with her afterwards. The contrast between when she left and when she came back was so stark! She suddenly had a bunch of kyoumi (interest) and actually treated us as missionaries (instead of just friends). She said that while in Sendai, she thought a lot about the church, and she said that she always feels something different when she talks to the missionaries. We invited her to be baptized, and she said that if she feels this is true, then she will be baptized! We want to set up a date tonight. Although no one new came to Eikaiwa, teaching Mizuki is like starting all over with good expectations. It truly is interesting how the Lord works.

We had to drop an investigator on Friday, which was really hard. But, when we got home, we got a call from the elders about a girl who is super interested in learning more about the church. The Lord immediately filled that hole in our hearts. It was such a tender mercy. The girl, Hibiki, came to Conference on Saturday! I think she was a little confused (and she was worried that there were no nihonjin in the ward here), but she still really liked it. We look forward to working with her more.

Speaking of Conference... It was so good! There were so many talks about marriage and family. I feel like the focus is coming off of missionary work and more onto preparing for future family life – at least, that's what a current missionary/future mother heard. The talks were all so inspiring. I especially liked President Packer's talk. He was so straightforward. I think some other themes from Conference that stood out to me were the importance of covenants, maturity, and the importance of actions over words (that last one is what Mizuki learned when she came to Conference). I love Conference! I am so grateful that we have living prophets and continuing revelation from God. I am grateful that the Conference talks are already online (in English, at least) so that I can go back and study.

I'm starting to get better at finding. Talking to strangers has always been difficult for me, but I know that the Lord is strengthening me. I handed out three Books of Mormon in the last two days, the only ones I've ever handed out before! And one of them was to a gaijin named Ed (Eigo dendou is super hard. I prefer Japanese)! I still struggle with train dendou, but I talked to a lady who we found out was baptized a long time ago but had fallen away when she became busy. We challenged her to go home and pray with her family. It's super cool to see all the tender mercies of the Lord.

Those are about all of the highlights for this week. Well, besides the exotic food I've been eating... I've had a bunch of mushrooms, and I'm able to eat tomatoes now (yay!). Last night the Watanabe family fed us takoyaki... It was my first time eating octopus, and it wasn't too bad. It was super chewy.

I love you all! Keep studying Conference!

Love, Crandall Shimai