Miki!

Going from left to right around the table: Cardon, Werner, Jacobs,
Hirschi, Bell, Adair, Kubota, Crandall, Chapman, Sugimoto, Burt,
Wilkes, and Law. Elder Mutzelburg was taking the picture.

皆さん、こんにちは！元気ですか？

I hope that everyone has been doing well! The weather has cooled down a bit here, and it actually rained a lot this morning.

I want to start off by telling you all about Frank. Frank would welcome us home every night. We usually had to throw rocks at him until he left so that we could get into our apartment. He stopped coming for a little while, but then he returned. "Frank's back!" We tried to take a video of him, but he wouldn't come out into the light. The next morning, we found him shriveled up and dead. Apparently Sister Chapman accidentally hit him with one of her rocks, and he passed away. I'll miss Frank.

On Friday I had the opportunity to eat lunch with one of my previous investigators. It was such a happy meeting, and she really glowed with the Light of Christ. I am so grateful that I was able to see her again. She has a baptism scheduled on the 23rd, and I really wanted to go, but doing so would make me miss church here in Kisarazu. I thought about it a lot, and I remembered a scripture in Ecclesiastes 2:18-19. Our stewardships will continually change. As missionaries, we transfer to new areas. When we transfer, we receive charge of a new area and new people. We are only in our areas for a short time, so we must do our best while we are there to leave it stronger than it was before. We must trust the missionaries coming after us to take care of the area and the investigators there. I realized that my stewardship is no longer in my previous area. I need to look after the sheep that the Lord has entrusted me here in Kisarazu, and how can I do that if I am not at church? I will truly miss being at my previous investigator's baptism, but just knowing that she is getting baptized is good enough for me. I will continually cherish my relationship with her.

We received five referrals last week, which is more than I'd ever received in the past. We visited with one lady, Takagi san, and she is going to come to the church on Wednesday for a tour! She doesn't know much about Christian churches, but apparently her husband dated a preacher's daughter before they got married, so she has some interest. I'm excited to see where things go. We went to visit another referral, and on the way, we suddenly started to hear this flute. It was really cool, and as we kept riding we could hear drums, too. We finally arrived at a festival! It seemed really fun, and the red lanterns made a really warm atmosphere. We tried taking photos and videos, but they don't really do the festival justice. It was way cool, and I'd love to be able to go to one sometime. My Mom's favorite holiday is coming up this week, so there are a lot of festivals right now.

I want to give a shout out to my sister, who just found out that she's going to have a baby girl in December! I love her and I am so excited for her family to grow even bigger! I know that she will be so blessed! I am grateful for families. Families are eternal!

Love, Crandall Shimai