Week Nineteen.

Dear family and friends,

First, Dad! I received some emails from you this week on Thanksgiving day! Thank you!

Second, Mom! I have no idea what I want or need for Christmas honestly... Umm maybe some American cereal! Also, maybe a Christmas CD that I can listen to. And I forgot to bring that speaker you bought me because I thought it wasnt allowed but I guess it is! So you could send that too. Also, I dont really have sweaters. I bought some the other day, but if you could send some cardigans or long sleeve shirts that would be a nice gift! I really want pictures of my family so that would be the best gift of all! Thank you!

This last week was interesting. I dont remember if I said this in the last email or not, but that same family that doesnt like me and Sister Johnson now apparently doesnt like any of the sister missionaries in Aizu. They think that we are lazy, dont follow the rules, waste time, and dont work. So thats great. And the ward mission leader and the only ward missionary we have are from that family. This will be interesting!

Monday night or maybe it was Tuesday night, I dont remember, but I talked to Sister Johnson about how I was feeling about this whole mission thing and that seemed to help. I set a goal this week to be happy and for the most part I was! Its crazy though because on the good days that I had they were the same days that you talked about in your email mom about when you went to the temple and prayed for me and stuff. Thank you for your prayers.

So this week we had to go to Yamagata for Zone Meeting and because of it we had to cancel a lot of our appointments that we had set up. I wish people would tell us earlier when we have meetings, but they never do!!! Anyways, I like Zone Meeting because I like riding the bus because you can sleep :) And it is so fun to see everyone in our zone. Oh, on the way home from Zone Meeting a lady sat by me on the bus and I talked to her and she said that she has heard of our church before because she used to go to Eikaiwa in high school. Before she got off the bus I gave her a pass along card and my business card with our phone number on it. That was good!

Today we are going to Yamagata again because we have Zone Conference tomorrow. We are going to spend Pday in Sendai shopping (I dont plan on buying anything really though) and then we will stay at the Yamagata sisters apartment. Zone Conference is an all day thing and we get training from President and the APs. We have this cool Christmas skit planned for it too and my district has a fun skit for it. Lets just say that yes I wrote another Christmas rap, just like last year. It is sooo awesome. I wish I could like record it then send it home somehow but I cant with these computers. Sorry.

So unfortunately this week we lost 2 investigators pretty much. Urasawa san and Nobuko san. Nobuko san gave us our Book of Mormon back and said that she will never read it because it is bad and Urasawa san said she wont read it either because she doesnt even read the Bible. We tried giving a lesson last Wednesday but I swear the planned it so we couldnt teach. We taught the english part of the lesson and then when we were getting ready to teach the gospel part Nobuko san got up and left and Urasawa san went into the kitchen and started cooking for us. They just want to learn english is all. Sister Johnson and I went back the next day as a surprise with a plan to give Urasawa san a special Korean BOM that we ordered for her and we were going to invite her to church. Turns out she already has a Korean BOM and she tried giving it back. We said no keep it! If you dont want to read it then give it to your family or friends! And she said no. We didnt have an opportunity to invite her to church because she was kinda annoyed with us... next week might be our last lesson. They arent progressing.

We taught the Arai family! We taught them about Adam and Eve and Christ and Agency. It was a pretty good lesson I think. Since all these little kids are so young, they pretty much believe everything we teach them. We still teach that they should pray and ask to know for sure though. One of the kids named Iriya is 9 years old so we are hoping that he can get baptized! He came to church yesterday so that was awesome! I think he liked it. He came with his little sister Mari.

Our branch has a goal to see a baptism on Dec. 28 and so in order for that to happen, we need our investigators to come to church at least 3 times. So we cant miss a Sunday from here on out. It is stressful. At this point, Iriya is probably going to be the one, we hope! That family is really ready I think.

So yesterday was Fast Sunday and in order for us to meet our goals as a branch to see a baptism on the 28th and also we want to see 3 LA members reactivated, we said a special prayer after sacrament meeting. I knew that I was going to have to give this prayer so I practiced so much the night before and I wrote out this super awesome prayer and memorized it. But on Sunday morning Sister Johnson got sick so we didnt go to sacrament meeting (which sucks because we had an investigator there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and Sister Morita was going to give the prayer for me instead. So I didnt practice my prayer anymore! Well Sister Johnson got better and we went to church and made it just in time for the prayer so I was back on to say it! Well I was under pressure and forgot everything I memorized and pretty much said the prayer in English instead... it was embarrassing. Ugh I practiced so much! Why when I really need help with the langauge I can never remember anything!! Its so annoying.

It makes it even more difficult because I can really express my feelings and apologys in english super well, but not in Japanese so with the miscommunication and misunderstanding it makes it hard to connect with the Japanese people here. Hm, maybe I will get transferred... I dont know.

Anyways, I love you all lots and lots.

I am so grateful for the emails of encouragement! Really!

I am sorry to all those that dont receive a reply from me. I usually run out of time to reply back individually, but if you include your currently mailing address I can write a handwritten letter back to you!

Love, Miranda