Week Forty-five.

Whoa. 8 months left on June 6th. I was reading through my journal and I read an entry from when I first got to Japan and I wrote in big letters ONLY 16 MONTHS LEFT! I never ever ever thought I would make it to this point! But the difference from then and now is that I am actually happy and enjoying my mission now! Yay!

So this last week we had a few fun things happen! We started Akita`s first Chinese Conversation Class! Since we have 3 Chinese speakers in our district and lots of people we`ve talked to have shown interest in learning Chinese we thought we would give it a go and see what kind of students we can get to come and fellowship with and hopefully teach! It was pretty fun and we had 4 students come! Hitoshi san(investigator), Rio chan(member), Natsuko chan(potential investigator, and Nene chan(potential investigator). Pretty good for the first time! We will do the class every Tuesday evening from here on out as long as we have Chinese speakers!

On Saturday I had another adventure with Hitoshi san! All the missionaries, Natsuko chan, and Justin (from the Philippians) went with Hitoshi san to the ocean and we went fishing! As me and Sister Luk were leaving our apartment to catch the train to the ocean I said to her, "Are we on a mission right now?" She just laughed and said "I know right. We have too much fun to be on a mission." But its true! Ive been fishing, been to a Cat Cafe, every month we play basketball, we have Chinese and English classes, Ive been to the zoo twice, bowling an infinity amount of times... the list goes on. So fun!! And a really good dendo tool to make relationships and find people!
Anyways, we were all fishing in the ocean and Elder Nishiie, Sister Luk, and Justin all caught fish but only them. Last night we cooked the fish and this time they WERENT carp OR poisonous and they were really yummy! But they had a ton of bones. Sister Morgan taught me how to gut a fish and so I so very gracefully cut a fish in our kitchen sink. It was a really fun adventure and we were able to not only build relationships with our investigator and potential investigators, but we were also able to talk to a lot of people that were walking by us wondering what we were fishing for and fishing with and things like that. Plus its pretty strange to see Americans fishing in the ocean... people were curious! But how cool is that? Never in my life did I ever think Id get the chance to go fishing in Japan in the ocean. So awesome.

This last week we also went on a big Less Active hunting activity. We went to a different city still in our area to go find all these LAs that havent been visited in forever. We werent able to find any of the LAs but I did find a few things that reminded me of dad! Check out the pictures I took!

Here is the funny of the week. In Primary yesterday the lesson was on the 10 Commandments and so I was helping the 2 Tongan boys that speak English and translating what the primary teacher was saying. I told the 2 boys that it was bad to have idols or statues and worship them and so they started talking about all the statues they knew. One of the boys, Jacob, said "Oh like the Statue of Liberty! We shouldnt worship that because its not real." And I said, "Yes only worship God, not the Statue of Liberty." And then he said, "Is the Statue of Liberty holding the Book of Mormon?" And I started laughing and said, "No I dont think the Statue of Liberty is holding a Book of Mormon, but it would be good if she was huh!" It was so so so funny. So cute!

So now I have a new mission goal. I want to convert the world to a point where we are all in a consensus to alter the Statue of Liberty and have her be holding a Book of Mormon. Whos with me?!

Love you all!
Love Miranda

Fishing!

Japanese sunset

Me and my best friend Natsuko chan fishing away like good friends do.