Week Fifty-six.

Hey

Whoa dad you are in Kuwait! And it is sooo hot there! I complain when it is 28 C or higher but it is 50 C in Kuwait!? Youll die! Be careful! Thats pretty interesting that they have the Sabbath on Fridays. Youll have to tell me how that goes... what do they speak in Kuwait? You should tell me about the LDS population there.

Mommy! Kimonos are suuuuper expensive. Like 500.00 dollars. But yukatas which are the summer version are like 30.00 or 40.00 bucks. What do you think? I havent really thought about buying one or anything... should I? Do you want me to?
It sounds like you will be having fun on your little Idaho vacation, mom. Do you plan on going to Idaho Falls at all to the sage creek ward? Oh hey, when you are in Pocatello you can visit all my friends! I hear school is starting up there now.

So here is the transfer information! I am staying in Ishinomaki with Sister Kanno, but Sister Alcazar is transferring to Odate which is over by Akita kinda! Elder Simonsen is becoming our new district leader and his companion Elder Aono is transferring to Yokote which is over by Akita. Elder Simonsen is also becoming a trainer to a new bean named Elder Wadsworth! Elder Kobayashis mission is over so he is going back to Hokkaido and Elder Hill is staying in Ishinomaki and his new companion will be Elder Akagi who is a half but only speaks English ha ha. We were in the same zone when I was in Akita and he seems like a pretty shy person. Our district is going to be soooo different.

Well here is the big news of the week! We got ourselves a new investigator! Her name is M san. She is the older sister of a member named Sister Kikuchi and she has known the missionaries forever and ever and we have all just been waiting to know when she would finally be ready to hear the lessons and her time is finally here! We taught her a short message about the Plan of Salvation and she really liked it I think. She had questions about if God really exists or not but she also told us that she always prays before eating food with her sister and sometimes when she is by herself she prays in her heart. That is so amazing for a Japanese person. They usually have a hard time praying because usually they have something they pray to like a shrine or a picture of an ancestor or something but as you know, we dont pray to things.. we rely on our faith that God is there and he hears us. That is a very hard concept for Japanese people so it is amazing that M san prays! I love her so so so much already. I want her to be the baptism I see before I go home from my mission.

We had splits this week and I got to go on a split with Sister Orr my MTC companion! It was like we never stopped being companions so that was cool. We talked and talked just like we used to in the MTC. It was great. On our split we went to a kids center and played American games with them. We played mafia and spoons. Those kids are pretty good at taking spoons and they can really put up a good argument in mafia! Its crazy that I was playing that game in Japanese. So weird. I never thought Id be doing that.

We really worked hard this last week and visited a lot of people. We have a lot of potential investigators lined up right now and me and Kanno Shimai made a pretty legit plan for this next week to visit everyone and start teaching more lessons every week. It is a rule to pass our boy investigators to the elders so we really really need some new girl investigators or some families over here!

Umm what else... oh we had a super awesome district meeting recently. Elder Aono gave this great training on the kind of missionaries we should be and the kind of dendo we should be doing. Ishinomaki really focuses on the way Jesus Christ dendoed and we try to mirror that. Christ was a servant to others. Even at his very last meal, instead of hanging out and chatting with his friends and enjoying his last moments with his friends, he was up cleaning dishes and serving food. Sometimes it is easy to want to only talk to the other missionaries but we have to remember that we arent here to sit back and have a dandy ol time with our friends, we need to be talking to others and helping others and activities and things like that. We made a name for our district and it is SHIMOBE (shee-mo-bey) and that is SERVANT in Japanese. I really tried applying that this last week at one of our events and the difference was incredible. I was so so so pooped after that night but my love really grew for Ishinomaki. I definitely can see this area becoming my favorite. I already have grown to love it so much in just these last 6 weeks. I hope I can end my mission here but Smith Kaicho seems to really like transfers and he goes a little transfer crazy sometimes.

Oh this week we went to the ocean with an investigator and picked up snails or shellfish or something off the rocks and then ate them. They were pretty good actually! I will attach a picture.

We also went to the GANBARO ISHINOMAKI place again as a district. This last week in Japan was a holiday called Obon which is kinda like Memorial Day. Everyone gets together with their family and goes and visits the graves of their ancestors or family members that have passed away. So because it was Obon, we first went and looked at the remains of the tsunami at the Ganbaro Ishinomaki place and then we rode our bikes to the ocean and sang hymns together and then we prayed together as a district and individually for all those that passed away in the tsunami that they would accept the gospel in the after life. It was a really cool bonding experience and a spiritually uplifting time.

Oh today we did hand massages again and I was talking to one of the ladies there that was also volunteering and we had a whole conversation about my family and dads work and him being in Kuwait and then we talked about her mission and my mission and also about I pads and how those are gonna work when we get them. I understood everything she said to me and she told me that my Japanese is waaay good. She was like, "whoa. you can have a fluent conversation with me and understand everything and have no problems speaking! You are way good at Japanese!" It made me SUUUUPPPPERRRR happy. It really helps to have a japanese companion Ive noticed! I wanna get way good these next 6 months at this language but our district is turning into an american district besides sister Kanno so I really gotta work hard and not retreat to English! So theres that bit of news for ya.

Love you all so very much! I hit 13 months on my mission yesterday, wowee! After 5.5 months I will be home and I am for sure that it will be Feb mom. Feb 6th!

Love Sister Miranda Robertson