Wildflower Thoughts : Week Sixty-three.

Hello.

Here is a weather update! It is FREEZING. And it is RAINY. I guess it is a typhoon today or something so it makes getting around a little bit harder. My bike is sooo heavy and hard to ride sometimes especially in the rain. I already fell off of it once today when trying to dismount ha ha. Good thing I was wearing rain clothes.

So Yamagata is pretty good though! Lots of mountains... the name Yamagata actually means "lots of mountains" so yeah ha. The view outside my 5TH FLOOR APARTMENT room is way pretty. There is a giant mountain covered in trees! I cant wait for the leaves to change. The ward (yes I am in a ward! My first one on my mission!) is way great! But I havent actually met anyone yet... on Sunday we went to Fukushima for church, which means I probably have some serious radioactive poisoning or something, but it was nice to meet all the Fukushima members. They dont have missionaries in their area of course so when the missionaries come, they are so happy and so nice!

I came to a way great area where the missionary work is on fire though. We have like 8 investigators and 2 or 3 of them are telling us they wanna get baptized so that is pretty AWESOME. One of our investigators, H san, is deaf... so now I have the challenge of learning Shuwa (Japanese Sign Language) on my own with no resources! My prayers now consist of "please give me the gift of tongues and the gift of... hands?" She is a way nice lady though. When we want to communicate we just write it down on a piece of paper and talk that way. But even writing in Japanese characters and reading it is sometimes difficult so it has already been kind of overwhelming and frustrating for me. But hey, the spirit can teach and be present no matter what language you are speaking or signing!
We have another investigator that is 17 and she is Korean but fluent in Japanese. Her name is K chan. I have only met her once but she is really cute! Her and Matsumoto Shimai have everything in common. Me and K chan dont have anything in common... but that is okay. She is one of the investigators that wants to get baptized but it is looking like it might be a challenge to get permission from her parents.

We taught a lesson to our other investigator, K san. She is a young mother with two of the cutest little kids I have ever seen. She was pretty busy with her kids and so we only taught a short message in her entryway. She seems to have real interest so that is awesome! She likes English too so good thing I transferred here!

We get to watch conference next week. Thats cool that they are letting people speak in their native languages! Is this going to be a new thing they do every time? I am excited to watch conference for sure :)

My older sisters kid is 3 years old now! Ahhh time is going by so fast isnt it. Sometimes I wanna get home fast, but other times I am a little bit scared to get back into real life. It is nice not having a real job ha ha and only having this one thing to do. But I still have 4 months left which sometimes feels really short and sometimes reallllly long. But in the end it is still just 4 months. I will do what I can with the time I am given!

Oh by the way, I got your package in the mail this week! Thanks so much! I am going to have to lose some weight before I can wear the skirt ha ha.. I cant get it on... but it is still way cute! I am working hard on my diet but it is impossible when I have to just eat what everyone else is eating in the apartment and at the same time when everyone else is eating because thats just how it goes. Hmmm at least I have a whole summer before I go back to school to get running and stuff again. Yeaaahhh!

Love you all so much!
Love Miranda

During transfers all of the Morita family was able to get together! From Right to left... Sister Morita (mother) Sister Luk (1st child) Me (2nd child) Sister Kanno (3rd child) Sister Arashiyama (4th child)