Monday, January 11, 2016

New Year, No News

Konnichiwa Kazoku!

Wow, I feel like I haven't written you an email in forever. I am
really excited for things to start slowing down after the holidays and
for it all to go back to normal. It has been fun, but exhausting. I
will have P-Day today and then it will go back to Monday this coming
week, so you will get to hear from me again soon. I unfortunately
can't use the computer today, so I still can't send you pictures, I
have a LOT of pictures I want to send, but I can't today. I am sorry!

I was really surprised at the news about Kassidy. I haven't seen her
since we were little. That is really shocking isn't it? It's amazing
how quickly life goes. It can be here one second and gone the next.
There is always hope and peace in the fact that we can be together
again after the end of the test of this life.

The past few weeks have been crazy and I don't even know what to tell
you. We had our ward Christmas party and that was a lot of fun. The
young men put on this little play about what the different things mean
in Christmas. Like, what does the start mean, what does the tree mean
and so on. It was really funny. And the ward sang songs and we watched
the Nativity video. It went well. We had some of our Eikaiwa friends
come so it was a good time to introduce them to the real meaning of
Christmas!

Christmas Eve I tried to make it as much like home as possible. We had
the tree from Mom, some  lights from Jenny and we turned that on and
then watched the nativity before we went to bed. It was good. And I
put our "piles" with our stockings by the tree haha. It was kind of
funny but It was cute, I thought.

On Christmas, the best part was Skyping with you all! It really made
me so happy, I did get a little home sick, but it was fun to see you
all! I am so grateful for you smiles and love! After that we went
shopping a little then we went to Kagoshima and got to watch Frozen.
That was fun, and then we were invited over for Christmas dinner by
the Senior Couple who live in Kagoshima. They made us real ham and
mashed potatoes and gravy! It was seriously SO good. I love ham. That
was about it, and then we just went home, did our daily planning and
it was over! Back to missionary work.

New Years is a big deal here, it has been a little hard to get
appointments and people to listen but we are trying anyway! We met
with a few of our investigators this week, and they are all slowly but
surely progressing. I think the thing we are struggling with right now
is that sometimes I can't understand everything they are saying so I
have a hard time like taking their really long stories and wrapping it
around to the lesson topic so our lessons have been going too long
lately. Also I need to work harder so I can understand! But other than
that Dendo has been fine.

We had a funny experience this last week. We were knocking on
apartment doors. We knocked on this door and did our normal thing and
this guy was just like starting at us smiling and we like taught him
about prayer and he asked where we lived and we told him it wasn't too
far from where we were and we showed him where our church was on a map
and he was just smiling this whole time looking at us like we were
aliens and we were inviting him to church and as we were about to
leave he was like, "can I take your picture? I have never seen
foreigners here before." So I was like, yeah if we can take one too.
It was so weird but funny. We have weird experiences every day. Haha.

Today we are going to probably go see a shrine that is close to here,
and it should be decorated for New Years so we will see how that goes.
We are continuing to do our best. Sometimes our best doesn't seem like
a lot but it's our best and I know God knows that.

I hope you are all having fun and being happy! Do something fun! I love you!

Happy New Year!
Love, Raines Shimai

No comments:

Post a Comment