Hello there mother!
Wow I have officially been away from home for 366 days! That's so weird. It's been the best experience for my life already and I can't wait to see how God will continue to change my life. I love it!
This week was full of evacuation map creating! We have dendo quite a bit this week. So my companions right now are Elder Hattanda from Hokkaido Japan, and Elder Uemura from Shiga Japan. We have made it our goal to dendo from after dinner till 9. Sometimes we have a lot of office work but we decided to show our faith a little more, work a bit harder, and get everything finished between lunch and dinner. We haven't found any investigators yet but it feels so nice to be out talking to people more. If I can master balancing office work with dendo I think it will help me balance my family and work. But family is the most important so I want to spend as much time as possible with my family.
So ya the typhoon was coming in HOT. I was taking daily pictures of the weather maps and watching the progress of it. I was sure it would slam us hard. Then at like the last minute it went right past us and hit Hokkaido instead. I was kind of bummed because it was seriously supposed to be so big. The whole storm in itself was about the size of Honshu (the main island) where I am.
Ya it's been getting so much cooler here to! I love it! Elder Hattanda told me this is exactly what if feels like in Hokkaido. I really want to go to Hokkaido someday. Cold winters and just mildly warm summers and tons of nature. I want to see Sapporo temple so bad!
That's good for Tripp to have friends. I can totally see how it is so so important to make sure your child's friends are good examples. I hope Krue doesn't feel left out. I kind of liked it better knowing they just had each other haha! They are so precious to me. Jared sent me a video of him playing the ukulele and all in a sudden Krue jumped in front of the camera and was dancing all cute. I loved it.
Oh wow I was actually thinking Willow was already in Korea! Haha. I'm so excited for them all to have this awesome experience I have right now. They will all be so great. I'm so glad to have such awesome friends!
That's so crazy about Drew! I just got a letter yesterday and I opened it and I saw Drew and Deonna. I am so happy for them! I knew they had dated before the mission but I didn't know they were engaged let alone already married! That's so awesome! There is that video I watched before my mission with Drew in it on his first day in the MTC that I could only watch once. I've been trying to play it again for like a year now and I just found it in Elder Rose's account! I was able to show him how young Drew used to look and how much more grown up he looks now! I think that's about 6 or 7 of my friends who have now gotten married since I've been gone! Who's next?
So this week has been a pretty normal week. There was all the anticipation for the typhoon and then it just never came so that was kind of a bummer but the mission was on lock down again!
I have found I can memorize Japanese scriptures much easier than I can in English. It was so weird! I read one verse in English, then I read the same verse In Japanese and I memorized it almost instantly!
Last Sunday we were all just sitting there in sacrament meeting and everything and the stake president was there but nobody thought anything of it. Alls of a suddenly ;) they released the bishop and called president Wada's old first counselor to be bishop! His name is Bishop Stevenson. He served in Sendai and married a Japanese woman and has lived in Japan for like 30 years or so. He is amazing. I can't wait t see how this ward will change. I haven't had a single dinner appointment since I've come to Kichijoji and he came up to me after sacrament meeting and said "eveyr first Sunday from here on out, all missionaries are invited to my house for a shokuji ( meal) ” I was so excitedly! There will be big changes I can feel.
God is our father and he loves us so much. He knows everything that there is to know! How awesome it is that we can communicate with such a being through prayer. I would hope that we all as individuals take time to consider the beauties of life and earth and the night sky and wonder why it exists. Ponder the greatness of God. Everything is because He loves us. That's why we are here, to go through trials and to prove ourselves worthy of the greater glory being restored for us by God himself. And on top of that I know he loves us because he has given us with guides to guide us back to him. He sent his only son, he created this church and we have the bible and the Book of Mormon and living prophets to show us the way. It's incredible if you really ponder it.
I have really come to love the scriptures. I couldn't go a day without knowing I am missing out on something if I hadn't read the scriptures for that day. Please study them personally and rediscover the mysteries of God. Study them together and I promise that your relationship will improve more than you thought it could.
I love you all very much! Thank you for supporting me in this wonderful journey.
"Improve the shining moments, don't let them pass you by.
Work while the sun is radiant, work for the night draws nigh.
We can not bid the sun beams to lengthen out their stay,
Nor can we ask the shadows to ever stay away. "
Elder Draper
ドレーパー長老
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