Minasan, konnichiwa!
First of all, ignore that I accidentally resent the same email from
last week..my time is short and so my fingers are flying everywhere
and technology hates me, so Gomen ne!
I want to share a few miracles with you this week! First of all let me
just say that God is so so good...this week we were literally showered
in blessings and tender mercies from our Heavenly Father and I really
can't even number them all or adequately describe them, especially
with the shortness of time I have. But God is real and He answers
prayers, that is one promise I can make with certainty.
So it was Tuesday and we were in the process of dropping one of our
investigators who just wasn't progressing anymore...before we could
talk she insisted that we needed to go to some cafe and we went and
ended up wandering around for like an hour because all these places
were randomly closed but she was not backing down and I was just
pleading with God forgiveness for wasting His time and begging there
to be a reason for this whole scheduling mess. We FINALLY find this
one cafe and we walk in and this lady who owns it starts talking to us
and ends up being this boss who has a Christian family and a desire to
learn English and so wanted to meet with us and learn about the church
AND get English help! She is so cute and crazy prepared and she came
to Eikaiwa and then we dropped by her shop again last week and taught
her again and she is awesome. I can't wait to keep teaching her, her
name is Hisako and she was truly such a miracle! I was so glad that
Heavenly Father put her in our path as we were trying to be obedient!
Okay so now it is Tuesday night and almost returning time...we went to
go and visit this less active and she was blatantly ignoring us. It
was freezing and I was discouraged and didn't know what to do. We
walked down to our bikes and then all of the sudden we see this
apartment complex and I know we need to go there...but our time was
way sketchy and so we knew we NEEDED to teach or we would be late.
Well we bike super quickly over to the apartment and pray and long
story short, we end up with this "4th Floor, Last Door" experience and
we found this 80 year old grandma named Fujioka Shimai who is just
PRECIOUS. She was so prepared and has such an open and sweet heart and
accepted the Book of Mormon and has been reading it to find the
questions of the soul she has been needing about the Plan of
Salvation. SUCH A MIRACLE! I was just so so grateful to our Heavenly
Father for leading us to her, as she can meet almost daily and is now
progressing and is doing awesome. Goodness I love being a missionary.
This weekend we had Stake Conference and were blessed to hear from the
Welch couple, our local leaders, and Elder Aoba of the 70. Such great
meetings and we were blessed to have Investigators and so many less
actives come! They were so uplifted and it filled my heart to be in a
room with so many people I love. My favorite part was when Welch
Shimai got up and bore her testimony in Japanese (and she speaks
literally NO Japanese) and the Spirit was SO strong I just cried. I
know the language of the Spirit has no barriers, and what a blessing
that is for us out here with all our minimal skills. The Spirit will
teach everything, we just need to let Him.
Really quick, our faith and repentance Book of Mormon challenge is
amazing, and I learn so much everyday. One theme that I have really
noticed lately is that a natural result of our faith in Repentance is
ALWAYS a manifestation of the Lord in our ways. I don't always know
how and I know it will be different for everyone, but I know that to
be true. I know He loves us and that He wants to be involved, and as
we seek him in faith and try our best to repent, we won't be able to
stop the manifestations of His love and His atonement in our lives. I
know I see that here EVERY single day.
I love this gospel so much, and I promise that it is true! Christ
lives and He loves you, rely on Him and everything will be okay.
Sorry this is sporadic and crazy...just know I am happy and alive and
well and can't wait to see a million other miracles that the Lord has
in store for us here in Sakai. Aishiteimasu minasan!
Love,
Sister Pickering
Photos: ZTM and we had exchanges and Smith Shimai and I with our new
investigator, Hisako!
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