Babies Raising Babies

This week has been SO LONG. It has also been full of wonderful miracles too! For one thing, we were finally able to meet with my Strawberry Jam lady! The one that I contacted all by myself on the street car like a month ago and gave a Book of Mormon to. She told us she wouldn't be able to meet until October so this month we gave her a call and this week we had lunch! She is just the funniest little lady who tries so hard to speak English whenever she can! We were planning on teaching the restoration lesson to her, but she just had TONS of questions. Like "Why did you want to meet with me?" and "How do you pay for your apartment?" and "How did your church begin?" "Do you have a Japanese host mom and dad?" "How do you pray?" and on and on and on. She is a devout Catholic who prays every night and day and goes to church every week, so she was curious as to how our beliefs compare too. After a lunch with her, she wanted to see our church which we were going to anyway, so we walked to the church with her and gave her a tour. Then, it just so happened that one of our church members was coming to clean the church that day, and showed up like 5 minutes after us. She was able to make up for our slight lack of Japanese and explain things to Strawberry Jam lady that she was still confused about. The timing was absolutely perfect. Then to top it all off, she actually gave us homemade strawberry jam! This week we went to Sasebo for a Zone Training Meeting, and then we also were able to go to the Fukuoka Temple with our branch on Saturday! Which is probably why this week felt so long. Weeks that we don't do as much teaching or finding always seem to go on forever! The Fukuoka Temple is so tiny and cute and it was just so refreshing to get to go again! Its been far too long. Plus, our mission home is located right underneath the temple, so we had the good fortune of arriving early for our session and getting to stop in the mission home and we got to say hi to our mission president and his wife along with the AP's. Driving to the temple was also wonderful because the countryside of Japan is gorgeous. Plus, we would often pass areas that overlooked the ocean which always brightens our day. Other little random facts of the week: We have an adorable old man that comes to our English class every week and two weeks ago we were talking about staying healthy and what foods are healthy to eat. He told us that he eats brown rice instead of white and we were shocked because we hadn't seen any brown rice in Japan despite our efforts. He tried to explain to us the store where he buys it, but we werent exactly sure where he was talking about. Then, this past week after English Class, he comes up to my companion and says "Heaton, I have a present I want to give." He then proceeds to pull out a bag of brown rice and gives it to us! It was the cutest thing! Another random thing this week is that a lady on the street totally said she loved God! This may sound like a strange thing to mention, but there are so many people in Japan who don't even know who God is let alone want to talk about Him, that we were just so happy to hear those words come out of her mouth! Japan is so ready to hear the gospel! Well, thank you everyone for all the love and support! Wells Shimai