Pictures (again)!

Baby On The Way!

Wow, so many things have happened in the past few weeks I have no idea where to start! The entire Christmas season was wonderful. Here are some of the highlights of my life recently: Having the opportunity to visit care houses and singing Christmas carols to all of the wonderful Elderly Japanese people and seeing their happy faces as they clapped along to Jingle Bells and Santa Clause is Coming to Town and other English Christmas songs since there's really not many options in Japanese. Going to a super fancy Lions House Club dinner for Christmas eve and being sung American Country songs by a Japanese man wearing an American Flag T Shirt and Cow boy hat. At that same event, an 80 year old man came up and grabbed my hand and put his arm around my waist and began dancing with me to the music for a moment before Eddy Shimai came over and saved me by cutting in. It was definitely a night to remember :) Then Christmas day we all woke up and opened our packaged from the Branch and from our families and we all got to call our families and just soak in the Christmas spirit. And despite the lack of snow, we were still able to have a white Christmas because one of our branch members 8 year old daughter decided to get baptized! It was a wonderful Christmas that I will never forget. This past Saturday, we had the opportunity to go to our neighboring area and serve at an orphanage. We made mochi (Which is basically just smashed up rice with warm water until it becomes a gooey paste that you form into balls around sweet beans) with the children, and played soccer and games outside (Yea its still that warm here) for a few hours until it was time to leave. That same day, our neighboring area was having a baptism which we got permission to attend. However, the church over there doesn't have a font built into it, therefore, we had a portable font that we literally had to fill up buckets of warm water from the sink upstairs and take all the way down stairs one by one and dump it into the font until it was full. It took like 2 hours with 8 missionaries doing it haha. Then we were dumb and didn't put the drain outlet by the door that led outside, which meant we also had to drain the font by filling up buckets and dumping them outside until it became light enough to move towards the door and drain completely. Anyway, besides that chaos, the baptism was wonderful! It was for a young man named Koike who has known missionaries for like 6 years now and has finally decided to get baptized! To add to the madness of Saturday, I received a call from the APs on Saturday evening telling me that I needed to come to Fukuoka on Monday to receive training in order to become a trainer!!!! I feel like I just barely got here, but now I'm gonna have to train a baby missionary all by myself! She's probably on the airplane heading to Japan right as I'm writing this. I'm a little bit scared, but super excited and can't wait to meet her! It's still just babies raising babies here in the Japan Fukuoka mission! Anyway, I want to send pictures of all this madness so I'll end my letter now. I know God will help me because there's no way I can do this alone! Thank you everyone for all your prayers and support and I hope you all have a Happy New Year!

Pictures from Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Its going to be a short one because P-day today has been a little bit crazy. Some of the events of the week: 1. I ate sushi for the very first time in Japan this week. Weird right? Usually back in Utah I have like sushi like once a month and now that I actually live in Japan I didn't even try it for nearly 4 months. Anyway, it's way better in Japan. And they have things on the menu like Octopus brain. Pretty legit. 2. One of our English Class Students and I were conversing after English class this past week when she asked me "So does this church have a worship service?" Of course I told her we do and when it was and she totally came and brought one of her friends to church on Sunday and they thought it was just great! We're meeting with them both tomorrow to teach them more about it! 3. We ate dinner at some other English Class Student's house with their family who just happen to be super musically talented and own a BABY GRAND PIANO! This might not sound all that exciting, but it is the first time I've played a non-electric piano since coming to Nagasaki nearly 4 months ago. Our church just has an organ and then little electric keyboards. And no one in Japan ever has a real piano in their house because Japan houses simply don't have enough room! (Everything in Japan is smaller, the buildings, the food portions, the clothes, the people.... you start to feel like a little bit of a giant after a while) I was able to play it for just a moment, but it made my whole week. 4. And now for the biggest miracle of the week! But I have to back up about 3 weeks ago. So at the beginning of this transfer, we went and did service at one of our member's houses that just had a baby. We wore P-day clothes, but then we packed our missionary clothes and changed afterwards to go finding. Part of my P-day clothing outfit was my purple Nike running shoes that I had to stuff into my bag when we changed and had to carry them around with me. Quite the pain. When we returned home that night, I discovered that I had come home with only 1 purple Nike. We made phone calls, checked the church, and searched around until realizing it was probably just wandering around Nagasaki somewhere not likely to be found again. Eddy Shimai, was determined however, and told us that her transfer goal was going to be to find my missing shoes. Fast forward to this past Friday, where I'm at the church waiting for our Christmas program practice to begin and in walks Eddy Shimai telling us that the biggest miracle just happened. I'm expecting a new investigator, a reactivation, a package from home, someone wants to get baptized, or something along those lines. Instead, Eddy Shimai pulls out MY PURPLE NIKE SHOE from her bag. Apparently they were walking along the streets of Nagasaki earlier that day when Eddy Shimai spotted something purple out of the corner of her eye on top of a mailbox. After further inspection, she shouted for joy, grabbed the shoe, and ignored the strange looks of all the Japanese people wondering why this American girl is screaming and stealing a purple shoe from the top of a mailbox. Moral of the story is, Set goals everyone. No matter how impossible they may seem, you can always achieve your goals! Ok, so that's not really the moral of the story, but that truly was probably one of the most remarkable things I've ever witnessed. MIRACLES STILL CONTINUE TODAY MY FRIENDS! Love you all, I have no time for pictures or more stories but have a Merry Christmas and keep up the prayers!

More Pics!

I'm Dreaming Of A Warm Christmas

This week was crazy wonderful. No other way to describe it. Basically, the first half of the week was getting everything ready for Yamamoto San's baptism. Monday we all four met with her and made sure she understood all that she needed to, Tuesday she had her interview with our District Leader and passed it with flying colors, and Wednesday we just told the whole world that they needed to come to this spectacular event and then came THURSDAY! It was a beautiful service that included all 8 of us Nagasaki missionaries singing 'I am a Child of God' in English and Japanese (And it was super adorable because her 2 little boys started singing along with us super loud because they know the song in English and Japanese because we sing it every week in our children english class) and Eddy Shimai gave a beautiful talk about the Holy Ghost and one of the ward members spoke as well and everyone was just in such a great mood! When we went down to the font area, my companion asked her if she wanted a hair tie for her hair because it was down and she just said 'no thanks, I want my hair down because that's how Jesus' hair was'. HOW ADORABLE IS THAT! Anyway, Harvey Choro, one of the Nagasaki missionaries was the one to baptize her and he did SUCH an amazing job. She came out of the water looking so happy! After she was changed, we all returned to the chapel and she bore the most beautiful testimony with tears running down her face while her adorable little 7 year old boy stood below her and wiped her tears away. It was definitely a night to remember. But as if one miracle baptism wasn't enough, we had so many miracles that stemmed from that night! One being that Keiko San, an English class student came to the baptism and was so moved by it that she totally wants to start meeting with us! She's our newest investigator and she came to church yesterday and was able to witness Yamamoto San recieve the Gift of the Holy Ghost. Just as a side note, she speaks SUPER good English. I don't know how we have had this luck, but right now our top 3 investigators all speak REALLY good English. It truly is the biggest blessing. God truly has perfect timing in everything because we are such young missionaries with such insufficient Japanese. Our Korean investigator was also able to come to the Baptism, but only for about 20 minutes before her husband called saying he was home and wanted to eat dinner together. We were super sad to see her leave early, however, this coming Sunday she is totally planning on telling her Protestant Preacher that she doesn't want to be part of that Church anymore. We asked her what it was like to fast about it and she said 'Oh yea, fasting was a little bit difficult. Actually my husband really wanted me to eat lunch with him so I ended up fasting for breakfast and dinner which I don't think is probably how it's supposed to be, but I actually feel like I've gained a lot of courage from it.' Haha she is so cute! And even though she fasted for breakfast and dinner I KNOW that God is seriously SO PROUD of her right now because she truly is making huge steps in changing her life. It has been so incredible to witness. Well, I want to send a few pictures so I'm wrapping it up now! Thank you everyone for the love and support and I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas season! Wells Shimai

Detective Wells

Approximately One More Year!

I think we figured out a while ago that the transfer I go home on ends on December 5th next year!!!! Kind of scary because I still feel like a super new missionary, but the reality is, I ONLY HAVE ONE YEAR LEFT! Weird... let's forget that I mentioned that. Life in Japan is great. This past week, my companion and I kind of hit a wall though. Because we were both trained by the Lyles Shimai, and we've never been companions with anyone else, so basically we've realized that we just don't have anything new to teach each other. And we both know pretty much the same words and phrases in Japanese. So talking to people on the streets has gotten really repetitive feeling because we just don't know how to come up with new ideas! However, we're just trying to get creative and asking other missionaries their methods and ways so that we can improve! My real Thanksgiving day was spent in Sasebo for a Zone Training Meeting and then that night all of the Nagasaki Missionaries went out to dinner together and talked about things we're grateful for. It rocked. Not saying Thanksgiving in America isn't wonderful, because it definitely is, but I'm just saying that fake Thanksgiving in a small Udon restaurant in Japan with 7 American missionaries and 1 Brazilian missionary is an experience I wouldn't trade for anything. This coming Thursday, Nagasaki is having another baptism as I mentioned before! We're meeting with Yamamoto-San this morning actually to help prepare her for her interview tomorrow and make sure she understands everything. Let me just tell you, this woman has some of the strongest faith I've ever seen. She knows that this is all happening fast and she knows that she still doesn't understand everything perfectly, but she just keeps reassuring us that she knows God wants her to get baptized because it tells her to in the Book of Mormon and everytime she prays to God she gets an answer. This is coming from a woman who only 2 months ago told us that she doesn't really have interest in our message because she's super Buddhist. I'm telling you people, this gospel changes lives! This past week, we met with our Korean investigator two times. We went over the law of fasting with her and tried to help her understand how fasting can truly bring miracles and answers to our prayers. At the first meeing, she told us that fasting was going to be imopssible because she has to make meals for her husband and he'll be upset if she just doesn't eat. We told her that God always provides a way for us to obey the commandments that He gives us and asked her to just pray about it and think more about it. The second time we met she just straight up told us that "Oh, it's just two meals, and it's not like my husband doesn't have to eat, it's just me. So I'll be able to fast this Sunday." Wait what? We didn't even have to say anything about it! I swear this woman is just teaching herself sometimes. Anyway, yesterday, she didn't end up coming to church which we were a little concerned about her because lately her husband has been more and more bothered by her meeting with us so much. But after church we texted her and guess who still fasted?! Our investigator. Yea, that's right. She couldn't come to church, but she totally fasted still! I can't tell you how proud I am of her. And to top things off, this week we get to go to her apartment to have lunch together and meet her 2 baby kittens!!! I'm probably way more excited about that than I should be, but I just haven't held a cat in nearly 6 months! You can probably expect like 10 pictures of just cats with next weeks email. Don't say I didn't warn you. Anyway, Japan is great. Japanese is quite the adventure. This gospel is changing peoples lives every day for the better. I am SO GRATEFUL to all of my wonderful friends and family who have helped me get to the point I am today! Remember to be 100 percent thankful because if you're going to be 99 percent thankful, you might as well be 0 percent (Words of the oh so wise Yamamoto San). I'll see you all in about a year! (I can't believe I just said that. Barf) Crazy Cat Lady Wells Shimai