Living in the Land of Many Hills

Ohayho Gozaimasu! Being on a mission is definitely like a roller coaster ride. You have the highest moments and the lowest moments each and every day. But no matter what happens, you always end the day with a smile on your face ready to ride again tomorrow! I just wish that I could write about every single miracle we see every single day but theres just too many to count! But first, I'll start out with just a little bit of the weird cultural things about Japan that I've noticed. First of all, there are absolutely NO AMERICANS HERE besides us missionaries. People literally stare at us all the time. Sometimes, people will see us and then get all excited and grab their friends and point to us and laugh. It was the weirdest thing to get used to. Sometimes people come up to us just to ask us what we're doing here or where we're from or just to try out their English. That's another thing, everyone LOVES to speak any English they know to us. People love to impress us with words like "awesome!" or "great" or "hello" or "thank you" except it sounds more like "sank you" because they don't have a TH sound in Japanese. Being in Nagasaki has been really a humbling experience because we've had a couple of times meeting with older people that tell us about their experience when the genbaku (Atomic Bomb) hit here. It's crazy that it really wasn't even all that long ago. Some of these people here were kids or teenagers when it happened. The miracle of it too is that nobody holds a grudge whatsoever. They have all completely forgiven us Americans and are completely open to talking to us about it. The Japanese people are truly some of the most humble and kind people on this earth. The food here is quite different as you would expect. However, I have not had sushi yet, and I don't eat rice every day for every meal. They do eat quite a bit of fishy tasting food and plenty of noodles and different types of soups. A lot of it is super good, but I will admit, I've gotten pretty good and just not breathing when I eat things I don't like so that I can't taste them as much. It's a good skill to have. Also, they all drink some sort wheat based tea called mugicha that tastes a bit like licking an ashtray. I hear it's an acquired taste, though I have yet to acquire it. Nagasaki has TONS of hills. Lucky for us however, the steepest hill that we bike every day is the hill just before our apartment! Literally, We've probably gone up it 3 times every day since I've been here and I've only actually made it on my bike 4 times total. I end up walking pretty much every single time. I'm slowly improving though! Now for some miracles of this week: I did a contact all by myself for the first time on the bus this week! Don't get overly excited for me though, the lady spoke tons of English haha. It was still really exciting. She's a really devout Catholic who was super shocked to hear that we Mormons are Christian. I talked to her for a solid 15 minutes in broken English and broken Japanese and in the end, we exchanged phone numbers and I gave her a Book of Mormon! She wants to meet with us in October and offered us homemade strawberry jam and rum. We said yes to the Jam and no to the rum. Don't worry :) We found 2 other new investigators this week. On Friday we were out finding and weren't having any luck, so we decided to just sit a moment and pray together. After our prayer we walked for literally 3 minutes before we ran into a young girl who we talked to and she totally wanted to come to church! We gave her a Book of Mormon, told her we'd meet her at the bus stop to walk to the church with her and exchanged phone numbers. It was super awesome! However, then she called us just a few hours later, and told us that her mom wouldn't let her come to church. It was really sad. We're hopeful that we can still meet with her sometime though because she really wanted to learn more! Every single day we see little miracles and its truly amazing. Japan is so prepared to hear this message and I can't wait to find the people searching for the truth! Thanks again to everyone for all the love and support and prayers. See you all in 16 months! Wells Shimai

Area 1: Nagasaki

Wow so many things happened this week I don't even know where to begin! I guess I'll start at the beginning. This past Monday, we depart from the MTC at 2:30 in the morning and head off to the airport! We board our plane, all 32 of us, and sit there for 2 hours before they tell us that something is wrong and this plane is not leaving the ground. We all get off the plane, and wait for our travel leader to tell us the news that they've rescheduled us to a flight that night at 5:45! All of our travel plans are way off now, but we're all in good spirits because we have faith that we'll get to Japan eventually! We then proceed to spend the next 12 hours in the Salt Lake Airport finding things to do and feeling like celebrities because EVERYONE kept talking to us and asking us where were going and then telling us about all the missionaries that they know right now and getting offered food and money. It really wasn't such a bad experience. We flew to Dallas that night, spent the night in a hotel, and the next day flew to Tokyo! It was a 13 hour flight with 31 other antsy young people and when we finally landed and stepped of the plane it was like stepping into.... a sauna! Seriously though it was SO HOT AND HUMID the second we got off the plane. Fast forward a couple of days and about 3 hours of sleep later and I found myself on a bus to NAGASAKI! As soon as I got here I met my 2 new companions names Lyles Shimai and Heaton Shimai. Heaton Shimai has only been here 6 weeks so she's still getting trained. Lyles Shimai is our super mom training two green beans at the same time! Lyles shimai is only on her 5th transfer too. Her Japanese is extremely skilled because she had a native companion about 2 transfers back, so she does about 60 percent of the talking, Heaton Shimai does about 25 and I attempt to do about 15 percent when I can. Usually when I try to talk, it just ends up that Lyles Shimai has to take over after about 2 sentences anyway because my Nihongo is still a little scrambled in my brain. But that's ok because I've only been here like 4 days and I speak a little bit more each and every day! The first day, we went out to lunch at an indo curry restaurant (yes, my very first meal in the field was Indian, not Japanese) and then biked home in skirts. Hahah what a joke that is. Picture weaving in and out of millions of Japanese people in narrow streets in the pouring rain, up hill, in a skirt! Quite the adventure, to say the least. Apparently we're in a typhoon right now, because it literally rains 80 percent of the day. Sometimes we get to put on our rain suits which consist of some super attractive waterproof pants and water proof jacket. I'm still trying to really figure out the point of them because they 're supposed to keep you from getting wet, but whenever you take them off you're drenched in sweat anyway! Missionary life is great :) Japan is truly such a beautiful country. Where I am there are just hills upon hills covered by so much green! Our apartment is tiny and awesome. We sleep on futons every night, eat with chopsticks, and take our shoes off before we enter the house. Every morning it's still weird for me to wake up on a futon and think "I'm in Japan!" It's also wonderful too. As for missionary work, we've seen a few miracles just in the few days that I've been here. The very first time we went out finding on like my second day, the very first door we went to was a cute old lady who totally wanted to hear more about our message! We have an appointment with her this week! Yesterday, after church, we went out housing and for about an hour had no success whatsoever. We then took a moment to see if we wanted to try a different area or continue where we were. We gave ourselves a little pep talk about how important our message is and how we really want to share it with others and then proceeded on to housing. After our little pep talk, the very first house we went to was a sweet old lady who was SO receptive to us! We gave her a book of mormon and a pamphlet and asked her if we could come back. She said we could come in right then if we wanted to! It was the strangest thing but also super amazing. People in Japan don't just invite random people into their houses. But we sat down with her and prayed and got to know her a little bit and talked about how our message could benefit her. It was only a short visit, but we're going back next week, and she gave us cookies! After that house we were all dying of thirst, but still had about an hour before we needed to go home. I said "maybe someone will offer us a drink" and we proceeded onward. Literally about 6 houses later a super nice older woman asked us if we wanted a drink of water! She let us in to eat some grapes and some weird fruit that I still don't know what it was, and had a nice drink of water. She also gave us some interesting (aka really gross) fish tasting crackers. Despite the nasty crackers, she was really such an answer to our prayers. It made me realize that God really does take care of His missionaries. Well, I wish I could talk about every little mercy and miracle that happened this week but there simply isn't time! Japan is wonderful, my jet lag is finally wearing off, and I can feel the prayers from back home as I've received strength I haven't earned and been blessed with miracles that did not come from my own doings. Thank you everyone for your love and support! It's time to go save Nagasaki! Wells Shimai

T-Minus 45 Hours and Counting

The time is finally here! After nine weeks we're finally being released! We still have two days before we leave, but now it's just one more P-day and one more Sunday. It's actually getting quite sad. Last week we just did regular Training Resource Center and my companion and I taught a super super sweet Nihonjin lady. It was the first 40 minute lesson that we taught (all the others had only been 20) so it was a little bit of a struggle filling up all the time. But we just kept asking Sister Suzuki if she had anything to share or comment on and she was great because she just kept on talking and telling experiences she had had. This past Wednesday we were able to do Skype TRC again and it was quite an interesting experience. We got to our computer and the monitor said we were going to talk to Andy Wilson from Mexico City. We asked the tech people if that was really our person and the guy was just like "I don't know, let's find out!" and he pushes the call button so we throw on our headphones and wait for an answer. A woman answers the call and apparently she speaks Japanese! I have no idea if she was Japanese herself, because the video never ended up working. She was super nice and I still have no idea what her name was because Japanese is difficult to understand, and through a computer it's even more difficult. Overall, it was much better than our last Skype TRC session. This week, we had to say goodbye to all of our investigators. It was pretty depressing. I think I'm going to grow to hate the song "God be with you till we meet again" because we only ever sing it for sad goodbyes. The hardest goodbye was for Toshi. We've been teaching him this entire time pretty much and he was coming along so great! When we told him we were getting "transferred" he was so upset. He just kept asking why and talked about how terrible it must be for missionaries to change areas so often. We were able to have a super great last lesson though and we just asked him where he was with his testimony and what he really believes. He said that he still feels guilty a lot of the time because he thinks he's a bad person. We explained repentance to him more and asked him if he had ever actually asked God for forgiveness. After he thought about it, he said he hadn't really. He only ever said sorry for the bad things he's done. When he said the closing prayer he asked God if he could be forgiven for all the bad things, and it was just the sweetest and most sincere prayer. After he finished, we asked him how he felt and he looked so happy and said that he felt like God had forgiven him a little bit. It was such a cute moment and I'm sad to leave behind these investigators, despite the fact that they weren't actually real. Yesterday, we had in-field training. It's basically when everyone that's leaving this next week goes to a nine hour long ordeal about working with members, finding people, setting goals, and all that jazz. I actually really enjoyed it! It was super weird though because everything was in English haha. We did a few different role play activities and it was quite hard to talk about the gospel in English and I kept on saying words in Japanese accidentally. It was also pretty funny because there were tons of people there that had only been in the MTC like 9 days and they were leaving the same day as us! It's always so amusing to hear the English speakers complain about the food or the schedule and we just sit here like "I'd like to see you try it out for nine weeks" haha. As excited as I am to leave the MTC, I'm also a little sad to see it go. It's truly been such an amazing experience here. I've learned so much more in 2 months than I ever thought possible. Not even just about Japan or Japanese but also so much about the gospel and how it can change lives and also about how to learn to love other people for what they are and what they aren't. I can't wait to get to Japan so that I can start helping real people with struggles in their lives. I know that this gospel can change anyone's life for the better and I'm so excited to share this knowledge with other people. Thank you to everyone truly that has been here to support me! Pray for me as I travel to the foreign land of Japan and pray that I will be able to find the people that need to hear my message. I love and miss you all and I'll see you in 16 months! Ai shite Imasu! Wells Shimai

日本あいしています！

This week was quite eventful. To begin, WE GOT OUR TRAVEL PLANS! :) We leave August 26th which is next Monday at 6:00 a.m. Which means we have to leave the MTC by 2:30 a.m. Fun right? Then we fly to Dallas, and from Dallas we fly to Tokyo, and from Tokyo we fly to FUKUOKA JAPAN!!! We'll arrive in Fukuoka Japan Tuesday night at 7:00 p.m. So we basically have a full 2 days of traveling. And the time zone difference is something like 15 hours so we're all super excited for that jet lag. It's gonna be great. Other exciting news of the week is that we finally got to hear an apostle speak! Tuesday night at the devotional we were all just sitting there waiting for the speaker to come, and no body knew who was coming. Then everyone down in front began to stand up. We stand up and squint into the distance to see who will be speaking to us and in walks Richard G. Scott! You could literally feel his presence as he came in. In all our 8 weeks of being here this was our first time hearing from an actual apostle. Before he even sat down, half of us had tears in our eyes. He spoke to us all about prayer and it was exactly what we all needed to hear. He also bestowed an apostalic blessing upon each of us there that was trying to learn a language. He said that he blessed us with the ability to be able to speak and learn our languages if we would have sufficient faith. He said this twice during the devotional too! It was just what we all needed to hear. With our departure date coming so soon, we've had a lot of nerves and frustrations with the language and lack of confidence in ever being able to speak it once we're in Japan. Elder Scott's words really boosted our spirits and gave us the motivation that we needed during these critical last days here. This past Wednesday, our district was assigned to host the new missionaries coming in. It was such a fun experience! Also somewhat nostalgic and sad as we got to watch these brand new missionaries say goodbye to their families. We were able to host some of the international missionaries as well and I hosted a super cute girl that was from England. It was super funny because she wanted to get a drink of water before she went to class so I took her to a vending machine. A water bottle was $1.20. She pulls out her money and some coins and then looks at me and says in her English accent "This might seem really dumb, but I have no idea how much these coins are worth." Haha it was funny because I had never even thought about little things like that. I just can't wait to be in Japan and be the one asking silly questions. Our Sister Training Leader assignment ends tomorrow! I'm a little sad, but also grateful that I'm going to again have some time at night to actually write in my journal and things like that. It's been a but of a struggle these past three weeks. Also I'll probably have to start packing my suitcases this week! It's still so surreal that we're actually going to be leaving to Japan. Sometimes we get little glimpses to the outside world. Like this week one girl in my district got a package from her friend and it had hostess donuts in it! Haha we were all just so shocked that hostess is back in business and making food again! Little things like that remind us of how much of a bubble we really do live in here. This past week we all got an email from the mission home saying that they're making our Japanese name tags this week and that we needed to send to them how we wanted our names to be. I made mine ウエルズ姉妹 which will be pronounced "oo-e-ru-zoo shimai" If you say it the first part really fast it almost sounds like Wells haha. It was as close as I could get. Translating English to Japanese is always a struggle because they just don't have the same sounds that we do. All L's turn into R's and V's turn into B's and everything just starts to sound funny. Anyway, just holding out for 9 more days until we fly to Nihon! Thanks once again everyone for all the love and support! Sayonara!

Life at the Top of the Food Chain

Konnichiwa Minasan! So this week we got rid of our oldest group of missionaries and recieved 2 new districts full of missionaries. Which means that we're officially Daisenpai and are the next ones to leave! Crazy to think that I'm not just going to be stuck in this bubble forever and that I'm actually going to go to Japan soon! On Tuesday, we taught one of our investigators his second lesson. His name is Ryan and he's 17. (He's actually Wilkes Sensei without a tie on, but that's beside the point.) We were just teaching him from the first lesson about how God loves him and how the gospel can bless him and his family. He asked how he could be happier and what he needed to do to recieve blessings and before we knew it, we had a baptismal date! August 24th! It was really quite exciting. :) We had a missionary from Brazil come in this week that's part of our zone. Since he's international, he arrived at the MTC a day early, and the zone leaders and the Sister Training Leaders (us) got to take care of him until the rest of his district arrived the next day. His name is Elder Pessoa and he's actually called to speak portuguese in Japan, but he's here learning Japanese. Not exactly sure how that works. We hung out with him and showed him around on Tuesday night and the people told us that's all we needed to do because he had a schedule of things to do Wednesday before everyone else arrived. Wednesday morning we see him at breakfast, and ask if he knows where he's supposed to go etc, and he says he's just fine so we let him be and say Ja mata! (See you later) A few hours later, an official looking man comes to our classroom and says "Do any of you know where Elder Pessoa might be?" We all look at each other and respond that the last time we saw him was at breakfast. Apparently our new international missionary had gone missing! We said a prayer as a district and hoped that he was ok. So now we're all wondering what on earth we did and where he might have gone. I was convinced that we freaked him out the night before and he decided to ditch the MTC. When we go to lunch we see his name on the TV and it tells him to come to the front desk as soon as possible, so obviously he was still missing. The man came back another time and asked if we still didn't know where he was, and we still had not seen him. We felt like terrible zone leaders and sister training leaders. Later that day, we see Pessoa Choro walking down the hallway without a care in the world. "Where in the world were you?!" We ask. "What do you mean? I was just in the computer lab doing what they told me to do" he responded. Apparently he had always been where he was supposed to be. It was slightly anticlimatic, but relieving at the same time. Wednesday night we had our first TRC skype session with someone in Japan. It was.... interesting to say the least haha. Usually our visits are only 20 minutes and we usually teach people that know english as well as Japanese and can help us out when we're terrible at speaking Nihongo. This time, however, we had to teach a 40 minute lesson to someone who spoke practically no english whatsoever. Our volunteer was an old man who lived in the Nagoya mission boundaries who's name has escaped me. He was really nice and friendly, but he just spoke so fast! And with so many words that I had never heard before. It was long, painful, frustrating, and also super humbling. It was a good experience though because in just a matter of weeks we're going to be in Japan with people like that. Although it made me realize how terrible my Nihongo still is and made me want to just work harder so that I can actually somewhat communicate in Japan when I need to. The next two weeks, we'll being doing Skype for TRC once again so hopefully the next two weeks will give me more hope :) Wednesday night we also got to welcome all the new Kohai to the MTC and give them a tour. That was a fun experience. It's just funny to be with missionaries on their very first day at the MTC and see how they're doing. So many of them just have a dazed-what-did-I-get-myself-into-? kind of look on their face. Others just look exhausted. While there's those few that are just excited about life and want to know every little bit of Japanese that I've ever learned. I brainwashed all the new kohai into thinking that 4 square is the coolest thing ever here at the MTC. It might have been a mistake because on Friday when they came to gym EVERYONE was playing 4 square and the line was miles long. But it was still fun and I really like the new missionaries :) Well, my timer is running out once again, but the MTC is a wonderful place to be, Japanese is a wonderful language to learn, and the people that I'm here learning with are some of the most amazing people I've ever met. Love you all! Wells Shimai

Senkyoshi for Life

So last Sunday we're eating breakfast and I'm thinking to myself "Hmmm, I think they're going to call new Sister Training Leaders today, I wonder who it'll be..." We walk out of the cafeteria building and on our way back to the classroom Willis Kyodai (A member of our branch presidency) is just standing there waiting. He looks at me and my companion and says "I need to see you two." Shimata. (Japanese for dangit) He says with a big smile on his face "You two get to be our next sister training leaders!" The thing about being a missionary, is that you don't get callings, because you're calling is a missionary. But you get assignments and you're expected to do them without question. So what does a sister training leader do exactly? I wasn't exactly sure myself at first. Turns out, we have to go to meetings on Sundays with the branch presidency and zone leaders. We have to interview all the girls in the zone whenever we have free time, which is literally a joke, because at the MTC, free time doesn't exist. We have every minute of every day scheduled for us. So free time just has to be during our additional study. Also, each night we have the opportunity to go say goodnight to all the Shimaitachi in the zone and make sure everyone is doing well. There's 30 Shimai in our zone if I counted correctly, so this usually takes about 20 minutes every night. Then we have to be in bed my 10:30 every night, which is quite the struggle with our new responsibilites. Let's just say my journal entries have consisted of about 1 line for the past week. We also get to check out the Daisenpai when they leave at like 3 in the morning on Sunday. They said we can do it the night before though, thank heavens. ALSO we get 2 districts of new Kohai this week and we're in charge of their orientation on Wednesday night along with the zone leaders. As if being a normal missionary wasn't already enough. But I will admit, that I've really liked this responsibility. I've gotten to know a lot of the girls in our zone much better than I otherwise would have. I'm convinced that this assignment is going to help me more than I'll be able to help anyone else. Even though I've had a lot less time for myself to study Japanese and prepare lessons and things, I don't feel like I'm falling behind. I know that God provides a way for us to accomplish the things He asks. I've been somewhat ill for the past couple of weeks and I started developing a cough on Tuesday. Of course, the only time that I've ever started coughing uncontrollably had to be during the choir musical number at the devotional tuesday night. Literally seconds after we all began singing I started hacking up a lung. I could not stop for the life of me and I was just hunched over coughing throughout the entire song. After the devotional our Chorotachi (elders) were like "That was you!? I thought someone was dying!" So that night Willis Kyodai (The member of our branch presidency) basically forced me into having a blessing. It was definitely a good thing, and I'm really glad that he's the one that performed it. He's probably one of the most perfect people I've ever met. He's actually Gordon B. Hinkley's cousin. Not joking. I'm convinced that he'll be translated any day now. It's weird that we're almost the Daisenpai. That means that we only have about 3 more weeks! Which is really exciting, but also really scary. We started teaching each other as investigators this week. It's actually been a pretty neat experience. I really like being on the recieving side of a lesson. It makes me think about how an investigator might think about our message and I think it makes me want to know more about the gospel and study my japanese more so that I can answer people's questions effectively. Next week, we have a skype session scheduled to teach actual Nihonjin (Japanese people). I have no idea if they'll be able to speak any English whatsoever, so this could be really interesting. If all else fails, I know how to bear my testimony in Japanese and hope that they can get something from it! Whenever I start to think that I might be getting better at understanding Japanese, I learn something new and realize how far I still have to go! It's really been a great experience though. I enjoy learning and I'm having fun just throwing random Nihongo words into my daily life. The MTC is funny that way because you've got a bunch of people here learning a bunch of different languages so everywhere you go you hear things that don't make any sense. Also, in Japanese, the word "Hai" means yes. So if I'm ever talking to someone going to another mission, I'm in the habit of just saying "hai" instead of yes. People always give me the look like "Why on earth do you keep saying Hi to me?" because that's what it sounds like. The funny Nihongo mistake of this week happened to a Shimai in my district. They were teaching one of their investigators about the word of wisdom and telling him things that he can do besides smoking. One of the girls was trying to say that she likes to visit her chuch member friends. But the verb to visit is "homon suru" and the verb to excommunicate is "Hamon suru". Apparently she used the wrong one and told her investigator that she likes to excommunicate people haha. Also theres the mistake of calling people carrotts (ninjin) instead of humans (ningen). It's always an adventure in the life of a Japanese Senkyoshi. Well, time is running low and I've got plenty that I need to get done on this junbi no hi (P-day). Hope everyone back home is doing well! Kono Kyokai wa shinjitsu to shitte imasu. Kamisama no imashime ni shittagaeba shukufuku o ukeru koto ga dekimasu! Sayornara!