Hello, everyone!!!!

Mom, thank you so much for sending me the cookie recipe (: it's completely okay, we rescheduled our activity for this week anyway so your timing was actually perfect! haha I'm excited to get the letters here. I sent a couple home so I hope they get there?? I can't find an international mail box in toyooka yet, but we just had a big mission conference in Kobe this past week so I was able to send some letters. hahha sending mail is super mendokusai.

My area is still awesome! it's definitely hard though. On average we see a person a day on the street so we get to visit a lot of people who have expressed interest in our message before and alsooo just knock on a lot of doors of peoples' houses. hahha it's unfortunate because everyone lives like 30 minutes away and usually they aren't home or tell us they're busy and to come back another time. but they don't give us their phone number so we can't schedule a time when they know we're coming. haha basically what it comes down to is that we need to find better people to teach that actually want to learn about their relationship with God and how we can be happy on earth, now, and eternally in God's presence.-- you'd think that everyone would be lining up to meet with us but even when we testify of this to them they kindly shut their doors and tell us they're busy. This week is going to be a good one though, I can feel it.

Our apartment is HUGE!!! also, we have a heated toilet which is probably the best thing of my life. No buildings have central heating in Japan-- just lots of space heaters. I have one right next to my legs at my desk and I think I'm getting skin damage but it's sooooo warm. it snows or rains almost every day here but it's really wonderful because I get to wear my rain pants!!!! hahah it's just a poncho for your legs, but it's the biggest blessing because then your skirt doesn't catch loads of rain water AND your legs stay dry AND your skirt doesn't get mud on it AND you don't have to worry about your skirt flying up in the wind (although we do have nifty little things that attach to our bike that you just clamp your skirt onto which are way nice.) they are still a little mendokusai because you have to take them off and put them on, but it's definitely worth it. (:

My companion is like the sweetest person in the whole world. She's very kind and gentle and trusts me a lot. She's a little bit shy but she gets along well with everyone. She's australian!! hahha her accent is yabbai (legit). her name is Pipers shimai.

The Church members are AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ahhhhh sooo sosooo awesome. I think there are like 20 active members? The branch president is also the ward mission leader and he sets up everything for sacrament and does everything else in the branch, along with this crazy awesome family named the Muratas. Murata shimai is an english teacher and Murata kyodai is a member of the branch presidency and the coolest person i've ever met in my whole life. they have 3 kids and they're all crazy but i want to keep all of them. I think they're 15, 13 and 10? i want to keep their whole family.

That's wayyy awesome that kirsten and collin are leaving for their missions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tell them good luck and congratulations for me!! actually ''ganbatte'' and ''o-medito gozaimasu''.

i love you all!! I pray for you every day.

p.s. the second picture is from our english conversation class (: and the two little boys are from the way awesome family i was talking about earlier