Ai suru kazoku ya tomodachi!!!!!! Konnichiwa!

This week was incredible and I'm not sure how exactly to explain to you the amazing life of a missionary but I'm going to try. I LOVE TOYOOOKA.

sidenote, the weather here has become the most beautiful thing of my life. Like 5/7 days each week in the winter it was snowy and super freezing and hailing and rainy. Which is totally fine because the sun always shines when you're working with the Lord and despite the weather being a missionary is still fun. BUT this past week has been paradisiacal and in the mid-20's (c) every day and my arms are getting tan from biking and I'm starting to get a missionary watch tan line #officialmissionary and also cardigan tan lines on my forearms. It's pretty humid but it feels like heaven. It's been like a 3 day run since we turned the room heater on. 

We found 3 new amazing angelic investigators this week <3. The first is named Anna chan- which is apparently a real japanese name- and she's 20 and super cool and her heart is super open and she's living by herself and looking for a job here in Toyooka. SHE IS SO AWESOME. we taught her again this morning and she's basically my favorite person ever. We have a special lesson that we teach when we meet with potential investigators which always ends up sorting out those who truly have interest and those that are just really nice and want to be friends and have zero interest in learning about God. In the lesson we do a lot of How To Begin Teaching suggestions and basically introduce the idea of God as their loving Heavenly Father, prayer, the attitude of importance of Jesus Christ, and the meaning of life. We also set expectations that we'll be meeting regularly, giving them assignments (reading from the Book of Mormon) and we also tell them that they'll want to be baptized twice within the lesson. All of this lesson is my favorite part but I especially love that part. It's true!

When we taught this to Anna chan this morning she was awestruck that we can talk with God. IT'S TRUE. I LOVE TEACHING JAPANESE PEOPLE. It's soooooOOOOOooOOOO ooo cool- the coolest thing in the whole entire world- to see people hear gospel truths for the first time. Clean, pure, doctrine. And the Holy Ghost touches their hearts and their faces light up and their eyes get super big and your heart expands to reach all the crevaces in your chest. Which brings me to our two other investigators, Ibuki chan and Natsumi chan <3

This past week we've been repenting so much. We're being super obedient but as we all know and become super aware of on missions is how imperfect we truly are and how perfect God truly is. And how desperately we need His help to do His work. And we need the whisperings of the Spirit to direct us to those who will accept our message and who have been prepared by the hand of God. And we need to really follow through with those promptings every time, depsite how small they may be. We had mensetsus this week and kaicho and I talked about this. (interviews, with the mission president.)  I've been praying so hard to know where to go and while biking past some apartments last week I felt impressed to go there. It was the smallest impression ever and I didn't even think it was an impression but I figured that if I didn't follow it there's no way I'll continue to receive these impressions, so we went there the next day. Most people weren't even home and everyone that was had zero interest. But while we were leaving I caught a glimpse of the buildings across the road which reconfigured in my head later in the week while seeking revelation for a place where we could find those that would accept our message. We went thursday and again, no one had any interest. But as we were walking back to our bikes we saw 2 precious middle school girls sitting on a curb so we went up to them and invited them to eikaiwa (english class.) After some friendshipping and lots of talk about korean pop music we figured out that they were curious about Jesus Christ so we invited them to have a tour of the church and I'm like all out of time but we met with them on saturday and taught them (one of the girls we talked to and a different friend she invited to meet with us) the above described lesson and the whole time they were just in AWE that God existed and is their Heavenly Father. we'll have to meet with their families real soon because they're so young and we don't want the families to become hantai (anti) but the moral of the story is that this gospel is true and being a missionary is my favorite thing ever of my whole life and I'm not ever going to let kaicho pull me from toyooka and kogure shimai is amazing and i will send you pictures because I have to go.

Thank you soooooo much for sending me loads of pictures of mexico!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it's amazing how old you all look, expect mom and dad and grandma (;

love you with all my heart,

Daniels shimai

p.s. WHOA THAT IS WEIRD THAT I'LL BE CALLING YOU SOON. i don't have any info yet but i'll let you know when I do. Kids: don't do your homework on Sunday at midnight. It's bad for your health.