The Adventures of Danieru Shimai

I am repenting for 1. not emailing last week and 2. for not telling you about the ridiculously awesome events that have been happening in my lifetime in the past few weeks. I'm also going to send pictures and I hope that you forgive me.

so big event number one: ELDER NELSON AND HIS SWEET WIFE AND ELDER RINGWOOD OF THE 70 AND HIS SWEET WIFE WHO IS ALSO THE DAUGHTER OF ELDER NELSON GRACED OUR MISSION. We all got to shake their hands and Elder Nelson is incredible and I can't describe to you in words exactly how it feels to be in his presence but his air is different. There's almost like a really quiet majestic, but very humble and very real, fuinki about him. we'll loosely translate fuinki to aura. It was really cool. And he is so funny and just a sweet grandpa but also a man of such faith and a man called by God to bear special witness of Him. I love meeting General Authorities. The gospel is true!!!!!! The priesthood power of God is on the earth!!

big event number two: WE GOT IPADS!!!! hahaha ahh the prophecy held true: Daniels shimai got an ipad during her mission. iPads are AWESOME!!! If I only could use it for the sole purpose of showing people the new easter video on lds.org -->HeLives.mormon.org (go watch it if you haven't already because it is incredible) then I would be perfectly content because it is GREAT for that purpose. Slash also showing everyone my other favorite video in the world called ''Because of Him'' --which you should also look up if you haven't seen it yet-- is just joy. But, also it's just great to use in teaching because we can just whip out pictures of the first vision or of baptism or of Noah when he is with all of his animals on his ark or of President Thomas S. Monson from gospel library. You can also do that if you carry the Gospel Art Book around but ipads are just super convenient and hold everything you can ever imagine inside its realm so you have more room in your bags for Books of Mormon to give to people searching for truth on the streets. My life rocks.

big event number three: I celebrated my first and second Iranian new year(s) on the 21st!!! NOROZ MOBARAK! (happy new year) it was super awesome. I never felt so desperate to not eat in my entire life. The food was absolutely incredible though and the people are so kind and warm-hearted and I love them more than I love how comfortable my stomach feels so I continued to eat. I considered going American-4th-of-July-hot-dog-eating-contest-style where you dunk the hot dog buns (or in my case endless rice) in water so that it goes down your throat but I restrained myself. But it was way good. We ate lots and lots of rice in different styles but I think my favorite was like a huge rice-cake looking dish. But in-bedded into it was really deliciously spiced chicken and some vegetables. It was awesome. And I want to learn Iranian cooking someday.

big event number four: LILY! We have an awesome investigator named Lily who is chinese and studying at the really intelligent university here next to the church. I can't remember if I've told you about her or not, but she is maybe 23 and loves to talk and loves to eat and loves to learn. We asked her to start reading from 3 Nephi 11 when Jesus Christ appears in the Americas and told her that it ends in chapter 28, but to just take her time and do what she can. She read all of it, twice through. And she prepared a ton of questions for us about the teachings of Jesus Christ. She has made a ton of progress this week and has so much desire to be baptized. We asked her why and her response was awesome: ''of course you would want to do this sort of thing.'' Also we've been teaching her with a young woman who has her mission call and will be serving in temple square in a couple of months and they've just become super good friends and she's doing a great job teaching and life is good. Being a missionary is just really happy all of the time.

big event number five: the young women asked Croft shimai and I to join them in their young women activity on saturday and also the Stake president asked all of the missionaries in the kobe stake boundaries (like 50) to participate at youth conference and sit-in during the testimony meeting and support the youth. I saw my girls from Toyooka bear their testimonies (which was sooo special because they both have started to go less-active and one shared a super awesome spiritual experience that she had during the conference my prayer is that she'll be back at church next sunday) and also like 10 of the youth from the Kobe ward went and half of them bore their testimonies. One was particularly special because she talked about how she really prayed for the first time in a very, very long time and felt a lot of love from God and she had prayed a ton in the past couple of days and she just testified of the power of prayer and it was just incredible. Her whole countenance was lit up and it was on Saturday and was yesterday at church and Heavenly Father really can change our hearts and transform our whole selves. It's amazing the transformation that takes place when people remember that God loves them. And He definitely does. But! at the young women's activity we made o-bentos (lunch sacks kinda) and had a picnic in the parking lot next to the beautiful magnolia tree. We made special sandwich-looking onigiris and also fried egg roll and potato salad and wrapped bacon around asparagus and fried it and it was surprisingly delicious. I took some pictures on my ipad (; and then showed all of them the easter video (: please watch it-- it's way good.

big event number six: THE SAKURA STARTED BLOOMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (: we went running this morning and there were just beautiful pink flowers all over the trees lining the street! and we found a really adorable elderly morning aerobic at the ginja (buddhist shrine) and we were invited to join and it was so beautiful being surrounded by sakura trees and paper lanterns and beautiful statues and my companion and kind elderly people that live nearby. i took a mental picture (:

there were lots of awesome little things in between but my neck is sore from writing this super long email. I'll put some pictures up ne(: