GET OUT OF HERE OHIO STATE TOOK OUT ALABAMA IN THE SUGAR BOWL!!!!!!!!!!???!?!?!?!? I will continue to wear my lucky Ohio State sweatpants to bed each night. I switched to my Christmas pajamas (which are AWESOMEE!! THANK YOU) but I'm going to do all that I can do to help the cause over here in Japan. Woo!! Go bucks!!!! I appreciated all of the updates on the game. haha cheer loud for me during the championship game!! Cardell Jones sounds amazing. 

Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (: (: 

This week was amazing and awesome and super busy and an awesome New Years celebration!! The only unfortunate thing was that my cold got a lot worse and it was really bad for a couple days but it is slowly going away and is basically gone now. I received a blessing last Monday and my heart felt a lot more genki and since that day I felt a lot more energy that was the biggest blessing ever. The rest was manageable with lots of medicine and water and sleeping during meal times. 

Every single day this past week members had us over for meals and it was AWESOME to get to really talk to so many of the members!!!! The members in this ward really do have dendo fire and they just didn't know how to involve the missionaries so we got lots of referrals and ideas for where we should dendo. We will be having lots of fun this week following up with that. Also we became super well acquainted with dinosaur maps of Kobe. So I can't remember if I told you already, but we used to have this miracle application on our phone called EZ navi where you could type in the address of where you wanted to go and it'd tell you, it could tell you where you were, pull up maps of the surrounding area, and most importantly tell you train times and the fastest ways to get to the place you want to go and alternative travel routes and it was the best thing in my whole life and saved my life-- literally-- in Wakayama when we opened the area and also helps me IMMENSELY as we travel to do splits with sisters in super far away areas. Sorry for that run on. (: That application was like a Liahona to me. I might even go as far to say that it was my best friend but regardless of how much I loved it, when our mission got new phones because there is cheaper plan on a different company we switched phones and the new phone does not have EZ navi. It was probably the hardest thing of my whole life. Because travelling in Japan is a special scavenger hunt when you can't read the jillions of different kanjis. But Heavenly Father knows all things, and in His plan of knowing all things has been preparing Daniels shimai for this tragic switch and guided her through the depths of her super old apartment to a pocket map book that has little katakana readings (one of the alphabets I can read) written above the kanjis. And it's super old-school but I carry it with me every where I go and it has saved my life finding members' houses. Heavenly Father knows and loves me so much. 

Anyway, we had lots of delicious meals with members and had some awesome opportunities strengthening them quite a bit. BUT my favorite part of this week was meeting again with our friend from Iran-- Farhad!!! HE IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!! He is the one that came to our ''Purpose of Life'' fireside ages ago and ate everything up and became our good friend. I gave him a call this week just as he was returning to Kobe and he came and met with us and 2 elders who have recently moved into the office. He blew me away-- I have never met someone who is more prepared than he is to accept this gospel. His heart is one of the biggest I've ever seen and the Spirit was there so strongly and he was talking about what he think he believes and IT WAS ALL TRUE DOCTRINE. He loved the plan of salvation from the fireside and really wants to learn more about the church. We have the mission office next door so after the lesson we took him over and helped him pick out his own copy of the Book of Mormon in his native tongue. There is a huge showcase of probably like 30 different languages of the Book of Mormon in the office and fortunately we had a Persian one there. So he-- and we-- now all have Persian Books of Mormon and we also gave him an English one because the Persian book only has selections of the Book of Mormon. The numbers aren't the same and it looks a lot like Arabic but he promised he'd teach us a little Persian as we study the Book of Mormon with him. I'd say it's a fair trade. 

I hope you are all having a wonderful week and making lots of goals and seeing the hand of the Lord in your life. It's all around us!! And we have to look for it and thank Him. Life is so full of light that way.  

Love you! 

Sister Daniels