Sister Malone's Mission in Fukuoka, Japan!: Busy busy! / Week #14

Ohayo gozaimasu!

So much to do. So little time. That's the life of a missionary. I'm realizing how blessed I am to be in Okinawa where we have appointments and get to teach people. Not everywhere in Japan is like that.

For P-day we went with the other sisters and a less active sister to Chili's on base! It was the best! You better believe we ordered that molten lava cake with ice cream. Desserts in Japan are not desserts. They don't understand the meaning of chocolate and lots of it! Portions are small. Well dessert portions. You can still get huge portions of ramen or fried rice. So after our fill of American food we went to see a lighthouse but by the time we got there it was dark so we couldn't really take any pictures. But we still tried. And as we were leaving we saw this huge spider with a sac thing underneath it. We figured that was all of its thousands of babies it was carrying around. So gross!!! I have one spider encounter AT LEAST once a week. But as of yet there have been no spiders on me. Which is good because I made a deal with Heavenly Father. He keeps His promises everyone.

So we are still teaching the usual people. We challenged Emi this week to pray about Joseph Smith and I told her I would pray about it too. She texted us to say she did it! We have to wait until Tuesday to find out how it went.

Sad news. We didn't get to teach Karla this week. It was her husbands birthday and then her son had a fever and then she got sick too. It's so hard to not see her. I just want to teach her everything right away but I need to be patient. Plus this week we wanted to set a specific date with her but it didn't happen. So our mission goal was to have 2 baptismal dates by the end of August. We really wanted to set one with Karla but we couldn't. But...we set one with somebody else. And it's really funny how it happened.

So we met with this girl Naia. She's in high school. She's almost 16. She was being taught by the elders earlier this year but then stuff happened and the elders who were teaching her are gone. So we called her up and met with her. She's pretty cool. Like cooler than us, so it's intimidating. Just kidding. But she mentioned something about having a baptismal date when we were talking to her. We didn't think she had one. We didn't say anything about it at that time. We were just getting to know her and see if she was still interested. But the next day I called her and she's at a house party and I can hear yelling in the background while I'm trying to ask her about her baptismal date. She said it was supposed to be in October sometime. So I'm asking her if she still wants to plan on that. Then she's like can you call back in 10 minutes? So I say yes and we call back in 10 minutes and it's quieter on her side. So I ask her when in October she was thinking and she says October 12. So I said okay lets plan on that then and we'll figure out what lessons we need to teach you. So basically I did a baptismal invite over the phone while this 15 year old girl was at a house party. Yay for missionary work!

Also we have Eikaiwa each week but one of the students expressed interest in learning Spanish so we set up a Spanish class on Saturday. Even some of the missionaries want to learn so we sat and learned Spanish from Sister Pinzon! So Devin maybe I'll be able to speak to you when I get home! Just kidding. It's enough for me to learn Japanese.

The weather here has been hot but it seems like we're finally feeling a slight cool down. Slight. I've made it through the hottest months of the year! It's rainy on and off still but I really don't mind that. I have officially been in Okinawa for one month now! Transfers are on the 9th I think. I really hope I'm staying here. We shall see. By the way my P-day is on Tuesday next week not on Monday! So don't freak out when I don't email on Monday!

Have an awesome week everyone! Just keep pushing along! Whatever struggles you are going through there is someone who knows exactly how you feel!

Malone Shimai

The Lighthouse we saw at night