Week 19 - This Week We Knocked on a Lot of Doors!

Hey yo. 

Chiba continues on.  

We just got back from Tokyo Skytree, which is this enormousssss shopping mall / tower downtown Tokyo.   

We saw a lot of weird people.  Like men with thick eyeliner dressed up as anime characters. Then Sister Christensen and I got depressed when we walked into Zara and realized most of the clothes would get shredded on our bikes, so we decided to save the money for ice cream instead.  #thatsalotoficecream

No regrets.

Sister Christensen and I have really gotten into housing this week.  We stumbled on an apartment place that was ... a little less fancy, and we somehow found ourselves on the doorstep of an underground tattoo parlor.  We hear the buzzing stop as soon as we hit the doorbell, and some really nice guy with tattoo sleeves and white gloves peek through the door.  I think he was confused to find two little quaking Mormon girls sitting on his doorstep.  He rejected us.  Better next time.

We got a referral this week, a lady who just moved into our boundaries.  She's really excited to get baptized.  We're super excited to meet her.  She speaks Mongolian.  Gift of tongues? #ilikemongolianfood

The highlight this week was surely getting to watch General Conference.  IN ENGRISH.  I ashamedly was 100000000 times more excited to see this time around, not having to pull out the little electronic dictionary and frantically scribbling down words I don't know.  

One of my favorite moments of conference: Elder Timothy Dyches talked about Carl Bloch's "Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda."  That painting has always had a particular place in my heart (art history I miss you!).  BYU has a copy of it in its collection at the Museum of Art and I would often sneak on over from the HFAC between piano practice sessions and just take a moment to CHILL.  The rendition of Christ is so calming and awe-inspiring, as he asks "Wilt thou be made whole?"  Learn of His grace, His mercy, the redemptive power of the Atonement.  As we learn about the Savior, those burdens feel a whole lot lighter and heaven feels a lot less far away.

It's like was said in another talk.  From Life of Pi (last book I read before I hit the MTC):  "I couldn't get Him out of my head.  Still can't.  I spent three solid days thinking about Him.  The more He bothered me, the less I could forget Him.  And the more I learned about Him, the less I wanted to leave Him."

Being alone is a personal decision.  

I'll get off my little passionate missionary platform now.  But it's true!  Life is hard, but it sure doesn't have to be lonely.

Have a stupendous rest of the week, and I'll talk to you again soon.  WRITE ME Y'ALL. 

Love, Margaret

Pic 1:  Post-Conference SLEEPOVER

Pic 2:  Tokyo Skytree, in all its towering glory

Pic 3: Obligatory selfie before the camera died.

Pic 4: Yeah yeah, it's conference time.

Pic 5: Okonomiyaki! (Cabbage pancakes, or something like that?)

(Monday, October 14, 2013)

Week 18

Hi all,

Hope everyone is just well and happy.  Chiba was a tough crowd this week with a whole lot of rain, housing, and streeting.  We've resorted to dancing and singing EFY songs as we hand out chirashis at the eki because a simple "Hi do you want to learn English?" isn't seeming to do the trick.

I believe we got the police called on us as we were visiting a referral from the elders.  I think three incredibly tall American boys freaked out the neighbor lady so she called the police when she saw two short American girls show up the next day.  So we left.  Goooood times.  

On the bright side, it was Sister Christensen's birthday on Saturday.  The big 2-0.  So we celebrated by biking an hour away to track down a referral from a ward member.  We only had the address of the building so we housed the entire apartment building, but there was literally 3 people home in the entire building.  Even more goooood times.  

So we actually celebrated by eating at a burger place as per recommended by one of our hip eikaiwa students.  (Bob Dylan playing over the speakers? I love this place!)   And then we ate a bright purple funfetti cake that Sister Christensen's mama sent all the way from the dear old U.S. of A.  We lit it with a match from the earthquake surivival 72-hour kit.  

We also had a two-zone conference this week which was just the morale boost that I needed.  140 of the 160 missionaries in the mission have come since last April, so ... yeah.  It's crazy.  The zone leaders often call us and make sure we're surviving, but Sister Christensen and I just try to forget that we don't really know anything and just do the best we can.  That's all anyone can ask for, yes?  If you don't know what they're saying, just smile and invite them to church and bear your testimony.  (PS sarcasm not intended).    

My Japanese is slowly but (hopefully?) improving.  One of the ward missionaries lent me her electronic dictionary so now I can actually look up words that I don't know, instead of relying solely on Preach My Gospel to help me decode conversations and emails.  Sister Christensen is a doll and lets me yammer translation in her ear during sacrament meeting, and it quickly lets me see what I don't know.  

Zoachie: Pee day (that's how Zachary spells it, not Margaret) is Monday!  I'm sorry about the idiotic kids.  Don't let them get to you.  Just keep being a good boy.  And yes, I get to watch General Conference.  This coming weekend, I think.  

Heidi:  what's the hubbub about the government shutdown?  I rely on my eikaiwa students to keep me in the know.  One of them tells me about all the latest Apple products.  

Probably the biggest thing I have learned this week: faith wouldn't be faith if it wasn't tested. Is your faith progressing or regressing?

Okay.  That is all for today.  I hope you all loved General Conference.  I am realizing now how much I took it for granted.  Thank goodness I'm in a ward with a fair amount of English speakers so we'll have an English broadcast of it.  And thank you to everyone who writes me.  YOU ARE THE BEST.  I can't even say how much it means to me!  

Love, Magi-chan

Picture 1: Our kids eikaiwa (English conversation) class.  Aren't they the cutest?

Picture 2:  For Sister Christensen's birthday, we slammed some Tim-Tams.  Best grocery store discovery ever.

Picture 3:  I got a mystery delivery of 48 liters of water from Amazon.  Thank you to someone ... ?

Picture 4: Partying the American way.

(Monday, October 7, 2013)

 

Week 17

Dear everyone,

Happy Monday!  Thank you for the lovely letters I got this week.  They made my day.  Replies will be forthcoming. ママコ (Mamako - Margaret's Japanese grandma) and パパコ(Papako - Margaret's Japanese grandpa) sent me two big boxes with all my winter coats and a lot of vegetables from the garden (that I don't really know how to cook), so there will be lots of experimental cooking to come.  Also, thank you お母さん (okaasan - Margaret's mom) for the package!  I adore the shirt and have missed oatmeal more than you could EVER imagine, really.  I am constantly reminded of how American I am when I get up in the morning and all I want to eat is a big bowl of Life cereal and Quaker oats.

This week we had our first meeting as a district since transfers, and man.  It is going to be interesting.  There are seven of us, and we are on transfers 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5.  So basically almost none of us have any experience.  I got recruited to translate the meeting (not because I'm good but out of desperation) since our district leader mostly just speaks Japanese.  I felt sort of bad since the majority of the district was at the mercy of my non-extensive Japanese vocabulary, but it was super good practice (at making up stuff) nonetheless.  

Probably my favorite non-lesson this week was when we stopped by a sort-of investigator's beauty salon / house.  We tried to share a message, but before I knew it she was making us drink noni juice (not good) and was lecturing us on how kanji and Hebrew are related.  Then she started rubbing the noni juice in her hair and eyeballs and told us how she uses it on all her clients.  She's pretty cool.

This week we taught one of our investigators who told us she's trying to quit drinking coffee.  I wanted to be supportive or something so I made Sister Christensen and I commit to give up chocolate and peanut butter for the week.  I know that's not a real even bargain since she's giving up coffee FOREVER but we just met her again today, and so far so good!  She has so much faith and knows this gospel can bless her family so much.  She tells us how she sits in her girls' bedroom late at night reading the Book of Mormon with a flashlight just to find some peace.  She always makes me reconsider what this gospel means to me personally and how life just wouldn't be worth it without it.  Sacrifice brings blessings. 

Sorry this is kind of long.  And ranty.

But it was a good week.  Sister Christensen and I still get lost (2 hours to get to a members' house that was 15 minutes away--kanji will be the death of me).  And we still don't really know how to train each other.　　But the Church is still true!  

LOVE YOU ALL.

Margaret

From one of my dearest friends out in Bosnia:

 "The greatest miracles I see today are not necessarily the healing of sick bodies, but the greatest miracles are the healing of sick souls."

 -Harold B. Lee

Pic 1: Sometimes I feel like a narcissist when I send so many pictures of myself, but I thought it was kind of interesting. 

Pic 2:  One of the members went to the army base and bought us REAL AMERICAN CEREAL!  (Please ignore the fact that I look like Gollum clutching a bowl of 

Life). 

 

Pic 3:  We were leaving a lesson and these little boys followed us to the eki.  I felt like Wendy and the lost boys or something.

(Monday, September 30, 2013)

Week 16

Hi y'all.  

This week was CRAZZZY.  

Highlight numba 1:  On Tuesday, in honor of transfers, we four sisters when to the cat cafe.  One of our eikaiwa students (who brings us pictures of cats that he draws and songs that he writes about "blonde cat" every week) told us about this magical cafe where you can play with cats as you eat.  #supersketch So naturally we had to check it out.  Basically it was a big open room with a bunch of cats running around.  You're not allowed to pick them up so we basically just walked in and stared at them.  We were probably the most un-interactive customers ever.  And then we ate some udon noodles as we watched the cats sit there.  It was awesome. And really expensive.  And really weird.  

Highlight numba 2:  Sister Christensen became my new companion.  As I mentioned last week, Chiba was shrunk down to 2 sisters and 3 elders, so Sister Christensen and I have combined the investigators between the two companionships, which makes for a pretty busy week.  But as a missionary, busy is good.  Neither of us were expecting to be with someone from our doki (same transfer? I don't know what the English translation is) until the end of our missions, but the shortage of experienced missionaries means we are "co-trainers".  Or something.  We always laugh when we have our daily training session because it's not like either of us have the experience to train the other.  But she's super chill and happy all the time so we are having the best time.  

Highlight numba 3:  Miracle Sunday!  All the missionaries spoke in sacrament meeting yesterday, so we took it as an opportunity to call everyone we knew and tell them to come hear us speak.  Miracle of miracles, 7 people came!  The Yoshida family, who we've been teaching for a while, came with their two adorable children.  Yuki, our 15-year old Hannah Montana-loving friend (who told me the other day that when I sang the Backstreet Boys the other day I almost brought her to tears), and Okasan's aunt and uncle, who have lived here in Chiba forever but haven't had the chance to come to church before.  Best day evah. We will now speak in sacrament meeting every week. 

Highlight numba 4:  Sister Christensen and I got kicked off a college campus for proselyting.  A Canadian kid bid us "good luck in our spiritual quest preaching the good word."  We found more investigators than I have my entire mission thus far in those few hours we were on campus, but turns out it was illegal.  Whoops.  It was fun while it lasted.  

So there's the week in a nutshell.  If there's anything I've learned this week, it's that you can't wait around for some intense revelation to tell you exactly where to go or how to do it.  Because believe me, I would probably be sitting in our tatami room all day every day listening to EFY music if that was the case.  I like this quote from Elder Scott: 

"When He withholds and answer, it is to have us grow through faith in Him, obedience to commandments, and a willingness to act on truth.  We are expected to assume accountability by acting on a decision that is consistent with His teachings without prior confirmation.  We are not to sit passively waiting or to murmur because the Lord has not spoken.  We are to act."

またね！Loves!

Till next week,

Your favorite sister missionary in the whole wide world.

Picture 1: Meow.

Picture 2: Meow part 2.

Picture 3: Post-lesson, pre-typhoon.











Picture 4: Designated cockroach catcher.

Picture 5: This was after Sister Bagley and Nagamine moved out.  Some things never change.

Picture 6: The view from our favorite eki where we chase people and invite them to eikaiwa and to get baptized.

(Monday, September 23, 2013)

Week 15 - Transfers

Hi y'all,

Sorry this is super short! But email time got cut because of transfers and such.

I'm not getting transferred.  But our foursome of sisters is getting split so Sister Christensen and I are going to man the fort (aka Chiba) this next transfer.  We have been instructed to be each other's trainers (since we are both just finishing our first transfer).  We got the transfer call standing on the train platform as we were headed to a lesson, and we all cried (me and Sister Christensen = a little/lot panicked, Sister Nagamine and Bagley = sad to be leaving). 

Sooooo yeah. I'll write more next week.  This should be interesting.

Love you!

Magi-chan

(Monday, September 16, 2013)

Week 14 - Hai sai (Hello in Okinawan)

Hi everyone!

So this email is a day late because P-day got moved to today so we could all go to the Tokyo temple.  YAYYYY!  We got up at the crack of dawn, guzzled down some miso soup, put on our coordinating outfits (and no, we did not spend the hour before bed picking our clothes out--because that would be weird), and smashed ourselves onto some crazy packed trains to get to the temple on time.  I'm just grateful every day for Sister Nagamine who reads kanji and train schedules to get us anywhere efficiently.  I taught Sister Nagamine lame American slang in exchange for Okinawan (because learning Japanese isn't enough).  It was so good to see so all the other missionaries in one of the best places in the world.  After the temple we were all craving some good ol' American fare so I got a big juicy hamburger with cherries and feta cheese.  And then Baskin Robbins.  It was a lot of food.  #YOLO

Also, one of our investigators took me and Sister Bagley to Costco today.  I liked it.  It smelled like America.  They had peanut butter.

One of the most memorable events of the week.  Sister Bagley and I were sorting through the area book and found the address of an Indian lady who missionaries had previously taught, so we hopped on our bikes in a mild drizzle and ended up cycling 1 1/2 hours in a monsoon.  When we finally found the place, we looked like a couple of drowned rats (so much for professionalism).  I was relieved to find the aroma of Indian curry wafting out the front door and even more relieved to find her at home.  We shared one of our favorite scriptures (Alma 37:36-37), got a brief lesson on Hindusim and arranged marriages and were out the door with another appointment to teach her a lesson this week. 

Last Saturday, Ramo-chan joined us for a day of dendo and we were off to visit a couple of less active members.  No one was home, but that night we taught Yoko and Taka, the couple I mentioned last week that we found while doing a kubari at the eki.  We watched "Finding Faith in Christ" and discussed the miracles during Christ's ministry, and I gave my first-ever baptismal challenge.  I think I sort of freaked them out.  Actually I know I did.  But things are looking so good and they so love the principle of prayer.  Me too. 

Now for my little preachy moment of the week.  As a missionary I've become so much more (extremely) aware of my shortcomings, especially things that make me really grumpy.  In trying to be a little nicer, I've been reading up on applying grace and the Atonement.  I love the following quote:  "While many Christians view Christ's suffering as only a huge favor He did for us, Latter-day Saints also recognize it as a huge investment He made in us"("His Grace is Sufficient," Brad Wilcox, 2011).  Meaning, I'm not a lost cause.  "The great Mediator asks for our repentance not because we must 'repay' him in exchange for his paying our debt to justice, but because repentance initiates a developmental process that, with the Savior's help, leads us along the path to a saintly character." (Bruce C. Hafen).  I don't think I'll ever be a saint but it sure is worth trying.

Next week is transfers.  13 new areas are being opened to sisters.  I'm crossing my fingers.  I like being in Chiba.

Love, Magi-chan

Pic 1:  some favorite people, a favorite place

(Tuesday, September 10, 2013)

Week 13

Hi minasan,

Hope you all had a swell week.  I thought it was finally cooling off today and then I stepped outside with my glasses and they fogged up from the heat.  But if that's the most I have to complain about then life is pretty good. 

This week Sister Bagley and I taught a Russian girl that Sister Christensen and I found while streeting in downtown Chiba last week.  It was interesting, since there was sort of a language barrier.  She's going home to Russia this week after a summer of studying Japanese in Chiba, so we talked through this combo of broken English, Japanese, and stabbing at a Russian copy of "True to the Faith" that we randomly and fortuitously had in our apartment.  We communicated well enough to go with her to this "American restaurant" where I ordered this interesting piece of chicken that didn't exactly remind me of home, but that's okay.  Sister Bagley was pretty pumped about her chicken wings.  There were cowboy hats and skulls everywhere.  It was weird.

Sister Bagley and I also started teaching the sweetest couple in the whole wide world.  We met the wife while handing out chirashis at the eki the other day.  She walked right up to us (unusual for the typical Japanese person--they usually walk completely around us and I feel as though I'm parting the red sea) and told us she would shorten her dentist appointment because she wanted to be at eikaiwa (English class).  Yeahhhh.  Miracle of miracles, she came! We were able to give her and her husband a church tour, which they seemed super intrigued by since their only background on Christianity was having their wedding in a Christian Church in Guam.  Random, right?  We took them into the chapel, and I got to play some church hymns for them (somebody did a good job picking out that piano--a nice shiny black Kawaii grand).  We asked the husband to pray, and he was so pumped!  Another reaction we weren't exactly expecting.  I decided that one of my favorite things about being a missionary is getting to hear people say their first-ever prayer.  So humbling, and it really makes you think about all the things you take for granted.  Like having the knowledge that you CAN pray, anytime, anywhere, about anything.

On Saturday I got to teach kids' eikaiwa since Sister Nagamine had a lesson.  I mostly just teach them weird American clapping songs.  There's nothing like having a bunch of 8-year olds point and laugh at you when you write things wrong on the board in Japanese.  I'm trying to let go of my pride. 

In thinking about how busy we all are (aka the Japanese population who always say "I'm sorry, I'm so ISOGASHIIIII!"), I revisited one of my favorite talks by Elder Uchtdorf, "Of Regrets and Resolutions."  One of my friends once recommend that I read it when I was bogged down during a semester at BYU (I'm not sure what that says about me, but I appreciated it haha).  Here's one of my favorite excerpts:

"Isn’t it true that we often get so busy? And, sad to say, we even wear our busyness as a badge of honor, as though being busy, by itself, was an accomplishment or sign of a superior life.Is it?
I think of our Lord and Exemplar, Jesus Christ, and His short life among the people of Galilee and Jerusalem. I have tried to imagine Him bustling between meetings or multitasking to get a list of urgent things accomplished.
I can’t see it.
Instead I see the compassionate and caring Son of God purposefully living each day. When He interacted with those around Him, they felt important and loved. He knew the infinite value of the people He met. He blessed them, ministered to them. He lifted them up, healed them. He gave them the precious gift of His time."

So there it is.  Read the whole thing if you have time.  I love it. 

Have a lovely week, y'all.

Love, Magi-chan

Pic 1:  This is America.

Pic 2:  Bedhead + expired cake mix = good time

Pic 3:  Last week's adventure to Asakusa with Ramo-chan



(Monday, September 2, 2013)