Week 20 - A Lot of Rain!

Hellooooo.

So.  We had our first investigator officially drop us this morning.  That was really sad.  

Oh wait ... she's on the phone right now ... yes right now ...

Spoke too soon.  She wants to meet us at the church this week and have a lesson.  Hallelujah, miracles DO happen.

In other news, we finally had the Halloween Party that has been in the works since August.  (No really, the chairperson rounded up all the missionaries the first week I arrived in Japan for a meeting).  Sister Christensen and I sat in the corner and painted kids' faces with Halloween-y themed pictures.  The same kids kept coming back and pretty soon we were running out of body parts to paint.  We helped the Relief Society make little rice balls with Jack-o-lantern faces made out of seaweed.  

A strange fusion of Pinterest and Japan.  Welcome to the land of the rising sun.

We had a typhoon this week.  Fortunately a couple of weeks back I invested in a pair of dollar-store rain pants.  Unfortunately, my luxury-rain pants ripped in the crotch all the way down to my ankle so I might as well have just worn no rain gear at all.  Good thing I like rain.

I awoke on Thursday morning to have the phone buzzing in the middle of the night (and by the middle of the night, I mean 6am) to hear the bishop's voice on the other end.  We were supposed to evacuate, but neither Sister Christensen nor I could really make out what the announcer over the siren outside was saying so it was a really good thing the bishop called us.  But we were prepared with backpacks carrying our finest missionary wear.  If we're going to evacuate, we might as well look cute.  A few more typhoons are set to hit this week but our apartment is on the second floor so we are pretty safe.  (Don't worry お母さん!)

Sister Nagamine sent me to Narita this week to "train" her two first-transfer missionaries while she went on an exchange with Sister Christensen.  Haha.  It's a little unnerving when thinking about how young everyone is, so I just try not to think about it.  I learned some good Aussie lingo ("heaps" = really, so that was "HEAPS AWESOME") and talked to some nice Buddhist people on the street.  #storyofmylife

We had a lesson with an investigator who's been taking the lessons for about 12 years now.  The whole issue of blind obedience repeatedly kept coming up, so I turned to the oh-so-wise-and-logically-sound words of Dallin H. Oaks for a little direction:

"We all act upon or give obedience to knowledge.  Whether in science or religion, our obedience is not blind when we act upon knowledge suited to the subject of our action.  A scientist is not blind when we act upon knowledge suited to the subject of our action.  A scientist receives and acts upon a trusted certification of the content or conditions of a particular experiment.  In matters of religion, a believer's source of knowledge is spiritual, but the principle is the same.  In the case of Latter-day Saints, when the Holy Ghost gives our souls a witness of the truth of the restored gospel and the calling of a modern prophet, our choise to follow the teachings is not blind obedience."

That pretty much sums it up.  Thank you, Elder Oaks.

And that's about it.  Lessons are far and few in between and some people's eyes pop out of their heads when I pull out the Book of Mormon, but that doesn't make the work any less true.  

Go share the gospel with someone today.  Hey, thanks!

Magi-chan

Pic 1: District photo shoot.  A pretty mismatched bunch.

Pic 2: The fruits of a three-hour seaweed-cutting sesh, courtesy of the Relief Society.

Pic 3: Happy Halloween part 2. 

Merry Christmas from Tokyo Mission Office

Dear Parents,

As we approach the holiday season we wanted to reach out to the families of our wonderful missionaries to thank you for your support, and to invite you to unite your prayers with ours as we exercise our faith for a Christmas miracle during this holiday season.  The desire of our hearts is to have a "White Christmas", i.e., a baptism in every ward or branch in our mission between now and Christmas.  We can think of no better gift to give our Savior than to bring many souls unto Him and to strengthen the wards and branches in this special part of his vineyard.  The Lord said, "whatsoever ye shall ask in faith, being united in prayer according to my command, ye shall receive." (D&C 29:6)  We firmly believe that as we unite our faith and prayers with yours that we can see this miracle.

We have forty wards and branches in the mission, so we have decided to have the missionaries in each area fast on 40 different days during this period.  We believe that the combination of our united faith and prayers and this special 40 day fast will help us draw upon the powers of heaven.

We have also put up a special Christmas Miracle Tree in the mission home.  As each area has a baptism we will put a wrapped present under the tree to symbolize our gift to Christ.  We plan to fill each gift box with miracles and conversion stories that are shared during this period in each area; we look forward to sharing many of these with you.  We also plan to make special ornaments with the pictures of those who have come unto Christ during this season, and will display them on the tree.  We will update the mission blog with pictures of the tree as the number of presents and ornaments grows.

We hope that by uniting our faith and prayers that we will not only have a "White Christmas", but that you and your loved ones will feel a special bond with your missionary while they labor here in this great cause.  As you may know, our mission motto is:  United in So Great a Cause.  It is our sincere desire that as you pray every day as families for every ward and branch in our mission to see a baptism during this holiday season, that you will feel united with your missionary, with our mission, and with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.  I testify that this is God's work, that he desires to bless us and the Japanese people, and that Jesus is the Christ.  It is our honor and privilege to be in His service.  Shall we not go on in so great a cause?

Merry Christmas, and thank you for faith and prayers!

Love,

President and Sister Budge

(Monday, October 14, 2013)

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)