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| Trainer Sugihara Shimai with Gibbs Shimai |
こんにちは！[Hello!]
How is everybody? Having a fun
summer? Hope everyone had a good 4th of July! (...Didn't
even realize it was the 4th until writing in my journal and someone said, hey!
its the 4th of July! haha). Thank you SO much for the Christmas in
July package! Ironically, my companion and I had been talking about that
earlier that day. We had a lot of fun opening it up and reading all the notes.
It was very appreciated and am very grateful for all the work that went into
it!!
Everything here is great. Its
officially summer, which means hot. Today its 33 C. Its not too bad but being
in the sun all afternoon does take a toll. I don't know how missionaries do it
in super hot countries. Jonathan, good luck in Thailand).
This week we saw many miracles
but was exhausting. For the first time, I bear 99% of the language
responsibility. Before, it was about 15%. Plus everything else that comes with
teaching a new missionary. I'm having a hard time balancing
niceness/strictness. I'm realizing by nature, I lean on the stricter side.
Thank you お父さん [Dad] :) But we are learning together. I appreciate
my trainers even more now and am grateful for everything they taught me.
There's also another shimai in the apartment who is training for the second
time so she has helped me quite a bit. And I'm learning to depend much more on
Heavenly Father for where to go and when. However, I still somehow got lost
about 3 times this week haha (In my defense, one time was the map's fault).
Gibbs Shimai is patient with me though and is a good sport while I drag her all
over Obihiro. The balance between using English and Japanese has been hard too.
Her language ability is understandably very young (I mean, shes been here a
week and a half!) and I'm not sure how much of an 'immersion' I should do. But
the bigger problem is me. I'm not patient enough to wait for her to get through
the Japanese. It's so much easier to just flip to English. So I'm working
on that. Any advice?
The work is moving forward in
Obihiro. We had two progressing investigators this week and that made me so
happy! We were able to do two really good lessons and both are on their way to
baptism. I'm hopeful that they will be this transfer :) We also went housing a
looot this week. We found a really nice old man who let us come back and teach
a lesson! And we found a few more potentials. I was happy that Gibbs S could
finally see that not everyone says no to us even if it may have felt like that
the first few days.
I've been reading The Book of
Mormon a lot more lately and found a few scriptures I really like. I wanted to
share one of them. 2 Nephi 33:6. While I was reading it, I just felt impressed
with the simplicity of it. My love for missionary work grows daily as well as
my love for the people and this gospel. Thank you all for your love, support,
and prayers. They are strongly felt!! Love you all!
Love,
Sugihara Shimai
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