Happy Thanksgiving!

Our Young Womens muffin and dancing activity this morning! 

Having fun going on splits with the sisters! My companion is the one on the far right. She:s great! 

Yummy food! 

My dear beautiful family!! 

This week was great! We went to Ishinomaki for a split with White Shimai and Ishikawa Shimai. Ishinomaki was one of the cities hit by the tsunami. During our split we went to the place where they have all the temporary homes of those who were affected by the tsunami and did service! We gave the elderly women hand massages and sang Christmas hymns! :) 

Our investigator Obara san is doing great! We meet with her a couple times a week, and she is progressing bit by bit! She asks heartfelt questions and thinks about the thing we tell her. She only half-way believes in God, but this last week she told us that after she went home after our lesson, she was thinking about what we:d told her, about how God is our Heavenly Father. She said that just thinking about that helped her start to see people differently, like that we are all kind of connected! We are introducing the Book of Mormon to her and helping her to understand it little by little. 

Here was a little thing I learned from reading the 4 Gospels for Christmas:

Luke 5-

Peter and some of the other disciples had been working all night in their boats and had caught no fish. But then Christ comes and tells them to let down their nets one more time. Peter explains that they:ve already been trying and trying, but, in faith Peter replys, "...nevertheless, at Thy word I will let down the net." "And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake." 

I learned that Christ fills our lives. The disciples didn:t just catch 20 or 30 fish. The nets were breaking; full, complete, running over! 

I love Christ:s words about Himself: 

"I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

I believe in Christ. I believe that He loves us. And I believe that He came to fill our lives. He came to give us abundant goodness and light and perfect love! We just have to embrace it and trust Him. 

I love you all forever and ever!! I:m so so sososo grateful we are a family! 

Love Kingu Shimai

This is a Buddhist Temple called an o-tera.

This is where people are buried after they pass away. 

A cute little Japanese crane :) I love it.

A SAMURAI!

 Here is the "conversation" I had by email with Courtney while she was in the middle of sending these photos:

Mom:  Love the photos!  You look so happy!

Court:  MOMMMMMYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mom: WE ARE TALKING!  Almost in Real Time.  We have had Dave’s 3 daughters here all evening….a rare event for us.  Ashley and Nate came from Utah.  So fun to make them cookies and pancakes.

Looking forward to seeing you over Skype in about one month!

Court:  Yes! I am so excited to Skype on Christmas! Yay! My family! It will be so fun to skype, and I think there won:t be so many homesick tears this time, and that we can keep it to the 40 minutes, cause soon I will be home, and everything is going to be okay! :)

I hope your all having fun together! We get to go to the Chapman familys house this Thursday for Thanksgiving dinner (Shes the blonde lady in the YW activity photo I sent).