みなさんこんにちは！

I feel like so much happened this week I don't even know where to start, so I guess I'll start with food... Haha. We were so spoiled this week. I had sushi in Japan for the first time and a ward member fed us homemade gyoza and gave us a loaf of homemade bread and jam to take. So good. Also remember that all you can eat naan place? Apparently there's a competition among the missionaries to see who can eat the most naan. Each piece is twice the size of my head and our district leader, who's only like 6' ate 7. We were all impressed.

I got to know the ward members here a bit better. There's this one lady who is an absolute angel. She plans her life around the temple. Like right now she isn't working so she can spend all her time visiting people in the hospital and less actives and serving everyone she can. She does this and goes to the temple, which you have to fly to get to since it's in Tokyo, so she saves so she can go to the temple, and that drains all her money. So she goes back to work until she has enough money to serve and go to the temple again because she can't get days off if she continually works. One day I want to develop as much love as she has for the lords house.

Sometimes missionary work can get discouraging. We dendoed in a rainstorm one night and yesterday is snowed. People say I look really Japanese here. We teach an English class once a week and one student was speaking English until he saw me and asked where I was from in Japan. It's cool but then a lot of people ask why I don't speak Japanese if my mom is Japanese. Right now I'm trying to just forget about myself though and focus on loving everyone around me with the love God has for them. I'm also trying to be a more consecrated, committed missionary by losing myself in order to find the person Christ wants me to become. There's this talk called the fourth missionary that I love. One piece says "Trust him that he will make of you, immeasurably more than what you will ever, ever in all eternity, make of yourself. He will create of you a masterpiece. You will create of you only a smudge. You will create an ordinary man. He will create of you a God." I love this because it encourages us to let go of our will and turn ourselves over to our father in heaven who knows us and our potential more than we know ourselves. It might seem hard to do (right now it seems hard to do to me) but I know that as we trust the lord even if we're scared, if we go and say I will go and do like nephi even if we don't know what we're doing we'll be made stronger in the end.

I love you all! Have a great week this week! Thanks for your emails they're really encouraging. 

Love,

Massey shimai