Good Morning from Japan!

Good Morning from Japan :)

We made these "bentos"…in Japan it is considered an art form :)  Yes, it is food!

Kind of funny to read the translation into English :)

Summer is officially here in Kurume.  The sweat rags have come out and the make up off.  It's really a miracle people talk to us on the street :)  We have had a fun week.  Full of hand-sized (well, almost) cockroaches, tropical storms, new investigators, and adventures all around southern Japan.  It's been a blast!  

Williams Shimai (Sister Williams) and I have been working on our Japanese a lot and recently have been learning lots of Vietnamese and Nepalese.  The Book of Mormon is not translated into Nepalese so we use lots of fun teaching strategies and bounce around between English, Japanese and Nepalese and Hindi.  Our cute Nepalese investigator is doing great!  We had a wonderful lesson about the Plan of Salvation this week.  In every culture and everywhere in the world, families are central and with the knowledge that our families can be eternal brings hope and comfort.  We had a great discussion with her and she was so cute!  Every time we read a scripture (in Hindi) she would excitedly explain it to us in a mixture of cute English and Japanese.  I love sharing the gospel, but it makes me even happier when our investigators get just as excited as we are about it!  :)  

We have also been focusing on serving people.  When I first got on my mission I expected to do a lot of service.  Anything…mowing lawns (they don't have any here in Japan) or whatever came our way.  But for a solid year we have been offering everyone and anyone who we come across that we would LOVE to serve them.  Missionaries are always happy, but they are especially happy in basketball shorts pulling weeds.  Well, this week we took matters into our own hands.  One of our families who has had a health problem has a huge beautiful garden.  But with how busy they have been it's been a little neglected, so we surprised them and showed up and worked in their garden all afternoon.  It was WONDERFUL!  I have never been so happy raking up old eggplant bushes or radishes.  Williams Shimai and I went in with the goal to help them out with some of their physical needs, but as we were leaving the family asked if we would share a message with them.  We asked what they wanted to hear about and the cute grandma said, "Something about that Jesus Christ you keep talking about."  Gladly :)  It went great!  

I am so grateful to be a missionary here.  I LOVE it.  I can't even tell you about half the amazing miracles that happen to us on a daily basis.  I love it.  I know God is a living God.  He is aware of us.  It is just wonderful :)  I love you guys!  Have a great week!  And be safe!

Hawkins Shimai

From last week :)

July 20th…

This week on Tuesday I will hit my "one year in Japan" mark.  Crazy!  It's starting to feel like the same weather as when I first got here.  There was a huge typhoon in Okinawa and it made it's way up here to the mainland.  It wasn't anything too major.  Sister Wiliams and I were actually not in our area at the time.  We were on splits with the Nagasaki Sisters when the typhoon started to hit.  So we packed up early to make it back to our own area before the transportation systems started to shut down.  We walked to the train station in torrential down pour and heavy rains while carrying all of our bags and pumpkins, jam, and a bunch of other goodies that we had been gifted from the Nagasaki Sisters.  We got lots of stares.  Nothing could be more embarrassing than ringing out our skirts, shoes, and socks while balancing a pumpkin while on a train.  :)  I may never be allowed back in the country.  

I love my area!  It took me a little bit to get to this point, but we have worked so hard and have served the people that it feels like home.  Williams Shimai and I act like we have been together for 5 transfers instead of just one.  Fun doesn't adequately describe our daily adventures :)  I love the ward as well.  On Sunday our typical chorister was sick so naturally as a Sister Missionary I am a perfect target.  Mom, remember I can't keep a tune right?  Well, it gets worse when I am in front of everyone.  I could NOT lead the music.  It turned into a whole ward event.  I had ten woman and even a handful of men lead all 3 songs with me.  The bishop just chuckled behind me the whole time.  On the plus side, I think that will be the last time I ever have to lead the music.  :)  

Yesterday was really wonderful!  One of our cute Nepalese investigators came to church for the first time!  Hopefully my lack of music leading abilities didn't weaken her testimony at all.  She stayed for Sunday School too.  I am just so HAPPY!  I'm getting letters from recent converts too and they all sound happy, they are going to church and they are reading the Book of Mormon.  I am so grateful!  Saturday we had another really great experience.  We met with one of our Vietnamese investigators and taught her a lesson.  We gave her a church tour and when we opened up the baptismal font she had lots of really great questions like,"Who is the leader of the church?" and "How do people join the church?"  "How can I know if God exists?"  So neat!  The spirit was really strong and when we got to the end of the tour she did not want to leave.  She loved being in the church because of the spirit that was there.  It reminded me that although our massive, beautiful church building in Okinawa was nice (is was wonderful, really) it is not necessary for conversion.  The church buildings all have the same spirit in them and that is what really makes it a special place.  

And lastly, all throughout this week I was reminded again and again of how much Heavenly Father loves His children.  As a missionary, I just try to do my best, work hard and hope and pray that Heavenly Father guides us to people who are searching for the gospel and vise versa.  I saw that constantly and consistently this week.  God is real.  He is a living God.  And through Jesus Christ we can come to understand more about who God is and how we can return to live with him.  I love it!  I absolutely love it!  :)

I hope you have a great week!  I love you!  And I am praying for you!

Hawkins Shimai

Learning sign language too

The Nagasaki Zone…what a great bunch of missionaries!

We are headed to Nagasaki today to go on "splits" with the sisters there.  I have never known exhaustion as well as I do now :)  It's been a very busy couple of weeks with going to different areas to help the sisters and trying to keep our own area blossoming.  It's been super busy.  And I have absolutely loved it.  We are running frantically from appointment to appointment, teaching lessons and having a blast.  Just a little over six weeks ago in this new area (Kurume) we were teaching just one lesson, if we were lucky, every week.  Now we are well, well over that :)  It is a huge blessing and I am so grateful.  I have learned a lot about the power of prayer and the miracles that come from "cheerfully doing all things that lie within our power."  I am so, so, so happy.  I really am.  I am seeing the change in our investigators and I am learning with them!  We have a wonderful cute nursing student who we have been meeting with.  Her name is Fukumi and we met her on the street.  She is just one of the purest, genuinely kind people I know.  She has come to church a couple of times and last Sunday she biked several miles in a torrential downpour (It's currently rainy season.  Even Seattle doesn't have this much rain!  I feel like I constantly smell like wet dog.  The other day we met with Fukumi and talked about how her views of God have changed and she said that she came from not knowing anything: only knowing Christ's name and hearing about Christmas to now feeling the peace that comes from His atonement.  I was just so surprised.  She told us so straightforward that she loves what she is learning and she has felt more joy come into her life because of it!  It was an incredible lesson.

This week has been fun because Williams Shimai (Sister Williams) and I are hilarious together.  Two Gaijin (foreigners) in the middle of Japan attempting to understand the train systems and learning Kanji (or learning how much more we need to understand).  It's been a blast!  We laugh constantly.  Last Wednesday we set out on an adventure to find a member's home... we some how ended up in the next ken (prefecture) and totally lost.  We started housing and looked up to see a huge, massive statue.  

Giant statue overlooking the neighborhood we got lost in.

Then we found two young mothers who have now become investigators :)  On our way back, I stopped someone on their bike and it turns out that she is Vietnamese.  (I know "hello", "I love you" and "God" in about 9 different languages)  I used what little Vietnamese I knew and she ended up leading us all the way through town to the nearest train station where we sat down with her and told her about Sac Mac Mon (the Book of Mormon in Vietnamese) and exchanged numbers.  It was a miracle!  And so funny as we used a mixture of English, Vietnamese and Japanese.

Finally the coolest thing ever happened to me!  We were on the local train line to teach an investigator and I saw three cute ten year olds on the train sitting near us.  They were deaf.  Luckily Oi Shimai (Sister Oi) had taught me some Japanese sign language before she left.  I signed to them "how are you" and they freaked out.  They were so excited!  :)  We had so much fun!  One of the girls opened up her notebook and we started writing messages.  When we had to get off the train and leave I gave them a free English class flyer and said if they came we would teach them American Sign Language :)  Only one problem, I don't know any.  Oops!  I might be studying ASL from now on!

The silly picture :) 

I love Kurume.  I really love being a missionary.  I hope you all have a wonderful week!  I love you!

Hawkins Shimai!

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures

Our temple session was in Japanese.

The temple for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Fukuoka Japan

Saying goodbye to Sister Oi :(  She has completed her mission.

My new companion….Sister Williams

Housing with Sister Oi

Visiting shrines in Nagasaki

More Shrines

More Shrines

皆さん久留米からこにちは！

Hello everyone!  

This week was crazy, busy, long and FULL of miracles.  Our preparation day (a day missionaries use to grocery shop, do laundry, cleaning and sight see) was last Saturday which in missionary terms means a LONG time ago.  Our typical preparation day is on Monday, but because we had an opportunity to go to the Fukuoka, Japan, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Temple we switched our preparation day to Saturday.  We absolutely loved the temple.  It was a huge adventure because the four sisters that attended the temple were all American!  We had to take lots of trains, leaps of faith, and wrong roads to make it to Fukuoka.  But it was an absolute blast and well worth it.  In the train station 7 people (we counted!) asked to take our picture. :)  So search Japanese blog websites and Facebook!  We have got to be out there somewhere!  The temple was beautiful.  I haven't been able to go for over a year.  The last time I went was in Provo, halfway through the my time at the Missionary Training Center before it closed for cleaning.  Last Saturday was also a long time ago because that meant we had to buy groceries two weeks ago and hope they lasted until today.  I'll just cut to the chase by telling you that they didn't last, so we called this past week the week of the famine.  I typically eat weird things in Japan, but not as weird as the things we ate this past week as we literally cleared out our cupboards.  Luckily we had members come through for us and miraculously yesterday (when we had NO food) we went out and worked and got a lot of onions, potatoes and a random scary looking bag of dried fish heads.  Those things have never tasted so good.  

This week was wonderful!  I wish I could tell you about it ALL, but I'll tell you about Fukumi Chan!  She is a cute 22 year old nursing student who Oi Shimai (Sister Oi) and I met our first week in Kurume last transfer.  We got her number and a couple weeks later we were able to get a hold of her and set up an appointment.  Because of how busy she has been, how busy transfer week was and getting a new companion we hadn't been able meet with her.  But we, through a set of miraculous events, were able to meet with her Friday and taught her about the Plan of Salvation.  It really had a big impact on her because she loves her family and also as a nurse she works a lot with human frailties and death.  We talked about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and asked Fukumi Chan if she had any questions and she said she had no questions, but instead gave us a summary of the Atonement, applied it to her own life and bore her testimony to us!  She is incredible.  She came to church this Sunday and stayed all three hours and during Relief Society (a class for the women in the church) shared comments and insights!  Williams Shimai (Sister Williams) and I just sat back in awe.  Quite speechless!  She said after church that she loved it, that she felt at peace and was grateful she had the opportunity to learn about Jesus.  It was incredible!  It has been a huge privilege to see the city of Kurume really grow in church membership.  We started just a few weeks ago with no investigators, the ones we did have dropped us.  But I have really come to understand the power of prayer and the blessings that come from enthusiastic, diligent, hard work. 

On a side note.  I love Williams Shimai (Sister Williams).  We are having a blast!  Getting lost daily, learning kanji, speaking Nepalese, etc.  Pray for us :)  

Love you guys!  Have a wonderful week!

ホーキンス姉妹より

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