McKenna in Japan!: Pictures from Nakagawa

Children in the local congregation! Super cute!

Morning hike in Nakagawa, my new area, with Sister Crump.

Red arches along the path.

Our morning hike! Beautiful!

Sister Crump, my new companion, and I in Nakagawa.

Children in Japan…so friendly!

A sword fight with a boy we met while knocking on doors, I lost!

Saying goodbye to sweet Sister Williams. A sad day!

Happy Halloween!

Sorry I did not write earlier... We live so far away from the church now that the mission president gave us special permission to email on a different day than our Preparation day. Typically we will email Tuesday, but this week we had mission leadership conference and then Sister Owada, my Sister Training Leader companion, and I were super busy running to and fro doing trainings for the two zones that we just barely had enough free time to hop on the computer and email!

Let me tell you a little bit about my new area. It's really interesting. We have MONKEYS! Seriously though. Blue butt monkeys! We live in the Jungle. It's a cute little place. It takes us about an hour on our bikes to get to the church. Luckily no hills, but it is a long way. Lots of good exercise. I will send pictures. I like my new companion, Sister Crump. We have lots of fun together. She is great at directions, so she really is heaven sent. I am getting lost more often than ever. We have kind of been starting from scratch, but we had two really neat experiences that I wanted to quickly share with you.

We have the cutest high school student who is currently investigating the church. I got to meet her for the first time this week at Eikaiwa and we taught her a lesson before English class started. We talked a little bit about the Plan of Salvation and where she has been reading in the Book of Mormon. I was beyond shocked when she told me that she had read 10 chapters in 1 Nephi since the week before. She asked wonderful questions and then shared her testimony with us about the peace she feels when she reads even though she might not understand 100 % of the context. I was pretty much in shock at this point after our investigator said that. That has got to be a first on my mission. Especially coming from someone so young. Then when we finished the lesson I asked her if she had any questions for the church member who joined us in the lesson. Yuki Chan sat for a minute and then said, "So the sisters mentioned Baptism in the last lesson and I didn't understand it at all. What is it?" Our member did a wonderful job of explaining what Baptism is and the meaning behind it. I asked Yuki Chan if when she felt that what we had taught was true and the God really does live and this is Christ's church would she be baptized... She said yes! We set a date with her for November 29th. That girl was just so excited about the whole thing too. I asked her after the lesson how she felt and she just beamed and said she felt great and wanted to feel like that all the time. I love seeing that happiness in our Investigators lives. It is just priceless!

Lastly, Sister Owada and I due to scheduling problems had the opportunity to work together a lot this week. We were out housing and no one was super willing to listen to us. We stopped and prayed and looked at our watches. We had about 2 more minutes before we had to go home, so we decided to house one more door. We knocked and a young 21 year old came out and started talking to us. We talked to her about Christ and she just burst in to tears. She said that she was at home with her 6 month old daughter and was having a hard time all day. She kept remembering her nice Christian neighbor who she used live next door to. But the girl we were talking to had just moved from Kita Kyushu about a month before and had no family or friends close by. When we knocked on her door she said she felt like it was destiny. She invited us in and we got to meet her daughter. It was absolutely wonderful. Owada Shimai (Sister Owada) and I practically floated home. I know that God answers prayers. And most of the time those prayers are answered through other people. Especially this Sunday when I went to church. I was so nervous! I felt like a brand new missionary again and there were so many new faces and names to memorize, at the same time I tried to figure out who was our investigator and who was a member. I don't think I have ever had so many people come up to me and give me a hug or tell me how happy they were to see me even though they didn't know anything about me. Tender mercies!

I love you all! Have a wonderful week!

Hawkins Shimai