September 9, 2013 week 33 Esperar

Boa noite!

This week so much has happened…. I don’t know if I can fit it into one email without leaving out so many important things… But, I’ll try my best 🙂

On Tuesday, our zone had interviews with President Budge. It was really great two be able to sit down and talk to him about Oizumi, what we have planned for it, the people, how we can help them, everything. Transfers are next Monday, but at the end of my interview President Budge told me that they need me in Oizumi, and asked me if I could stay there another transfer. So im 99.999999999% positive I’ll be here longer 🙂 which I’m defintely not complaining about. We have some amazing people here. And I know we can help them find the light of the gospel.

Wednesday was probably my favorite day of the week. It started with going to the Brazilian plaza to try and visit a less active member, Marcia. But when we got there, we actually ran into another less active there, Nubia. (Oizumi doesn’t have the best luck with retention. But, we’re going to change all that!) Nubia honestly has a heart of gold. She has a desire to help everyone. She was baptized here in Oizumi about a year ago, and has been incredibly busy with work ever since. But, we had a chance to sit down and talk with her, and afterwards she told us to stop by her house anytime to come visit. The members love her as well, so we just need to get her coming back to church. Before we left, she ran into a store and came out with these two furry stuffed animal dogs, one yellow and one green (for Brazil of course) and gave them to Sister Carrasco and I. I haven’t named mine yet, but he sits on my study desk every day.
Wednesday night we had a lesson with Erika. hisashiburi desho. We haven’t been able to meet with her for a while because she is always busy. Not gonna lie, I was EXTREMELY nervous to teach her. She’s our one investigator that we teach in Japanese, but everytime we had gone previously, we had an older sister missionary with us. That being said, I think it was one of the best lessons we have had with Erika yet. We taught her about the gospel of Jesus Christ. (faith, repentance, etc.) She’s still struggling with her belief in God, but she really has a desire to know. I thought she was going to tear up a little bit when we talked more about faith. About believing in things we cannot see, and more importantly, having faith in Jesus Christ, that he is the son of God, and that he can lift all of our burdens. Erika said the prayer at the end of the lesson, and it was really great. The end of it was my favorite. I think in English it comes across something like “Heavenly Father, I’m still struggling to believe, but I really want to believe. Please help me.”. I’ll admit it, I’m a sap. Almost cried during the prayer. If we can keep meeting with Erika I know she can keep progressing.

Thursday….. on Thursday I legitimately did cry. And not for a good reason either. 😦
That day we went to Celia to teach her about fasting and invite her to fast about baptism. However, as soon as we walked in the front door, the first thing she said to us was, “Today is the last time I can meet with you”. Ouch. Bam. Slap. Being dropped always hurts. She told us that she was going to start going to school/studying again, so she wouldn’t have time to meet with us for a long time, but that we could still pass each other in the street and be friends. We still taught her a lesson, but it was definitely a little rough, and Im sure Sister Carrasco and I were both visually upset. And it wouldn’t have been so bad either if she hadn’t born this crazy amazing testimony after I asked her to keep reading the Book of Mormon. She knows its all true, and she said she would never deny it. She just doesn’t feel like she has time right now. Its hard, but I know someday she’ll get there. The seed is planted, and the testimony is there, she just has to figure out her priorities now.

Friday and Saturday were a blur, so I’ll just throw them all together. Bruna is finally out of the hospital! yosh! It took long enough, but she is back home hobbling around, and now just has to go to therapy 3 times a week. Now that Bruna is back at home we are hoping we can try to start teaching her little sister eduarda again… or even better, her mother Debora. Fingers crossed and wish us good luck!

We also got to meet twice this week with the Takamura family. Sayuri, her brother Fabricio, and her mom and dad. They are the referral that we got last week from the Funaki family. The Takamura family really is a great family. So full of love for everyone and always willing to help. We taught Sayuri and Fabricio about the Restoration of the Gospel, and then about the Book of Mormon the next time we met them. Fabricio is only 11, but he’s a smart little kid. He’s already in Nephi chapter 11, and he told us that he reads the Book of Mormon every night before he goes to bed. We’re hoping to be able to teach the whole family together about the Plan of Salvation, but its a little hard when the mom and dad both have really intense work schedules.
I also ate the weird food of the week with the Takamura family. They’re Peruvian, so the mom made us ceviche one night. It’s basically cut up raw octopus, squid, and some kind of white fish. Then they put a ton of lemon juice on it. I guess the acidity from the lemon cooks everything. And some cilantro. It was surprisingly good. I couldnt look at what I was eating sometimes because the octopus was purple and still had the little suckers on it, but other than that it was great.

We also did housing this week of course, but it has been pouring rain lately in Oizumi. So, we get to go around in our kapas (rain gear) on our bikes. Mine is all black, and Sister Carrasco’s is all blue, so I feel like we pretty much look like the equivalent of a robber and a smurf. I got a good laugh out of the idea.

Something cool I liked this week… is actually from PMG. Chapter 6, the Christlike attributes. The one about hope. So as a missionary, they always tell you to hope for miracles. But in portugues, the word they use is “esperar”. It kind of means, to hope, to expect, and to wait for… So when we esperar milagres, we are expecting miracles to happen, as long as we are doing the Lord’s will. There’s a quote from Neal A Maxwell on the page that says, “Being blessed with hope, let us, as disciples, reach out to all who, for whatever reason, have moved away from the hope of the gospel. Let us reach to lift hands which hang hopelessly down”. How amazing is it that hope is a blessing! And, as latter-day saints, those that have the gospel, we have this hope, and we get to share it with others. Sometimes its easy to get down when things don’t go your way, when people don’t answer their doors, and when things fall through, but when we have hope, we work against all those things, knowing that it will all work out in the end for our good. The Lord is never ever ever going to throw something our way that we can’t handle. We just need to persistently have that hope that he’s going to help us out a little bit.

I love being a missionary. There are miracles happening everyday. Some of them I see here, and on the days where it seems like nothing went our way here in Japan, without fail there is an email or letter from someone, telling me about something in their life that was a blessing to them that day. So, yes, EVERY SINGLE DAY there are miracles happening out there. For us in the mission field, and for our loved ones at home. I miss you guys like crazy, but your in my prayers every night, and I know that as missionaries, Heavenly Father takes care of our families more than we ever could. Keep the faith, stay strong, and esperar to see miracles and have hope everyday. I know it’s possible, because all things are possible to them that believe.

Amo muito voces.
愛しています皆さん

Sister Hunsaker 🙂