Hold up your light!

Monday 3, 2014

Konnichiwa!

MIRACLES!

Fast Sunday of COURSE always, always brings the miracles!!!  First, last week we met with our investigator Marina and she came to sacrament meeting YAY! (she has been meeting with missionaries for over a year now. She basically knows everyone in the ward but isn't getting baptized..) I can't remember how much detail I have given on her, but she 18 and is going to America in May to go to school in New York.  Sister Heaton and I KNOW that now is her time to receive the gospel.  She needs it sooo bad before she goes to America.  We are teaching her today with the young woman's president who is AMAZING.  The yw president speaks fluent English she is a huge blessing, except she is moving to Tokyo next week!! :( :(  Her and Marina are really close so I pray that today's lesson we can see some major progression.  We are inviting her to be baptized for April 5th.  I really think she will accept!  She knows that the church is true…something is holding her back, and we aren't sure what exactly it is, she's super cute though! Love her :)

Seguchi San-
We taught her last week with a member who is also way awesome.  We taught the restoration with a really good visual aid and she LOVED it.  She understood everything and knows the church is 100 percent true.  She comes to church every single Sunday but is refusing baptism right now…really weird…we ask her how much she is progressing each lesson and we finally made a break through with her in the last lesson…slowly but surely she is progressing to getting baptized.  I think she might have a really deep fear either of water or men…I'm not quite sure.  The yw president told us that she thinks she was abused as a child so there are a few things that aren't quite right with her, but she really wants to get baptized but for some reason the ACT of baptism itself is not something she wants to do…little by little we'll get it figured out I think.  She's way cute though, I need to get a picture with these people so you can see who they are :)

NEW investigator- Kowazaki San! We found her last night.  She has two kids, age 3 and 4 and she is super nice!  I really don't know if she even remembers anything we said to her on the door step??  Her daughter was jumping all over her but when we asked to come back she said 'sure!' so we made an appointment for this Tuesday at 3, hallelujah we found a family!!! :)

Right before we housed into her, we stopped two high school girls on the street and gave them both book of Mormons and invited them to our English class (which is getting HUGE by the way.  Its getting so big we are now teaching a beginner, advanced AND just started a children's class this last Saturday!  I LOVE JAPANESE KIDS!!!!!!!) Anyways, they weren't way interested in the gospel but there was something about them that I kept being drawn too…we talked to them for maybe 5 minutes, left, found Kowazaki San and then were getting ready to leave the area, I was saying a prayer before we got back on our bikes and those two young girls came back to us out of nowhere..my first thought was 'great..they probably are giving back the book of Mormon', but we realized they wanted something else…they were both saying a word in Japanese that both Sister Heaton and I had never heard before so we were like uhhh?? sorry! we don't really know what you are trying to say?!  And then they said 'we never get to meet Americans' (in Japanese) and then grabbed my hand to shake it.

In Japanese Culture when first meeting a person you bow, its weird for them to shake hands, but because we were Americans they really wanted to shake our hands.

To Sister Heaton and I they kept saying 'You are so beautiful!!'  So I took a picture with the both of them and then again told them to come to Eikaiwa (English class) I felt the love of God so strong for the both of them as we left to head home.

Heavenly Father is preparing the hearts of SO many people.  We are his hands.  I can't count how many times I have come to realize that its not really me they are talking about…I know its the Love of their Heavenly Father and Light of Christ that they are seeing and feeling when they speak to me, and that is the only thing they know to equate it with,  Christ said:
Hold up your LIGHT that it may SHINE unto the WORLD.  Behold I am the light which ye shall hold up-

As we live worthy of the Holy Ghost we are filled with the light of Christ.  Others see this light in our faces and they want what we have.  I know this to be true because I have seen it time and time again on my mission.  Truly, it is a beautiful thing that can visibly be seen!  Let us hold up the light of Christ each day and bring our brothers and sisters home.

I thank Heavenly Father each day for all the trials, heartaches and disappointments that come each day. I know that its through the challenges that we face that we are able to more fully rely upon the Atonement of our Savior.

Hold up your light.  Hold up the light of our Savior.

I love you all! Keep fighting against Satan in this very real battle that is going on all around us.  Stay united as a family and don't let the little petty things in life become more important than a person to be loved.

I love you all,
Sharp Shimai