I LOVE PRAYER

Sunday July 13th

Konnichiwa,

Its crazy that the time has gone by so fast and slow at the same time!  I was thinking about how different my mission has been in every area.  I feel like I have been on three completely different missions all packed into one experience.  All wonderful and hard in their own ways.

Nakamoto is doing so good!  He came to church yesterday for the first time!  He showed up exactly when we told him to come, and he was able to see the baptism of a little boy that turned 8 yesterday.  He stayed for all three hours, and when we went to meet up with him after priesthood, all the elders and our mission leader were circled around him.  He had his Book of Mormon opened up and was sharing his favorite scripture!  I didn't even know he had a favorite scripture?! Haha he was so cute.  His faith in Jesus Christ is growing and it makes me sooo happy!  I feel like he is going to accept our invitation to be baptized.  We are going to invite him this week. :) Pray that he says yes!

Our other progressing investigator (Taira) has sort of slowed on his progression.  However, we taught the full restoration to him last week and he LOVED IT.  He committed to pray about it to know if it was true, and yesterday when we met with him, he said he didn't pray about it yet.  I'm not sure what he is waiting for, but we are working on getting him to pray.  He is so stubborn about it! If there is anything I have learned on my mission, it is the power of prayer and the importance of it.  If we don't have the confidence to open our mouths to talk to Heavenly Father, not only are we letting Satan have full power to tempt us and deceive us in our lives, but we CANNOT know of spiritual truths.  I LOVE PRAYER.

I think i told you about the mother that we met with 8 children? When we went back, she rejected us pretty hard core which was way crappy, but the good news is that we found 2 other investigators in that same apartment complex, so it made it okay :)

The typhoon wasn't too bad, just way, way, way strong winds.  Knocked a few trees over, but other than that nothing was damaged.

Kashiwa and I had a little bit of a bumpy week at times with our communication (LANGUAGE BARRIER!!!!!) but we were able to talk things out and we are happy and genki again :) Love her!

Other than that, nothing too crazy to update you on.  The work is going well here and I am so blessed to be a part of it!

I had my first Okinawa mango last week at a members house and it was SOOO DANG GOOD!  Mango is now my favorite fruit.  Guess how much 4 mango's cost? $40 dollars.  We bought the cheapest kind we could find for $10 dollars, mmmm so good :)

Anyways! Love you all, have a good week!
Love, Sharp Shimai