She really loves the people (maybe not the mean ones so much but she talks with conviction about how much she loves Japan and the people she is serving). She loves the country and is doing great although she is super busy in her new calling and hasn't been able to do her Japanese study the past couple of weeks. Anyway - there's a fair amount of stuff in her email so let's get to it.
こんにちは、
This week was great overall, but the best part of my week was definitely getting to Skype my family. It's so cool that even though I haven't talked to them since Christmas (other than email of course), it was just like nothing had changed. A special shout out to my mom, dad, and Jantzen, I love you!!
Undram:
Undram is from Mongolia, she's 25, and she's living in Japan right now for school. She's been taking the lessons for about a year, but recently hasn't been progressing. We met with her on exchanges this week (my first time meeting her) and built good trust with her and talked to her about her beliefs. She said english was better than Japanese for her so we talked to her in English although there was still some confusion. She told us that she prays every day, she reads the book of Mormon, and believes in God and Jesus Christ, but then she also said that she was buddhist. I'm not really sure what she is or where she's at with the interest level, but now we're homies and now all we need is someone who speaks fluent Mongolian and English to interpret for us :-) I did ransack the mission office and found pamphlets in Mongolian so I'll have those for next time!
Takadanobaba teaching station:
Our church bought the 2nd floor of a building to be used as a teaching station for mission school. It's prime location as it's about a 10 minute walk from a major train station (Takadanobaba, yes that is it's real name), and right in the center of 3 major universities. We had the opportunity to go and we taught English to a lady there. Next week, we have 2 teaching appointments there! People just randomly show up there all the time wanting to learn English; it's the coolest thing.
Italian flare:
As a sister training leader, we get the opportunity to go on exchanges with all of the sisters in our zone. It gives us an opportunity to get to know each sister one and one and this week I went on an exchange with Sister Fossa. Sister Fossa is from Italy, is a passionate food-lover, loves giving hugs, and loves telling stories; she's also on her last transfer *sad face*. We had so much fun on our exchange. We went to the ikebukuro train station which is one of the biggest stations in Japan. We talked to a ton of people, some nice, some not to nice. We saw these two foreigners and went over to talk to them because why not, and we asked if they ever thought about God. The guy (he was 19) said no in a rude way and then Sister fossa asked why and he said, in a pretty sassy tone, "I'm busy!" I was in shock, like what, you're too busy for God are you kidding me?! I kept my mouth shut because I knew if I didn't I would've said something that God probably wouldn't have wanted me to say and Sister Fossa kindly said something, but now I forget what that something was.. haha oops. The end. Then randomly, Sister fossa asked if I had hand lotion because her hands were dry and I said no but told her to use that as a streeting approach ahha. She accepted the challenge and went up to the next lady we saw and asked her, "My hands are really dry, do you have any hand lotion?" The lady replied, "I'm don't have interest." Hahaha nice to know she was listening... after all that was said and done, we ended up finding 2 new investigators!!
Manami chan:
Manami chan is an investigator that was found a month ago or so, but neither Yamashita Shimai nor I have ever met her. We've been messaging her a little on LINE and she ended up coming to church on Sunday! She's 20 and so cute. She went to a catholic high school so she has a little bit of a Christian background. She loved church and afterwards we had the opportunity to teach her about the book of mormon and how to pray. She thinks both are great and accepted the commitment to read the book of mormon! Way excited about her!!
Muse Acts concert:
One of the shibuya ward members (the area next to mine) rented out this huge concert hall and invited a ton of people to perform various music acts, including the Tokyo zone missionaries! So on Saturday a lot of the Tokyo west missionaries all went and we sang there. It was such a cool experience.
Word of the week:
Word: himatsubushi
Pronunciation: he-maw-tsu-boo-she
Meaning: waste of time
Side note on the word of the week - my companion said it while she was coloring instead of writing in her journal at night, and she even looked it up and showed me so I would know what it means haha. Anyway, have a blessed week everyone. Love you all.
愛しています、
Wunderli Shimai
Pics:
1and2: more from zone pday last week
3. The shibuya shimaitachi came for exchanges
4. Manami chan and a ward member and us
5and6: We stopped in at a pet store for pday and wow this dog 
7. Undram and Sister Fossa
8. Sushi
9. The fam bam 
It sounds like she had a pretty good week overall - those cute little puppies added to it, I'm thinking. While she has challenges, she has really impressed me at how she focuses on the positive.
For those of you keeping track, she has been out over 10 months now. It really is going by quite fast but I still miss her a lot. I know she's doing a really good thing and I've loved watching her grow - she is very obedient and really wants to do what Heavenly Father wants her to do. As always, thanks for your support via thoughts, prayers, email and snail mail - we talked about that on our skype call. They all mean so much to her so keep them coming. Feel free to share your thoughts and questions in the comment section. See you next week.
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