I have no time! I'm sorry! I'll write down all the sick miracles we saw this week in next weeks email! We got transfer emails and I am still in Shonan and my companion is Sister Hernández! She speaks Spanish to help our three Spanish speaking investigators! One of them might have a baptismal date soon! And everything is looking fly!
Love Sister Fordiani 1. Dinner at the Komine family's home with like half the ward! Party! 2. I ran into Yamaguchi Shimai in Yokohama and it was a huge surprise because she flew up for only two days and I didn't know and when I saw her I cried because I love her so much! 3-5. We threw a surprise party for Itou san's birthday and made a sponge cake that tasted yummy in the microwave in five minutes! It was a special recipie! She had no idea and she cried because she was so happy! 6. Splits with my favorites! Smiley Shimai and Sanchez Shimai! 7. Mt. Fuji from our apartment! Today is the best weather! It's so clear!
The best thing happened today was when I went to Yokohama! My companion Yamaguchi Shimai went home in December because she finished her mission! And today we just ran into her! She came to Yokohama to see her MTC companion and stay with President Wada! I am a big baby and it was unexpected that I would see her so I totally cried haha in front of a huge group of missionaries that were with her... 😐 oh well! I was sooooooo happy! Its like seeing your family when you see old companions! We have had lots of success with people this week! We are finding so many people who wanna listen to us! Yay! Most of them are from South America haha what!!? Yeah the population of people from Peru and Bolivia specifically is actually really high! Most of our investigators are from South America haha :) I haven't got the letters (from family) yet but I'm watching for them. All the mail goes to the office then they forward it to us, but if they are busy sometimes it doesn't come out as frequent as we'd like it to...
Other than that we have just been living the same miracle seeing, freezing, pasta and curry eating, teaching, finding, always working missionary life!
Sorry this is so short! We had no time today like always! And it snowed today for the first time!
Love Sister Fordiani
Dinner with the Spanish speaking sisters! Purikura with our high school friends haha!
It's the middle of January and it is cold! Now I don't have a lot of room to complain because I'm not in Hokkaido and we don't have any snow yet, but being cold is not a fun thing! We battle it with layers of tights skirts, shirts, jackets, and I have yet to layer coats so that's good! Humidity just pierces through it all and makes you freeze anyway!
This week was literally probably the best week of my mission so far! We found and taught two new investigators who are already progressing making our pool of progressing investigators 4 people! This has never happened on my mission before! I love each person so much it hurts! We have Sayuri Itou San and Selena Crespo San from before, and this week we found Jessica and her beautiful Bolivian family of 5 and Hiroko Shimizu San!
The Spanish speaking elders actually housed into Jessica in the beginning of December, and she said the sisters could come back to teach her. We haven't been able to though because Wallace Shimai and I don't speak any Spanish haha. But when we went on splits we had a Spanish speaking sister come to our area and go with me to her house. She didn't remember the elders at all due to the length of time between contacts, but she still let us in and let us teach the restoration! I could barely help teach at all because she only speaks Spanish but we practiced in the morning and I introduced each part of the lesson and the Spanish speaking sister then explained everything after that haha! Whoo! Maybe I'll come back trilingual? (Not) 😉 We are going back tomorrow to teach her the plan of salvation!
We were handing out English flyers at Chigasaki station later that night when I met Shimizu San. She has a background in Christianity and a love for English so she loved the Family English Eikaiwa program I introduced to her. She told me very strongly that she is not looking to join a church, but that's okay because when we met with her again that Saturday, we introduced the church anyway through teaching the restoration haha! Yes! The Family English program we do is 30 minutes of English class and 30 minutes of gospel study/intro to our church and beliefs. When we taught the restoration it literally answered all of her concerns! She didn't realize we were the Mormon church until the end when we introduced the Book of Mormon! But that ended up being a blessing because lately I guess there has been horrible newscasts on TV saying bad things about our church. 😔 she said if she knew we were Mormon beforehand she would've never said yes to meeting with us... 😳 holy miracle. At the end we read the promise in Moroni 10 and as she read it out loud she all of a sudden looked up at us and said, "Do you feel that!? It just all of a sudden got way hot!" Oh my! The Holy Ghost filled up the area of the tiny study we were in! AND THEN after all of that we asked her if we could meet with her again because we were really ballsy for teaching her when she said not to haha. (We said that it was an introduction to our church so it worked out) and she said NO. I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE. She is so prepared and this will bless her life so much! So I asked why! And she said when she studied before she took a lot of time to investigate and we don't wanna waste our time and she doesn't wanna waste our time either. I was filled to the brim with love for this woman already, but in that moment it overflowed and I told her I knew God loved her so much and he wants her to be happy. And because he loves her, we do too and we want her to know the truth for herself. The spirit was guiding me because she paused and said, "Okay, I'll meet with you one more time." This whole lesson was a miracle but shoot after that I we were so exhausted we went out to eat cause fixing food sounded like torture haha! So that lesson will happen sometime this week... Pray for us and this amazing person!
Though the lessons we taught this week my testimony was strengthened in this gospel so much! It is true. The gospel answered all of our investigators questions and the spirit we felt together was so sweet and pure. I'm so blessed to have this missionary experience. It has been worth all of the tears and heartache! I can't wait to watch these two special daughters of God progress on their journey to find lasting peace and happiness which I testify is only found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is Christ's perfect church once again restored to the earth through the prophet Joseph Smith. Until next week! I'm sorry that was ridiculously long!
Love Sister Fordiani
The mission at Christmas conference Dendo with the nekko chan!
I had a great new year! We were really busy but we have two new investigators and I got to go see the sun rise on the very first day of the year! It was the very first sunrise and Fuji San was in the background! Way beautiful! We got permission to go to the beach💛 we also had a zone meeting and Christmas party where I saw all of the missionaries who were in the MTC with me! We took a picture together! Yeah transfer 7! Plus my old companion met Elder Clinger when she went home to Fukuoka! I hope everyone has a wonderful new year and remember that as you set goals work on them slowly and don't stress yourself out with all of the different things you want to change in your life! Plus if you go to God in prayer he'll help you too. God loves you so he will help you achieve your goals. Love Sister Fordiani
