Fantasticness!

Party party in my area!  I sent too many pictures, so this is going to have to be short!

Monday!  Fantasticness.  We visited a castle (see attached pictures and descriptions) and a flower park!  We then taught D******** at O*** Shimai`s house for FHE.

Tuesday: Got our apartment cleaning checked, got stinted for a lunch appointment by an investigator, but the member (O*** Shimai) still fed us lunch, did some service, got fed dinner, and had a lesson with H******** Shimai, who`s in a little bit of a rough spot right now.  Apparently while she was praying, she kept thinking about Buddhism, so she thinks that there has to be more than just God and Jesus, though she `trusts them too.`  This is not supposed to happen when you pray!  *sigh*  That`s okay.  We keep trying.

Wednesday - Interviews!  I think Welch Kaicho is fantastic!  For real!  I love him!  In my interview, I asked him about receiving revelation because I didn`t feel like I was very good at it, and he asked why, and I said a little part of it was that I hadn`t really seen much `success` on my mission, even though I know that`s not the only indicator of success, and he just jumped and started telling me stories about how a missionary who tries is never unsucessful and about all sorts of missionaries who thought that they had failed and then found out years later that they had helped someone. Needless to say my interview went way over.  He didn`t actually say anything new, but I`ve felt just about as much at peace during this week than I have during my entire mission.

And that took all day.  Actually, I have an experience about not delaying promptings that happened on the way home, but that might have to wait until next week.

Thursday - Got to teach a lesson to a PI, had a good lesson with LA O*** Shimai, who is now reading from the Book of Mormon every day by herself, and did SKK.

Friday - visited a PI the Elders found for us and she became a new investigator!  Y**** Shimai is great and already believes in God, but has always felt like he`s been more of a distant present in her life.  But she`s great! And then we went to O*** Shimai`s (yep, she does a lot for us) to have Okinawa tacos with an investigator.

Saturday did some housing and various missionary like things.  Then that night we got to go to an activity at the church and watch It`s a Wonderful Life! because Welch Kaicho gave us permission, because he`s awesome. Eddy Shimai and I were cracking up the entire time, and we`re not sure if it`s because the movie was that funny or just that it`s the first movie we`ve seen besides The Testaments and the Restoration movie in over year. Maybe the second one.  Our investigator enjoyed himself too.

Sunday - Church, and a temple fireside given by people from the temple presidency in Fukuoka; which was good. Then we taught a lesson to a less active named M***.  She breaks my heart.  She`s the sweetest thing and the president of two companies, so she`s always traveling, and always busy. And she knows the church is true. But many years ago, she was offended and left.  She realizes that people aren`t perfect and that everything we teach is true, but refuses to come back because she was offended.  And there is such an emptiness in her life because of it.  There is such a lack of love in her family and a lack of fulfillment besides everything she`s done.  It made me realize a little more how important it is just to make sure that we do not allow ourselves to be acted upon and let other people control us, even if it`s just someone who says something rude and not allowing our day to be ruined.  

Love you!

The Church is true!

The Book is blue!

Love, 

Sister Whitney

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This random lady came up to us at the flower park and asked to take a picture with us because we`re gaijin.  We gave her an eikaiwa chirashi.

Many fun pictures coming up!  Last preparation day we went to the castle and to a flower park!  Which didn`t actually have too many flowers this time of year but did have some mysterious slide things!  And some cool jungle ness.  

Also, we stopped on the way to take pictures with this fantastic cat car! I dedicate this car to Kathryn.  I think it`s a preschool bus.

CAT BUS!

Statue in front of the castle.

The road leading up to the castle.

Sister Eddy on that road.

The castle!

A cool tree!

The castle was super cool in person. I have more pictures!

Cool stairs!

 A demon face.  (Don't be scared; it's just a statue.)

I`m not sure what this is, but it`s cool.

Me on the other end of it.

 It looks like ANUBIS or something, but it`s just another cool statue.

Cool shrine.

An area of cool statue things.

The view from the top of the castle.

More from the top!  The castle was 6 floors high, with all sorts of cool exhibits inside, including lots of mesmerizing Samurai uniforms and helmets and pottery and art and a disturbingly large amount of taxedermied animals, but we weren`t allowed to take pictures inside. :(

Me and Sister Eddy at the top!

Random canary cage?

A chair.  Or a large telephone?  Possibly both.

Walkway

We had to go from station to station (there were 4, collecting stamps.  Then, when we turned them all in, we got a postcard!  And got to keep the stamps!   Bye Bye, Castle!

This area looks more city-ish than the other areas I`ve been in, but there`s still absolutely no people out on the streets.  Probably fewer than in my other places.  There are definitely a lot more things to do on preparation days though!  And that`s wonderful.  Apparently it used to be a little bit busier, but a big factory shut down and a lot of people lost their jobs and moved away.

A random street.

Begin flower park pictures!  A beautiful bridge entering into the flower park.

The view over the side of the bridge.

The rest of the pictures are going to have to wait until next week!  O*** Shimai is taking us to see the towel factory today and this area is FAMOUS for towels, so this should be fun.  

A jo is a castle.  I still want to go bike the big bridge, go see little horses, see other castles, etc.  We got an recreation pamphlet...in ENGLISH yes!  I have no idea bout the people question.  Because there are big cities with people all over!  That`s how it is whenever I go to conferences, because they always put the leaders in the cities.  Who knows?  There`s a decent amount of people riding bikes, but we can`t exactly force them to stop.