Hello Again!

Hello everyone!

Big news of the week (ok, probably not actually that big, but still): I did feel the earthquake the other night. It was like an hour after we went to sleep, but I woke up. Tsuchida Shimai didn`t, even though I said her name, haha. I think she was really tired from our days out in the cold. It wasn`t super big, but since we`re up on the 8th floor it shook pretty decently and lasted a long time, like a minute. Earthquakes are always kind of funny in Japan though, because everyone just keeps on doing whatever they were before it started like normal.  No getting under desks and heading outside like in elementary school drills!

The weather this past week has actually been pretty unusual in general -- February is supposed the be the coldest month in Hokkaido, with temperatures down around -20 degrees Celcius even during the afternoon. But for a few days this past week the temperature crept back up to just above freezing so that a lot of the snow melted! The streets turned into like rivers, like they did around the end of march last year.

So it was nice for like a day, but then when it switched back it was super cold because it was half freezing rain, half snow during the afternoon and then it all froze onto us in the night. Then the next day was like an intense windstorm blizzard! We were out all day and only could pass out flyers to like four people. But it`s ok, because there are totally days like that occasionally, and we`re out in the hopes of finding just one person who will listen. Plus, it is all part of the adventure!

I feel like there was something else I wanted to talk about... but I can`t remember what it was so I will do a quick week run-down like last time!

Tuesday: We had a lesson with a long time investigator, and watched a video about the restoration of Christ`s church. Then we went house to house and found a really nice person.

Wednesday: We went around to the houses of a number of friends and had some short, good discussions.

Thursday: We spent a lot of time out on the streets after a couple of canceled appointments, and then went and visited a cute family whose mom is a member that hasn`t been to church in a number of years. We taught the daughter, who is 6, about prayer using a letter we wrote together as an example.

Friday: We had our weekly planning session before our weekly visit to a member who was baptised this past summer. Then we had our English class where I taught the kid`s class with Tsuchida Shimai`s help. We learned positional words, like up, down, by, and over, and then acted them out and did the hokey pokey.

Saturday: We spent the whole day out on the street and knocking on doors.

Sunday: We went to church, and then went out with a member to visit her friend. It was blizzarding pretty bad, with occasional white out conditions because of the wind, so one time when we stopped at a signal I looked back and we realized that we had totally lost the
sister and she was no where in sight! But don`t worry, because we did find her a few minutes later; it turned out she had stopped to talk to someone waiting for a taxi. After that we did some more housing before coming back to the apartment for a delicious cultural Japanese dinner made by Tsuchida Shimai (if you look up Feb. 3 in Japan online, you
might be able to learn more! No time to explain)

Today: One of the sisters in the ward invited us to her house to wear kimonos! It was a ton of fun, and then we had lunch together afterwards. And now I am here. And out of time.

Until next week!