Zone Conference and Goodbye to the Hills

Aloha to Mexico and Seattle and anywhere else that's reading!! :)

Wow, this week has been full. And it sounds like it's been pretty full on all of your ends too!! Thanks for all the great e-mails!

A quick note, I was reading in the white handbook and I guess I'm only supposed to e-mail immediate family. Do uncles and aunts count? I dunno... Uncle Craig, I might just have to write you letters but feel free to keep sending e-mails my way and I can always respond through these for small things and write snail mail too. :) So, President and Sister Hill have officially left the island. They are probably flying right now back to America. Crazy! I didn't even get to know them for that long but it felt longer than I had imagined it would. So now we have President and Sister Albrect. And even more crazy is we get to meet them in just two days! He is doing mensetsu's (interviews) with the whole mission this next week! He is going to be Tsukarechau'd! (tired out!) But we are the second area to be interviewed so hopefully we get the good end of it ;) Anyway, pretty excited to meet 'my' mission president. I mean, President Hill will always be great, but just the most of my mission will be with President Albrect. And he sounds pretty intense! Yikes.. :) Ok, so this week for me, started out with Zone Conference in Kichiouji which was basically a giant goodbye and last words of President Hill. It was a very emotional time for everyone and the very last zone conference the Hills were doing so they tried to make it the best ;) Well, it was very great and we talked a lot about going back to the basics and talked a lot about the atonement of Christ and how we can all find strength and comfort in that and that it's really the core message of what we are sharing with people! It was great. Then we've had a lot of housing and park dendo this week. There were some really nice people we met at Kose Sports park this week but no one really made a contact. One lady almost did but her husband said they'd have nothing to do with religion. :( But we did get to make an appointment to meet with a little girl's family that we met like my first couple of weeks here and they run a snack shop on mainstreet. Her name is Chieko and her little sister is Aiyako and they are like 7yrs old and 5 I think. They both, especially Chieko, speak English like nobody's business and they learned from their dad who taught himself! Anyway, they've been coming to Eikaiwa with their Dad and after we made an appointment to come over (where the mom just was so excited to have foreigners and wanted us to stay the night and play with their kids (a bit muri-impossible :) ) that week at English class the dad was asking some good questions about the church and about its history. We told him we'll tell them all about it on Sunday when we come over ;) He said he's excited to hear. So, they seem pretty great! Then we had our lesson on Monday with Yumiko the girl I contacted last week and she is just Golden! We had an awesome lesson about Christ's gospel and about faith and how it grows and she said she's always loved churches but never thought she could really go in one. So she's coming in three weeks. She would have come this week but she's having an engagement party! And the next week is her birthday so another party. Lol. But she is excited to come and is meeting with us again next week for another lesson!

Yay for great people that are actually interested in learning about church!!!

Ok, so that was pretty much this week. Oh, the bishop went and bought a basketball hoop for the ward since we said we wanted to start doing sports night! It's pretty funny cuz he hasn't been all that excited for our other proposed activities but he is just in love with this one and is taking steps on his own to help us. It's going to be a youth/Single adult activity we do weekly and just play sports to get the ward more together and have something fun they can bring their friends to. Apparently they do that a LOT here in Japan.

Ok well my hands hurt now from typing so a few comments then I gotta go:

Steph!!! you are going to Texas??!! Wow, that will be so much fun.. holy cow. Crazy! And is it the same area as Ryan Dance or chigau (diff)? Well anyway, that's going to be so perfect for you, they will absolutely love your big smile and big heart! :D And Dad-I am soooo jealous that it's so cheap there in Mexico. That's probably the biggest diff from Kofu. We tried to go clothes shopping a little today and the cheapest things that were missionary-poi at all were all at least $50 and a lot of shirts went well over a hundred. And a bag of quacamole chips that we found at this random foriegn goods store (where I found M&M's!!) were like four buck! sheesh.
If you all still need goodies to send I've thought of a few more: Peanut Butter M&M's, Skittles, RecesPieces.

Mom, I realized I didn't bring some of my favorite recepies... if you find my recepie box (big clear plastic tall box) please pass along the cream-cheese crab dip (the one we made up in Hawaii :) and some simple french bread or rolls recepies please! And banana bread!

Ok, phew, love you all tons and miss you lots and I think your prayers are working for Kofu to stay somewhat cold but it's sure getting pretty muggy and sweaty!! Keep praying onegaishimasu!! :D

ps. Steph, I loved that you spaced your e-mail out so I had to scroll.. It made me laugh :D pps. Happy fourth of July!!! We'll be having sports night!! ;) maybe we'll bring fireworks for the kids to do, sparklers, etc. Too bad missionaries can't play ;)

Love,

LeFevre Shimai
Kofu, transfer 2