All you can eat ramen

So our list is going to get shorter of investigators. We dropped a bunch of them this week because they either wanted to be dropped or won:t answer calls and missed a bunch of appointments. Sigh. Oh well. We will keep in touch but not Qs (investigators) anymore.

"Y" is our little ray of brainless sunshine. Ha. We met her like three times this week (also I think the train station that you have the web camera at is where I went to for the first time on Saturday, not where we teach) (we teach at Nishi-Wakamatsu) Anyway. Not bad. Still don:t understand her at all. We committed her to obey the laws of the land (in my mind a throw away commandment that even though you probably aren:t suppose to think of it this way, really you just have to check it off the list) and her response is. (translated of course)*well........hm......yes?* So that was concerning but she said yes so we push forward and teach word of wisdom. And when we commit her to that (even though she said it would be hard like 30 seconds ago) we get a *Yes.* without hesitation. I:m still trying to figure it out. Anyway this week my big push with her has been praying sincerely and more specifically praying for something, asking. I don:t know if Mandy or you Dad had this problem but she only expresses thanks and never asks for anything. Then yesterday (we will ignore that we urged her to again) She just pauses in the middle of her prayer (common occurrence because she either gets embarrassed or forgets how so she has to read the cue card) and then.....*Help me follow this...Word of Wisdom* Oh my goodness. It was so simple but I could of kissed her at that moment (of course I:m a missionary and there are couple of other problems with that (no worries Lyssa)). She did it! Ha. What joy fills the heart. Also during the nightly call to her to remind her to pray and stuff she expressed some concerns about some stuff and Shinno choro told her that she could pray about it and this morning when we asked how her reading went this morning she said she prayed last night like we suggested and she had made a decision (not sure if it was a decision from the spirit but hey at least she realizes the two are connected). She might just be able to do it! Ha. Still really slow, still really frustrating but possible.

"H" and "U" called yesterday and said he had to work so he couldn:t meet so that was a bummer but he called ahead and wanted to make another appointment so I:m not too worried about them right now. Thats basically it for investigators.

Yesterday we had a 8 year olds baptism which was sweet for our investigators to see. Also any baptism is cool especially in these tiny branches where everyone attends and is super excited and the little girl was so cute and shy. Pretty sweet. Another cool thing is next Sunday we have Fukata choros investigators baptism, then half way through next week probably another 8 year old baptism then the next sunday Yoshimisan is scheduled for baptism! Aizu is growing!

Ok so the new missionary here is named Kano Choro. He is half nihonjin (Japanese) but knew no japanese before coming. He wasn:t in my district but I did know of him before i left. Been kinda fun to lead him through the little parts of missionary work. Fukata choro has been pushing him real hard in not speaking a lot of English to him. Its been pretty funny. I:ll have to keep working hard to keep my language better than his. ;-) Good stuff. Its kinda fun to see his dendo fire as we call it (talk to everyone, everywhere, all the time and baptize two people a week!). I don:t want to say we are trying to break him but....ok we kinda are. Too much dendo fire singes people, especially the members and if we bother them we are in deep trouble. Also think that its bothered Fukata choro a little after explaining their current investigators Kano choro answers *Thats all?* or with the RC (recent converts) that went LA (less active) he always wants to meet her but she doesn:t want to meet us.

Lets see. Saturday I rode my first train to Iwashirio (Look it up I probably spelled it wrong, its the name of the lake by Aizu). Pretty beautiful place. Also dendoed this couple on the train and left them a book of mormon which was sweet. Ate at an all you can eat Ramen place which was super expensive. Also had some Koriyama members there which was fun.

Eikaiwa (English class) was really fun this week so I think we will be ok. We are trying to make some big changes to help the effectiveness of Eikaiwas so we will see how these effect things in the coming weeks. Shall be interesting.

Psh. There is no daylight savings here, robbed!

Hm. Not a whole lot else to say. I sent my camera card with my letter to Lyssa last week so that should be coming this week soon so hold your horses. :-) Also I attached some pictures. Probably not what you were looking for but its basically all I have taken for the last week. One is our *no name referral box* (actually the box that Lyssa sent cookies in) where members can put friends that they think would be good with the gospel and we won:t use the members name (kinda wimpy but oh well). Then a picture of my muffin cake baked for the newest little member of Aizu branch. My baking skills are coming in handy. Then the last one is all the people when we went and ate ramen.