Sister Crofts-Called to Serve

June 9, 2014

Minasan konnichiwa!!!

This week was 110% awesome and I love the experiences I am having and how much I am learning and growing from them. I do have good news, the crazy skin rash I had covering my body is called erythema multiforme. So I was able to go to the hospital and get some medicine for it. It has actually cleared up quite a bit. It has been on my body for 3 months so I am way happy that the itching has been going down with it. YAYYYY. It is so crazy how much we were blessed by God this last week to find people to teach. We had a referral from one of the members to go visit this house "accidentally" (by the Spirit) messed up on the address. However, when we went to this apartment, we found this lady who had actually been an investigator 20 YEARS ago! Insane right?! She liked the church, didn`t have a Book of Mormon because she moved and was just absolutely awesome. She is busy right now, but you can bet we will be going back. We visited some people a few weeks ago and felt like we should go housing over there. We knocked on a bunch of houses, found a whole lot of "not interested", “I don`t need that" and "I am buddhist". Then we came across this absolutely beautiful, traditional Japanese home and the cutest woman came to the door. We started introducing ourselves and she said "I know who you are," did Sister Tachi send you this way? And we were way surprised and had literally just bumped into her house. She talked about a member who she was friends with and how she has been to church and what not.. She said she had learned about the church 2 years ago and wants us to come back!!!!!! YAY, that was totally inspiration and we are stoked to meet her again.

We went to Jessa`s house last week to have a birthday party for Sakura chan (her 2 year old daughter). It was just us four and SO MUCH FUN. She fed us so much food and we thought we would die. Then we taught her about the plan of salvation and how we can live with our families forever. She started to cry and she said "my grandpa." She loved it so much and she has been carrying her Book of Mormon everywhere with her because she loves it so much. So she wants to be baptized!!! So excited for her, she is the sweetest person in the world.

One of our investigators, Mika, is awesome and she seriously tells everybody about what she is learning from us! She met this man on the street and she said he looked like a spiritual man to her... SO she started talking to him and told him about us. He had lived in an Amish (type) colony for most of his life and has been in the real world for only 3 years. We met him with Mika and we taught him one of my absolute FAVORITE lessons of my entire mission. When we first saw each other we both said "hey, I know you!" We have said hello to each other all the time, and I always want to talk to him because he looks so nice... But we can`t talk to men unless they talk to us first so I couldn`t talk to him. Anyway, back to his lesson. We first talked about God and it was way difficult for him to get the concept of God having a body like us and being our father. But he has prayed a lot. So we talked about how Mika was a mom and she always calls her son Yuhi in California to get closer to him and make sure he is okay, but it is like the same thing as prayer and God loves us and always wants to hear from us. When Buchi heard that he was just like "WHOA. WHOA. WHOA.!?!?" And he threw his hands up in the air and couldn`t believe it. He was so excited. We told him about Joseph Smith and he said that he thinks it is true. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he just said " This is such a special book. I can feel it." And he prayed at the end of the lesson!!! I love Buchi. He is seriously the coolest person I have ever met.

Chizu (the one who believes that god is in trees and water and what not) read from the Book of Mormon last week in Alma 17 where it talks about King Lamoni. She said that as she read it, it kind of felt like an answer for her because King Lamoni had super similar ideas as her. She is slowly coming and it was awesome that she could find answers in the BOM!

Well, I LOVE YOU!!! Have an awesome week. It is starting typhoon season so there are incredible amounts of rain all the time. The church is true!

Love,

Sister Crofts