Raw Horse, Cooked Noodles, Swings and some rain

Hello ai suru family!!!!!

Me and M shimai have another transfer together!! I AM SO HAPPY. We have a lot of fun together. And now we just get to have more fun!!!

Tuesday: we went to the huge mountain/volcano- Aso. It was huge. It was beautiful. It was green. It was a 2 hour car ride there and a 2 hour car ride back. It's been so long since I've been in a car (and since we were going up a mountain, the roads were way twisty) I got a little car sick. I've never been car sick in my life before my mission. And not my body is not used to cars. At all. On the plus side, we ate some really good mango soft serve ice cream on top of the mountain. A day is always good with ice cream.


Wednesday: we were a 3 man. One person went up to trainers training and her companion who was going home packed all day with us. We did go out and teach a lesson to a Philippino investigator of the other sisters. So we taught in English. The cool part was that our 3rd
companion (a Japanese sister) totally killed it in English. It was simple English but it got the point across and the Spirit was strong. It gave me hope for my Japanese. Every once and a while a nice reminder is needed that even though your speaking another language,
the Spirit will use whatever broken unintelligible mess you to say to help them feel God's love. Also, a member gave us basashi (raw horse meat). Lemme tell you, it was delicious. Better than steak (not that I've had raw steak)! I highly recommend it.


Thursday: Transfer day! We took the missionary going home to the Shinkansen. Aka, the bullet train. It makes a 2+ hour bus ride a 30 minute train ride. Way cool 😊  After, we went to the church and made crepes with all the missionaries staying. Then we cleaned the
apartment and organized before going to pick up the new missionary. She's a BRAND new missionary. She's stellar and it's amazing and it makes me think back to my brand new missionary stage. It's cool to see how far I've come in a year. Also, we stopped by  Claire's in the evening because we have a PI [potential investigator to teach] who works   there. We stuck out heads in to say hi and then we chatted. She showed us some ¥100 earrings and I, in a moment of weakness, bought some sick ninja earring. I'm so pleased. Also, it make her look good in front of her boss.


Friday: our area is the boonies. We drove out with a member to visit some members and less actives (1.5 hours by car) and there were more rice paddies than houses. It was beautiful. Also, we got way lost. We went with K shimai (who is my Japanese mom). She is HILARIOUS. She was a missionary and went to college in Utah so she knows more English than I do. But she talks to us in Japanese just throwing enough English in to help us follow along. She has the funniest mission stories. After the crazy long car adventure- and an all you can eat restaurant- we dendoed. While dendoing we decided, rather abruptly, to go swing on some swings at a nearby park. As we rounded the corner to the park we see to little girls. We yell "can we play?" And they yell back "of course!"  So we played with two 8 year olds at a park and it was glorious. When their moms came to pick them up, they told us "we'll be here next Friday at the same time if you want to play." Yeah, we'll probably go back.


Saturday: M shimai (recent convert) is amazing. We had a lesson with her and we just read the BoM together. It was way fun to see her insights on scriptures (especially because we hit the good ole Isaiah chapters). It was interesting and rather difficult to explain the
context of Isaiah in Japanese. But we had fun and felt the Spirit as always. I l left her lesson with the biggest grin. Afterwards we threw a goodbye party for the elders Chinese investigator. He flies home next week. He was really sad to say goodbye to us. Especially because there's no missionaries in China. It's really cool to see how God gets His work done in China without having missionaries there.


Sunday: we had a crazy busy day of lessons with members and biking out to a return appointment. The best part of the day (besides going to a members house, playing with their kids, and eating the husbands amazing Italian food (he's a stellar cook)) was biking home in the torrential rain. We had none of our rain stuff. But it was so liberating. We were soaked but it was way fun. Next time it's raining go bike riding in a dress shirt and skirt. It'll be the time of your life.



This week I'll be hitting my YEAR MARK (what does that even mean?!?! I'm so OLD). But I still have time...

Have a good week! Have fun at school!!!

Love love love

Sister Bearman