Final Missionary Email, First of Other Posts?

Dear Family and friends,  

So, I’m back in America for the first time in a year. America is a weird place. For all my friends on missions- I returned home early (and it was absolutely terrifying). I’ll give you a rundown of how the week went.

Sunday: Really bad back day

Monday: Really bad back day part 2

Tuesday: Went to the doctor in the morning. I had my native companion who is FLUENT (who knew), talk to the doctor and get the scoop. The real very detailed scoop. She gave me the very real detailed scoop in missionary Japanese so I could understand. I had understood what the doctor had said the problem was but because of the language barior, the urgency of the problem was missed. He said the only way to recover was to rest. And resting is not something a missionary has time for. I talked to Kaicho [mission president] that night and we decided to each pray about the decision and talk about our answer in the morning. It was the hardest thing to pray about. Because I wanted to stay so bad. But I wasn’t praying to tell God what I wanted (He already knew); I was praying to know what He wanted for me. And I got the strongest feeling that it was time to go home. That I was needed there.

Wednesday: Kaicho called during studies. He asked how I was. And then he asked the Big Question: did you get an answer. I couldn’t answer his question- I was crying. I finally said that I felt like I needed to go home. He answered that he had got the same answer.

The next two days were a flurry of packing and doing everything I love about Japan. It was nuts. But I was fun. I flew out on Friday (a day that was actually 36 hours long). It was so sad to come home. But IT was cool to see how I could still be a missionary as I was flying home.

I met five really cool people on the way home.

On my flight from Fukuoka to Tokyo I met this really cool guy named S. I sat next to him and he tried to say his piece in English. And I think I surprised him by answering in Japanese. We chatted the entire 1½ hour flight. It was so fun. He knows the Mormon church. Even though he’s not necessarily interested in church and religion he love taking pictures of religious buildings. I told him to go check out the Tokyo or the Fukuoka temple when he had time because they’re pretty awesome buildings to talk a picture of.

Then going though immigration I met a nice lady named B. She’s from Oklahoma but was living in Sasebo on a base. She was holding a book about the power of prayer. So we talked about that for a while. When we got on the plane she said “if you pray in the front of the plane, I’ll pray in the back and our journey will be super safe!” She came and gave me a yummy Japanese snack during the flight.

On my flight from Tokyo to Dallas two absolutely adorable Japanese girls sat behind me. Half way though the flight I decided I needed to pass them a note saying they were cute (because they were. Come on, they’re Japanese. That’s inevitable). I think it made their day. They passed me a note back. When we got to customs I was able to help them know where to go (they had no idea where the English signs were pointing them).  They asked why I knew Japanese and I said “well…” and of course went all missionary on them. I’ll miss Japanese people.

On my last flight I sat next to a nice guy who does business in Japan so we just talked about how awesome Japan is. It was great.

Let me tell you, I got off the plane in Baltimore and I was super nervous to see my family. Who knows why. But I cried when I saw them. Well, all of them except Josh. He decided to run off to Seattle. Because he doesn’t love me or something.

Now I’m no longer a full-time missionary. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still a missionary. I can still share God’s love.

I think the biggest thing I learned on my mission was that the most important choice have is to trust God. Because when we do that everything else works out. Life (or missions) never goes the way we plan. I had no plans on coming home early. And when I realized that I would be going home, I was devastated. But because I trust God, and know He has a plan for me, I wasn’t worried. When we trust in Him it will all work out. That’s a promise.  

Love love love

ベアマン姉妹^_^

Editors Note:  I am working on convincing Emma to keep on blogging.  I will let you know how that goes.  Feel free to encourage her ;).  She thinks she won't have anything interesting to say now that she is here in America.  I think she is always interesting, but she doesn't believe me since we are related.  Either way, thank you for your love and support!

Halloween, Parties, and an upcoming transfer back to Maryland

Hello my beloved people, 

Happy Halloween 👻🎃 Eat lots of American candy for me! 

This week went by crazy fast. And we had lots of fun Halloween related things. 

Calling people: We were going through a list of people and making calls yesterday evening. Lots of weird things happened. One was a miracle. We called this guy named R. He's from Nepal and we chatted in English. We asked if he had time to meet and he said he was busy with work and school. I thought it was going to be the normal "I'm too busy but I'm actually not interested" call but right after he said "but I'm free on Friday afternoon. Can we meet then?"  Yes. Yes. Yes. Of course. Yes. What? Huge miracle. The next person I called was named S. From China. So I put the number in and hit call and it was ringing forever so I looked to see if I put the number in right and I was calling a member! We were so confused why a members number was in under an investigators record. We laughed for a good 15 minutes after that one. 

Specialized training from the mission president and crew: all sort of crazy things happened- I sang a special musical number, bore my testimony, took lots of notes, caught up with my MTC companion, ate pancakes and ice cream, and danced to "happy" from that Disney/Pixar movie (despicable me?) with my mission president (????). Overall it was a fun and spiritual day. My favorite part was from a video clip we were shown. The lady said that she realized she didn't need to be healed to help. And everything seemed to click into place. I don't need to be miraculously healed to serve and love with the energy I do have. It was so relieving to hear that I guess. 

Halloween Eikaiwa: we taught them how to have Halloween. In Japan, Halloween is kind of new so they don't really know what to do. So we taught them Halloween words and what trick-or-treating is. Afterwards we danced to "Thriller" and had a Halloween party. Everyone stayed for it! Normally people try to skip out on our game/conversation time but they didn't this time. 

Halloween party: the ward held a Halloween party for kids and asked all the moms to invite their friends with kids. There was 97 kids total. Chaos and candy ensued. It was too much fun. And too much cute. Japanese moms know how to make killer cute family themed costumes. And Japanese kids are literally the cutest creatures in existence. When they were planning the party they called me up for American Halloween games. So we played them (except Japanese style). We played the donut on the sting game, but instead of donuts there were rice crackers. They also had piñatas but they had them on the ground. And whacked them with plastic bottles. I guess it's safer that way? 

I bought a $1.50 jar of peanut butter and $.75 quality ice cream. Nuff' said. 

K san: she's a referral from some other sisters who had been teaching her because it was an elders area. She's this older lady who lives 30-45 minutes away by train. She lives amongst the rice fields and mountains. It's beautiful. She is basically perfect. She just focuses super hard on the tiny mistakes and problems so she has no confidence. But when we taught her about faith and repentance she knew exactly what they were. She taught us what they were. Towards the end of the lesson she got off on a tangent about how terrible she is and the Spirit had left the room. A thought came to mind to share the part from Elder Holland's talk that says "To all mothers in every circumstance, including those who struggle--and all will--I say, 'Be peaceful. Believe in God and yourself. You are doing better than you think you are. In fact, you are saviors on Mount Zion, and like the Master you follow, your love ‘never faileth.'" As we shared that quote, the Spirit came back into the room and testified to all of us that we were doing what we needed to do. It was really cool. 

Last pday, one of the zone leaders taught me how to kick-box a bit. It was fun ☺️

Hospital miracle: while I waiting for S shimai in the bathroom after my doctors visit, this nurse came up and started chatting with me. We chatted about church things and she was really nice. Sometimes, as a missionary, you're lucky enough to see that you're in the right place at the right time. 

Even though Halloween hasn't happened yet, all the Christmas stuff it out everywhere. And at the big train station in Fukuoka they've started hanging up Christmas lights. How is it Christmas already?!?!

Well, I think that's about it. You guys are the best. Have fun. Good luck in school and stuff. I love you guys ❤️️💕😘😍

Love love love 

ベアマン姉妹

Sent from my iPad

Post Script:

Emma's back has flared up again.  The mission president decided it makes the most sense for Emma to come home to rest and recover.  We anticipate that she could be home this coming weekend.  As much as Emma wanted to stay, we think she is at peace with coming home.  We are super excited as a family to have her home for the holidays!   Thank you everyone for following her adventures with us. 

The week everyone decided to make me a Broadway star

Hello beloved 愛する fambam,

The cooler weather is starting to creep in here in Higashiku. And some leave are starting to change. I was sad until I realized at home it hit that point a while back. #blessed. Anyway, how is Maryland? I met a lady the other day when I was on junkai (splits? Companion exchanges?) in Fukuoka city and she has a daughter living in D.C. right now because her American husband is a spy. It was fun to talk to her about D.C. 

Junkai in Fukuoka: a little about Higashiku: it's the outskirts of the outskirts of Fukuoka city. So it's not city. Then we went on junkai (I can't figure out what this is called in English) with the STL's in Fukuoka city, the largest city in our mission I believe. It was so much fun. It reminded me of Naha. I was dednoing with W shimai, a missionary from Australia. We had TOO MUCH fun. We met so many cool people including a lady from South Africa. She's in Japan to teach English and we just chatted with her in the English language and it was so refreshing. There was so many young people to talk to. We went to a huge underground shopping mall and we dendoed by asking people for directions. It was so fun. We met a ton of super cute nice people. 🔸🔸🔸🔸

Becoming a broadway star: So we have a training with Kaicho this week and I got a call on like Friday and one of the sister was asking me to do a musical number. I laughed and asked if she called the wrong sister. Nope. I'm aiming a musical number. Me and another sister and 2 elders. This a first. We'll see how it goes. Then an elder who is a stellar dancer decided he wanted to teach us all the "Thriller" dance for us to sing at Eikaiwa on Wednesday for our Halloween party. And he asked us to dance. So this week I will preforming in a dance and in a musical number. What the what? 

J: she's the Vietnamese girl we met our 2 day in Higashiku. We went out to dinner with her and talked about life and Jesus. She loved it. She came to English class with us after. She said she wants to come to church on Sunday because she always feels good when she is with us. She came yesterday but late so we weren't outside to greet her. She was brace enough to come in to the chapel herself and the biggest miracle happened. She sat down in the back next to a member married to a Australian so she speaks perfect English and was able to translate for her. We had a lesson with her  after sacrament meeting with the Fukuoka sisters to pass her (she lives in their area...). And one of the office missionaries at the missionary home is Vietnamese so she came and helped us with the lesson. When the office sister missionary started speaking Japanese to J, J started to cry because she felt so alone moving to Japan on her own. We had a powerful lesson with her about God's love and prayer. At the end she prayed in Vietnamese. She's so sweet. It was sad to give her to the other sisters to teach but I'll still be able to see her at English class and church. 

Sister H: she's the Vietnamese office missionary that helped with J's lesson. She's a BEAST. She was born in Vietnam and in school studied English and French. When her family was 16 her family moved to the D.C. area for her father's new job. She lived in Silver Spring, Maryland and went to Blair high school. She graduated, went to the University of Maryland for college and taught French there for 3 years. When I met her before the lesson yesterday, she asked "Sister Bearman, are you from Silver Spring Maryland?" and I freaked out because no one knows where Maryland is let alone Silver Spring. We both got excited and it was wonderful. She's such a cool lady. She's serving a mission with her husband now. I translated for her in Relief Society. 

M san: we found her in our area book and we called her up one day during phone dendo. She answered and said "I'm Christian. I love Jesus. Let's meet, eat, and talk." So we did just that. She's this cute old grandma with more energy than I've ever had. She was so fun to talk to. She showed us pictures of all the oil paintings she's made and then pictures of her famous j-pop star daughter. It was hilarious. Then we chatted about Jesus and how we all love Jesus and it was so nice to teach someone who loves Jesus as much as we do. 

Chikushino Ward: so we were greeting people in the foyer to the church and I look up to shake the next persons hand and it's Brother Y, the father of my favorite family in Chikushino. We both got really excited and I couldn't give him a hug but I gave him an air hug. He came to the Fukuoka ward with his recently returned missionary daughter. As I was greeting people, several other people we from Chikushino and it was a joyous reunion. 😊 I also gave a short introduction and testimony in sacrament meeting and I was a bit nervous because it was in front of 300 people I didn't know in another language but I looked out in the congregation and saw my favorite people from Chikushino ward and it made me less nervous. 

Tuesday: was just a solid day of dendo all around. We met a plethora of kind people. One lady, as we talked to her, said that she has a friend who goes to our church and wants to talk to her friend about it now. It was really cool as I talked to people I was using Japanese that I had learned but never used before in order to teach and talk to their needs. It was amazing to see the gift of tongues work over and over as I talked to people. I'm definitely not fluent in Japanese, but the Holy Ghost is so I'm covered. 

That's about the sum of it. 

Have a wonderful week. And have a fun Halloween. Wait, I think that's next week. Don't have a fun Halloween. Yet. But if there's parties and you dress up take pictures. 

I love you guys!!!

Love love love

ベアマン姉妹より

Sent from my iPad