FOOSH

Hello everyone!

So I will start out with the turn of events that occured on Friday evening while on a kokan (splits? exchanges).  So we got a last minute lesson and were heading out to teach it.  I hoped on my brand new bike (yes dad, it helps the knees)  and we were maybe 1 minute from our apartment when I saw a nasty huge bug on my bike.  Not a fan.  So naturally, I tried to kick it off.  Well, in attempts to kick it, my foot got stuck in the tire and I flew over the handle bars.  I caught myself though... I rolled over in some pain, but not a ton, stood up, and tried to get back on the bike.  To my dismay, the tire was disaligned, so my poor bike needs fixing.  But we got a member to pick us up and join in on the lesson.  The lesson was great!  It was with Junior (a brazilian).  The Spirit was so strong in the lesson.  He knows this church is true, but he gets held up by how we worship and that he cant really speak Japanese (the church he goes to now has all brazilians).  Anyway, he showed us a video of a time he sang and played his guitar at his church.  The congregation was standing and waving their arms and singing randomly "Hallelujah!"  Ive seen videos like that before, but it was so weird this time I watched it.  The Spirit immediately left the room and the video just looked dark.  It was weird, but just another little reminder that this is the one and only true church.  Anyway, during the lesson, my arm started to hurt more and more.  My right arm hurt to move and my left arm was stuck at a 90 degree angle.  I thought it was just from shock, but the STL convinced me to call the doctor.  He didnt answer, but the pain kept intensifying (I refused to take ibuprofen)  so I had some members take me to the hospital.  The members were so helpful.  They dropped everything they were doing to help and stayed up late and were just so patient.  They were lifesavers!  Anyway, soon the mission doctor called and he said I had a FOOSH injure (fell on out-stretched arms).  I guess it is pretty common. Anyway they took x-rays on my arms and didnt find anything.  I didnt understand.  I nearly threw up and passed out due to pain and I couldnt move my arm the slightest with cringing, yet there was nothing wrong.  Do you know what these wonderful Japanese doctors suggested as treatment?  O-furu ni hairu...which means to take a bath.  I almost started laughing right there in the clinic it was so ridiculous.  No meds, nothing.  Just take a bath.  Scott, how often do you give that out as your only treatment?  Anyway, I did get a sling and that helped.  But today I went back in for another check-up and apparently I have a microfracture at the head of my forearm bone on the radial side (wow, I have a lot of brushing up to do when I get back).  So I have a little cast and it should be all healed up by next week.  Nothing too serious.  

Anyway, the rest of the week has been good.  The LA from last week took all of the missionaries out to sushi (still so gross) and then told us he was moving.  This guy is solid.  He is packing up everything and moving so he can have a job that doesnt force him to work on Sundays.  Thats dedication.  Also, yesterday I gave my second talk ever in Japan.  It went well.  I was assigned to talk on a lesson I learned from 1 Nephi.  I talked about the difference between Laman and Leumuel and Nephi and how we need to be grateful in times of trial.  I think it went okay, especially because I had a Nihonjin check the translation before I gave it.  

But thats really all for the week. Love you all and thanks for all the emails and support!

Love,

Ellsworth Shimai

The Middle East?

Family!!!!

It has just been the best week ever. Hasn't it? I absolutely LOVED general conference! We do have to watch it on a different schedule than all of you but we still get to watch it! and since the last session was too late for us to watch yesterday, all of the VC sisters went over to president's flat to watch it today! It was so much fun and we all made lunch after we watched it! I love getting to be so close to President and Sister Jordan. Also, I just loved General Conference. I thought that the messages were so good and so perfect. To me, I kind of pulled out that the main theme was to stay grounded in our testimony and faith no matter what and that our testimony and faith NEED to be in our Saviour, Jesus Christ and His Atonement. What a powerful message. And I especially loved it because we had 3 investigators come to it and they were all Muslim...... perfect. And they all actually really loved it as well! 

So, we are teaching this guy and he is soooo good. He comes from a very Muslim background (At the moment we are only teaching Muslim men from the middle east haha ) and when we first started to teach him he was not very receptive..... but I told you a little bit about him last time. Once we gave him the Book of Mormon, he completely changed! He now reads like at least 2 chapters a day and comes back with all of his questions. He also came to 2 session's of General Conference and really loved it. He said that he knows what we are teaching him is true but that since it is such a huge and dramatic decision, he wants a little bit of time. The spirit of God is powerful. It can change the hearts of any one who is willing to soften their hearts and listen to it. 

Not too much is new at the moment. We are just working hard at trying to find new investigators. Actually, funny story. So we were out talking with everyone and people were stopping and talking with us but we weren't getting any new investigators or people to teach. So, we decided to say a prayer and ask for people in our area to teach. After that, for the next 30 minutes, not one person stopped to even talk to us. haha we were just laughing so hard at that point. Heavenly Father really does have a sense of humour. But I realized, it is not really faith if we just give up when we don't get what we want. We must continue to endure at all times. That is true and lasting conversion that God is real and He cares about you and wants to help you!

I hope that you all learned something new from General Conference and what you can do to strengthen your testimony in our Saviour and in His church. I know that this gospel is true and it is the key to our eternal happiness as individuals and families. I love you all SO much and I hope that you have a wonderful week!! LOVE YOU!!!!!

Love, Sister Ellsworth 

 She loves these girls!

Feeding squirrels at Hyde Park

Hyde park 

New Shimai Dendo

Dear Family-

 

First off, the weather has been gorgeous out here for most of the week and we got to see the beautiful Sakura flowers blossoming.  Be prepared for  a lot pictures coming your way. 

 

So Yonago.  I love that it is by the ocean and mountains and not fully surrounded by cement buildings everywhere you turn.  I am slowly starting to get to know the ward and investigators, and they all seem great.  It is a bigger ward though, so it will be hard to remember all of the names. 

 

So nothing big as far as the week goes, but there was quite a big announcement at last weeks ZTM for how the mission is going to be run.  Zinke Kaicho has been doing a lot of thinking and praying, and he has decided to make a big change in the mission.  After realizing that around 90% of Japanese ward members are less-active, he is now switching dendo (missionary work).  The elders will go about their usual business, but the sisters full time and attention goes towards finding and teaching the less-actives.  We no longer have to make sure we have a member present.  They have already started it in one area and it has been really successful.  We will count LA as we would a normal investigator.  We can teach non-members as well, and most will be in a part-member family, so we can teach them all at once.  Then once the LA reaches certain requirements and seems fully activated, it is counted as if it were a baptism.  Kaicho realized that the sheep we are looking for may already be members who have just lost their way.  I am so excited to get to work on this!  Seriously, I think it will be so fun and successful.  We will be teaching more and finding less because we have the addresses of the LAs.  Plus, most of them already know a missionaries role, so they wont be surprised by that.  Anyway, it isnt into full swing yet, because we still have to get the members on board to help with finding out some of the information we need, but I hope it is in full swing by next week.  Seriously, I cant wait to get to work. 

 

Anyway, that is about all for the week.  I am jealous you all got to watch conference this weekend.  I cant wait until I get to this upcoming weekend.  It sounds like it was a good one....as always.  Anyway, I hope you all have a great week and start applying what you learn from conference to your everyday life starting now.  Love you all!

 

Ellsworth Shimai

Miracles Happen!

February 24, 2014

Family!!!!

It has been such an amazing week! We have been so blessed to see SO many miracles. It is the best thing ever!! 

So I am just loving this area and being out here with all of these wonderful people. I don't know if I ever told you but we are over 2 wards out here and I love it. Both of the wards are amazing and are really trying their best with missionary work. So since we have dinner appointments ever single night, we have decided that we are going to use this to the best of our abilities! at the beginning of the transfer we started calling them in advance and asking them who they know that they could invite for dinner. Then, if not, when we are there for dinner we share a short message and of course ask them who they know. Often times, they don't know anyone at the moment but we have tried something new that is really good. We bring a map of the town that they live in and we ask the parents to prayerfully pick one of the streets for us to contact. From the times that we have done this, the members usually end up picking a street that a friend lives on and they tell us to go and contact them! We didn't think it would turn out that way but it has been so wonderful. Now we are just going to invite them to invite those people to their homes the next time we come over! It is so great. I love doing member missionary work!

As for our investigators, they are so great! I don't think I have told you much about Inga, but she is wonderful. She is a lady from Latvia and she is the most humble and sweet person ever! We have been teaching her and she has a date to get baptised on the 15th of March. She has a cute family with two kids and a husband and we asked her if we could teach her husband. So, we taught him this last Saturday and it was so good. We taught him the plan of salvation and he really loved the idea of getting to be with his family forever and not just "until death do we part" is what he said. Anyway, at the end of the lesson, we started to explain the celestial kingdom and he started talking about baptism and how he wanted to be baptised so that he could be there with his family! So amazing! So we asked him if he would prepare to be baptised on the 15th with his wife and he said yes! ahh such a miracle. I am so excited for them to get baptised and he is already saying how he is excited to go to the temple in a year and get sealed with his family! I love teaching families and seeing the happiness and unity it brings!

 We also had another really great miracle this week. We were out at night trying to find someone who hadn't been to church in a really long time and the church doesn't even know where they are anymore, that type of thing. So we went to the house and no one was there. Well, we decided to go tract a couple of houses before our next appointment. We started and it was dark and kinda scary... haha (that is just me being a baby) but we knocked on some doors and no one was really interested. Then, we decided to just keep going. We got to a door and I turned to Sister Griffith and said, "This is the door where the person we need to save is going to be behind". Anyway, this cute, young, American girl answered the door and quickly invited us in. She is from Oregon and grew up with a lot of Mormons and currently her really good friend is serving a mission in south america. She told us how earlier that morning she was wanting to start going to church and she was wondering which one she should go to. She said, "I think there is a reason that I met you today!" (So true and we were so happy that she realized that) So we shared a short version of the restoration with her and she said, "Wow, that makes so much sense. I wish I would have learned more about this before". She then asked us if we could say a prayer with her and we asked if she wanted to learn more and quickly said, "of course!". We are seeing her this week and I am so excited! We just became instant best friends! Such a miracle. AHH I know that the Lord really does prepare His children to receive His gospel. I have been soooo blessed to be able to witness it so many times. 

Well family, I love you all so much. Keep being you and keep being the best. I love you all SO MUCH!!!!!!!!

Love, Sister Ellsworth 

Ely Cathedral 

Celebrating her birthday with the zone

She's 21!

With Anna, after her baptism

She loves the England Countryside 

With her companion

Happy Days!

March 3, 2014

FAMILY!!

It has been such a good week! Ahh I am loving it more and more out here. I love being in the countryside and with all of these wonderful people! 

Sooooo, this past Saturday our investigator Lisa got baptised!!!!! She is just the cutest. There were some troubles with the fount at first so while the members were dealing with it, I sat at the front talking with her about everything. There was one thing that I really loved that she said. She said, "I love how the people in the Church of Latter-day Saints live the truth." How true that is. There was another woman I was talking to who is less-active due to health reasons and when we asked her, what is faith to you, she replied, "Well I guess you could say, my faith has shaped me, if that makes any sense." I absolutely loved that definition. Seeing these two woman who were both converts to the church, has a strong testimony of the power of change that comes as we have faith in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Faith is more than just believing. It is acting upon the conviction that you do have and allowing that to shape who you are, how you live your life, and who you want to become. 

I think I told you last week about our investigator from Latvia? Well, him and his wife will be getting baptised on the 15th! yay. Anyway, we had a really great lesson with him again and we followed up on the Word of Wisdom. (this is a hard one for him seeing as he smokes, drinks alcohol, coffee and tea) We had a lesson and the members is really good friends with him and was so good in the lesson. He was still doing those things and we really committed him to stop. Well, during the lesson he got up and went and poured out all of the alcohol he had in the house. Wow. He said, "This is what I have to do if I want to be baptised on the 15th and if I want to go to the temple with my family." That is how powerful the atonement of Christ is. We can all change no matter our circumstances or how hard it may be. He has such a strong love for God and has such a strong desire to follow him perfectly. Also, to be sealed with his family forever, that he is willing to make the sacrifices necessary. I think that is so wonderful. It definitely does build my testimony when I see it. 

Oh funny story. Last night we were out tracting some houses and we went to this house and knocked on the door. We were just waiting there for someone to answer and all of the sudden this man open and said, "Oh Jesus". At first I thought he said this because he was excited that we were there to talk about Jesus Christ but actually he never heard us knock and was going outside to get something and we really scared him! haha it was so funny. We were all just dying laughing. But hey, we are going back this week to teach him! yay!

Well family, I love you all so much! Thank you for being the best family ever! I hope you all have a wonderful week!!!!!! LOVE YOU!!!

Love, Sister Ellsworth 

Driving in London is Crazy!

March 24, 2014

Hi Family!

 

This week has been great! I was really sad to leave my last area but I am back here in London and getting in to the groove of things again and I am loving it. I absolutely love my companion. She is so much fun. She is from Alpine Utah and we get along so well. We have just been having so much fun! As for the ward, I love them already. I do know a lot of them already but they are all really excited about missionary work and getting more involved with the missionaries.It is so nice to see. I can already tell that I will love it. As for the work, we just had a man get baptised and he got confirmed on Sunday. He is from Lebanon and I just think that it is so amazing to see so many people from all over the world and so many different religions joining the church. The Lord really is hastening His work and I have seen it hasten within the past year that I have been here! Right now we don't really have any investigators. haha BUT I am excited. This just means that there will be a whole lot of finding new investigators which will be great. I know that if our faith is strong enough, we will see miracles happen and the work will progress in our area.

 

Okay family, guess what? so for transfers, both me and my companion had to be to Hyde Park at 11 so President let us drive the car. OH MY GOSH. So I drove all the way to London and I got to drive in London. We took a wrong turn and I ended up at this HUGE round about in the centre of London with no stop lights........ haha but it was so fun and I didn't die or crash. Now I can say that I did it! haha it was so much fun tho!

 

Anyway, not too much else going on. I love being back here in London. It really is the best. It is like a big family here and I am loving the VC. So many things have changed in just 6 weeks but it is good. I hope that you all have a wonderful week. I love you all SO MUCH!!!!!!!

 

Love, Sister Ellsworth

Happy to be back in London!

With her mission bestie, Sister Bergstrom

One Year Already?

Sorry friends of Jamie for not updating her blog in a while. I am slowly working my way back but for now, please enjoy her most recent update. She just got transferred back to the Hyde Park VC in London after being out in the country side for only 1 transfer.

March 31, 2014

Hi Family!!

I hope you are all doing great! I am so happy to hear that Wisconsin is in the final 4. They are going to make it all the way! Also, family, can you believe that last week I hit my year mark? ahhh that is so crazy. Time has just flown by. I can't even believe it.

This week has been good. I am just loving serving with Sister Ferrell. We have so much fun together. It is fun because we both love waking up every morning and running to the chapel to play basketball with the elders, and we just get along and have fun.

So yesterday was mother's day over here in England. So, in the VC we made a cute table in the front with a whole bunch of things to make a mothers day card. We then went outside and got people to come in and make them. It was so fun and it got more people in to the centre and we got to teach them more. I love doing fun creative things like this! And the weather is getting warm over here so people are out and so friendly! 

So pretty much, Sister Ferrell and I are only teaching men and Muslim men. Literally. But it is so fun! We are teaching this guy who is really progressing. He reads like 8 chapters from the Book of Mormon a day and he is really starting to have faith in our Saviour!! Also, Best thing of my life. A man from Lebanon got baptised just 2 weeks ago and on my year mark, he took us out for some real Lebanese food. When the food got to the table we just started eating (we were so hungry) and he said, "Girls, slow down, we still have more coming!" haha we just about died. He ordered SO much food but it was all SO good. I love getting to experience all of these cultures! Then at the end, they came out with this dessert called Baklava. Wow. So good. Not your typically dessert but it is so good. What a good way to celebrate! 

So it was really cool because we had a really nice experience actually this morning. So, I had forgotten how in the VC our numbers are completely different than full proselyting! They are obviously so much lower because we only have half the time and pretty much non of the elders really understand that. Anyway, we worked really hard last week but there were 2 days where we got absolutely no proselyting time because we had conferences, therefore making our numbers a bit lower.... well, this is hard for others to understand sometimes. Anyway, I could tell that Sister Ferrell was having a hard time with it this morning and I was thinking about what they had said a lot and so I decided to pray. Ultimately, our accountability for everything in life is first to the Lord. I love that because as I was praying I got a confirmation that everything was okay. We can improve and we will but He is still pleased with our work. Anyway, we were talking about this in companionship study this morning and we decided to pray together. As we did we asked for the spirit to teach us how we can improve and to help us feel comforted. It was so cool because after we were done we talked about it and we were both prompted by the spirit to improve our companionship study. Haha it is such a random thing, but that is what we both felt. We just thought it was the best thing ever because it was a moment when we could both recognize the spirit so specifically. I know that Heavenly Father answers our prayers. I know that He knows what each of us is going through and He will be there to help us, we just need to simply ask. I am so grateful for the relationship we can have with our Father in Heaven.

Anyway, I hope that you all had a wonderful week! I love you all so much!! Thank you for all of your love and support that you show me! I am so blessed with such a wonderful family! LOVE YOU!!!!!

Love, Sister Ellsworth

Lebanese food!

Mother's Day card station

With Hussain, the Recent Convert