Oshogatsu (New Years) is the celebration of the year in Japan. People look forward to this holiday all year round. It isn’t just a one day celebration but a week long celebration. Unlike the U.S. that has all their sales on the holidays, making it difficult for employees to spend time with friends and family, Japan closes most stores. Even the little vegetable shop was closed for the week. The Japanese visit the shrines on New Years day with their families and they are packed. One Senior couple told us last year it was so packed that the crowd police would shout for everyone to take four steps forward and that is how they moved.

The first morning we left the apartment to take a walk we were shocked to find empty streets where we are usually dodging people on the sidewalk. We only got one day off so we decided to walk and explore another area of the city we haven’t check out yet. For our New Years meal we visited the local Dominos Pizza place down the street and celebrated with good old American pizza – the only place that was open.

We saw these beautiful plants growing along a wall. What a beautiful idea to add greenery to the city streets.

It is difficult to do missionary work during Oshogatsu so we had the idea to move our Zone Conferences forward one week and allow the missionaries to spend the rest of the week studying Preach My Gospel and sharpening their saws for the New Year.

Because it was the holidays we changed up our Zone Conference just a bit from what we usually do. In the morning we had training and spiritual message followed by lunch and then games in the afternoon. We did several relay/minute to win it games and the missionaries seemed to enjoy it – sometimes a little too much. We have a lot of competitive missionaries! We ended each day with a district competition of Knock Out in basketball. A lot of sweaty missionaries caught the train home each night.

For normal Zone Conferences we have women from each Stake help prepare a meal but we couldn’t ask them to leave their families during this holiday so I told the missionaries they would have to help prepare our lunch. They were more than happy to help but then we had several families reach out and offer to use their holiday time to help us out. I was so touched that they would be willing to do this. These are families with young children who said they always want to help but they work full time and can never help. They felt so honored to be able to help us during their holiday. Talk about sacrifice! They not only helped prepare and clean up but they provided a desert of ice cream and caramel corn. Their children jumped right in with chopping vegetables, serving etc. We had the kids play games with the missionaries and both thoroughly enjoyed their time together. So a big shout out to the Higashi, Iwamoto, Tanaka, Ijichii, Yamashita and Iwanami families. Brother Iwamoto and the Tanaka family came everyday. We were also grateful for the Senior Missionaries that helped out.

Our Social Media team asked us to put together an ad for Facebook. That really isn’t our personalities at all but the Church has pushed our mission to do more social media so we wrote up a short script about being leaders to 145 young missionaries here is Japan. In the script we shared that they are sacrificing their school, time with friends and family, and even their own money as they serve here in Japan. Why would they be willing to do that? It’s because of the important message they have to share. We practiced the script for days but still struggled. We met Sister Fong in beautiful Arisugawa Park, four minute walk from our apartment where she filmed it and was able to do wonders with the ad even though our Japanese was suffering. We told her we wanted to see less of us and more of our missionaries and I think it turned out really well.

Because the holidays were so busy we looked forward to the week of January 6th when nothing formal was scheduled and things would slow for us just a bit. We hoped we would be able to catch up. We planned to spend that P-day with some Senior Missionaries, the Lows and Burnetts, from our mission and go to Disney Sea. We had purchased our tickets earlier and as time drew closer the big storm that was coming kept moving ahead until it landed on the day we were to visit Disney Sea. We left the house at 6:30 am. and caught the train. It’s maybe about 30 minutes away by train. It didn’t open until 9:00 but the earlier you get into the park the sooner you are able to add the rides you want onto your app. If you get into the Park late you have very limited access to rides. We went with the Lows who are experts or we would have been so lost. After waiting in line for two hours we finally got into the park and Elder Low had us booked on the rides in no time. It was chilly but not too bad until the rain began to fall early afternoon. We were able to ride several rides, purchasing fast passes to some. Our final ride for the day was Peter Pan and when we arrived they told us the ride had shut down and they weren’t sure how long it would be. We decided to go grab another meal while we waited and if it wasn’t open when we were done eating we would just leave. We ate and walked back toward the ride to find it had just barely opened up and we were almost the first in line. It was one of our favorite too. By now it is cold and dark and our feet are pretty wet. We walked back to the train and arrived home around 9:00 p.m. We walked over 20,000 steps at the Park.

Disney Sea was a great start to the week but Laurie came down with a bad cold which took her out for the rest of the week. It gave her a little empathy for all the missionaries who have been suffering with it. Steve spent the rest of the week closed up in his office answering letters, solving problems with companions, planning emergency transfers and keeping the mission in check. We had anticipated writing our Stake Conference talk and another Sacrament Meeting talks but we didn’t touch those. Maybe we just do better if we are working under pressure with deadlines.

Our mission continues to see miracle after miracle. We have a Kiseki Call (Miracle Call) every Sunday night when the whole mission gets on and shares the miracles they have seen that week. We keep it to 30 minutes but it could go much longer. We have no doubt that God is reaching out to His children, that He loves them and is mindful where they are in their lives. In one call there were four companion sets that all ran into people who had joined the church many years ago – some as long as 40 years ago. One had joined in Australia and had no idea he was living three minutes away from the church when the missionaries knocked on his door. Another set of Sisters had many set backs one evening, but it was just God’s way of not only putting them in the right place at the right time but they just happened to be carrying a Spanish Book of Mormon with them when they ran into him. He too had joined the church 30 years ago in Peru and had become inactive. All of these people expressed a desire to return to activity and showed up for church meetings on Sunday. God is pouring out His spirit on Japan and we feel so honored to be here to watch it unfold.