We continue to enjoy (some days even love) our life in Tokyo. Of course, life here has it’s ups and down but we try to embrace it all and “Let it be wonderful” as we were counseled by the Area Presidency when we first started.

We are still waiting for winter in Tokyo. They put the snow tires on our van the last week in January and told us that February is the coldest month and the month it snows. Fortunately, we are still waiting. Other parts of Japan are getting pummeled with snow. The temperatures here are in the 40s and 50s during the day. Once it in a while it will dip down under freezing at night. We really love winter here. The days are always sunny and crisp and we have seen beautiful Mt. Fuji numerous times on our drives because of it.

As we wrote earlier, our lives rotate through a six week schedule. Some weeks are busier and more stressful but we really do enjoy serving with such great young missionaries. Our interview weeks are full of travel and sitting. We go to various churches where Steve will interview each missionary. Laurie sits in an adjoining room with the companion and visits. She makes around 300 cookies every six weeks and takes a couple to share with each missionary. It has been a struggle adjusting to the ingredients here in Japan but we are slowly figuring things out. It is a great opportunity to get to know the missionaries better, learn about their hopes and dreams, talk about their families, but most especially to hear about the miracles that they are experiencing on their missions. One of the stories shared by an Elder was how they were seeking to be led by the Spirit. Things weren’t going well so they stopped and had a prayer. They decided to go to a nearby eatery, grab a snack and do some language study there. It didn’t make sense but they went. About 30 minutes later they knew they should leave but had not received any clear direction about where they go. They walked to the door to discard their garbage and said ‘hello’ to another person doing the same thing. He asked them what they were doing in Japan and they told him they were volunteers teaching people about Jesus Christ. The man broke down in tears and said, “I need you! You two are 19-20 years old and look like you have everything figured out. I’m 48 and don’t have a clue.”

We attended the baptism for a young man in his 30s, Etham, from Turkey. He had come to Japan about two years ago to start a business. His family owns a medical business in Turkey and he had a desire to replicate that kind of business in Japan. When he arrived he signed up for classes to learn Japanese business language. Over the last two years he had tried to get the business off the ground but hadn’t been successful. In speaking with the others in his class he discovered they too were finding it difficult to start a business here and most who had tried had failed. He began to feel disheartened and even a little depressed. One day while sitting in his apartment feeling terrible, he told himself he needed to just get out and walk around so he could feel better. He walked to a near by park where he saw another young man from his class. He had noticed this young man before and he always seemed so happy and positive about things. He decided to talk with him and when he did he asked what it was that made him happy. The young man told Ethem it was the gospel of Jesus Christ that allowed him to feel joy during struggles. He invited Ethem to attend church with him on Sunday. Ethem said he had been in many mosques, but he had never once felt like he did the day he walked into our church. The missionaries began to teach him and he loved what he was learning. He had a moment when he started to question, and it just happened to be a time when they were studying Ether. In Ether 1:9 he saw his name. He said it was a tender mercy from God, showing him that this was the correct church. He said his name is rare, even in Turkey, but to see it written in the Book of Mormon was God’s way of telling him he was doing the correct thing.

Our days are long but rewarding. One night we arrived home around 7:00 pm. Laurie was too tired to start cooking so we decided to eat out, something that is rare for us. We chose a place close by to walk to; on our way we cut through a little alley way and found another restaurant that was hidden. We decided to give it a try.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and left feeling overly full. In Japan, they don’t have “doggy” bags. If you don’t ‘eat it you leave it and that was too hard for us to do. Laurie’s favorite part is the pickled vegetables and she ate too many, causing her vertigo (due to the salt content) that lasted throughout the week.

In Japan, presentation with food is very important. While Laurie was out with Tokie Hiyama, her missionary companion from 1981 who lives in Tokyo, they stopped to eat. Laurie said it was so cute she didn’t want to eat it, especially the little bunny.

The Church makes the world so small. It is very rare that we attend a meeting without making a connection. We spoke at Tokyo Stake Conference a couple weeks ago and a couple of women came up and asked us if we remembered them. They had both served as young missionaries in Laie in 2006, were assigned to Steve’s YSA ward and had been to our home for dinner. One Sister had returned to attendBYUH and so we remembered her well. Another time we spoke at the YSA Ward and afterwards attended a luncheon with the young adults. One of the men there was a brother to another young man we knew well in Hawaii. Also, at that same meeting we are sitting on the stand and we look down to see a coupple visiting (they are older and this is a YSA so they stood out.) I think we realized at the same time that we knew each other. It was Todd and Cynthia Abo, who had been in our Pleasant Grove ward in the 1990s. Todd’s sister, Joye, was in the MTC with Steve and his nephew Curtis LeFrandt consulted with BYUH so we knew his family well also. Last week we attended church in the Urawa ward and afterwards a sister came up and reminded us that she had also served a mission in Laie and had been to our home for dinner. She reminded Laurie that they had talked about her YW leader before her mission, who was none other than Laurie’s companion, Tokie Hiyama. We also were able to have lunch after our meetings with the Dorffs, Melissa and JJ are another couple we know from Hawaii. They were in Steve’s Married Student Stake and we saw Melissa as she worked every Tuesday night, our night to attend the temple. They now have a cute little family.

Laurie enjoyed a few hours with Tokie Hiyama (her companion) as Tokie took her to places she had never been. They visited a famous shrine is Asakusa and walked along the river bank where there will soon be hundreds of trees full of cherry blossoms. They just happened to be sightseeing around a holiday. Most of the people wearing kimonos were 20 years old – the time to celebrate Coming of Age. They also visited another park in Ueno that is famous for lotus flowers that grow in a lake in the middle of the park. While Laurie was out playing around, Steve was home trying to finish reading his 144 weekly letters from the missionaries. It is a heavy weight that he carries every week. It takes hours and hours but he enjoys reading them and how connected it makes him feel to the missionaries.

One of the hardest things about this assignment is you can never be sure how your day will go. There are so many little things that pop up making it difficult to schedule things. One example was last Saturday. It’s the first week of the transfer so we received new missionaries and then Satuday we drove to the airport to take the returning missionaries. While we were getting them to their gate a man walked up to Steve and told him that one of our missionaries had missed his flight to Philipines and was upset because he didn’t know what to do. Steve knew it was’t one of our missionaries because we were with our own missionaries. Most missionaries haven’t traveled much and flying is a bit scary for them, especially those that have long flights, layovers and airline changes. We discovered it was a missionary from Sendai, so after our missionaries passed through TSA we called President and Sister Ward to see how we could help. They asked if we could try to find him and allow him to use our phone to call them. There are thousands of people in the airport but we were eventually able to locate this missionary and allow him to talk with his Mission President using our phones. They contacted Missionary Travel who then contacted this Elder through our phone and told him what the options were. We then continued to stay with that Elder for another hour while they attempted to get another flight for him. We ended up spending two more hours at the airport than we had’t planned on but that is just another day in the life of Mission Leaders.

We feel so grateful to be part of the work in Tokyo Japan. We feel we are on the cusp of great things happening here in this country. God is preparing the hearts of the people. It is not uncommon to hear experiences like the missionaries just happened to stop a man walking, head down, recently let go at his work and wondering what to do. As they testified that God was aware of him and loved him he said he felt great peace and asked for more lessons. One of the main ways we find friends is through our social media ads. We get about 75 referrals a week from people who would want to learn Japanese or English from the missionaries. For six weeks they can receive a 30 minute language lesson and then a 30 minute gospel message. One day as the sisters were teaching a woman Japanese, she stopped them in the middle and said, “I really don’t want to learn Japanese. I clicked on the message because I want to learn about Jesus Christ. Can we just do that?” Our missionaries are teaching people from all over the world that have been guided to Tokyo in order for them to embrace the gospel. As we look at the world and everything happening in it, it makes us more aware of how the gospel of Jesus Christ is the answer to all the worlds problems. It is only through Him that we can experiencing peace and joy in this world. How grateful we are for that knowledge!