Week 41 Japan Tokyo mission

Special visitors this week! :) Megumi And Minami Chan from Koiwa! They

surprised me and came to Eikaiwa, :) so good to see them. They both

just barely received their patriarchal blessings. So wonderful to see

them.

This is Manami. She was baptised two years ago...She has been to church with us for the last 3 weeks. She's cute. :) this is the gym at the top of the 5 floor church
building,




(Before transfers-we were going through some old sisters clothes in
the house-gross right?) I think they look lovely :) ~~

She wrote me a cute message on our mirror :) so sweet.

Sister Bettridge- sorry we don't have a good picture together yet... She's great though! 

Apple pie from and old man I met on the street. He decided to take the
lessons and come to church! He brought me this pie to church to thank
me for introducing him to the elders. Way cool!

There is this thing in Japan called purikura. You take pictures and it
makes your eyes bigger (Japanese joke) as you can see it makes my eyes
huge!! Hahaha so funny!

Dear Family,

I've had a wonderful week! :) Sister Bettridge and I have really made
an effort to try and talk with everyone this past week and we were
able to meet some really neat people and invite them to church. We
definitely had some harder days where it seemed like everyone we
talked would give us us a weird look or ignored us. Gotta love those
days!
We had interviews this past week and sister Nagano, my mission
president's wife, said something that really helped me to this about
faith in different way. She said that faith is not a measure of how
much you can do everyday, or how successful you are, but a measure of
how long you are able to run without giving up. It is a Measure of how
much you are willing to give the Lord without receiving the blessings
in the needed or wanted time. Our faith is truly shown when we pick
ourselves up each time we fall and continuing to serve the Lord
despite the circumstance. It helped me think of a lot of the efforts
sister Bettridge and I have done in Matsudo lately. You might think
that because we were trying to be obedient, talk to everyone, and
following the Spirit that we would find and see amazing miracles! It's
not always like that, and it's not meant to be. If the Lord gave us
miracles every time we asked him for them, then how could we ever
learn to exercise our faith and show the Lord where our hearts and
loyalty remain? Sister Nagano is so wise! Anyway, what she said has
really help me this past week. We talked with over one hundred people
and only one or two of them took the time to listen for a little
while. It's comforting to now that someday everyone will have the
opportunity to hear and learn the gospel. That will be a wonderful day
in Japan. I'm truly blessed to be able to be here witnessing it happen
slowly but surely. The lord really is at the head of this work.

We had an amazing lesson this week with the woman we found at our
basketball activity last Saturday. I hadn't taught the restoration in
English for over a year (probably since being back home when I would
go out with the sister missionaries on splits). It had probably been
even longer for sister Bettridge. It was definitely a time when we had
to trust in the Lord to guide us in what to say. The Spirit was so
strong, and Rochelle really felt the Spirit. She has been searching
for the gospel for so long! She has studied many many different
religions, but she described them all as not feeling right in her
heart. We know that she felt the spirit strong and she is praying
about being baptized. So many miracles! :) we pray that the Lord will
help her to put the pieces she is missing together as we teach her and
as she prays. She is amazing.

We had a really neat experience with the Young women this week! Sister
Bettridge was introducing herself to all of them at an activity and
they made me introduce myself again too. I mentioned that I like to
make sock monkeys and everyone got really excited! I showed them
pictures, and they were all so excited. The young woman's president
asked me if I would direct and activity for the girls to make them and
invite their friends to come. This was a really neat experience as we
have been thinking really hard about how we can work better with the
young woman. Such a neat miracle! God knows all things. :)
Yesterday, we felt like we needed to go and visit a member in our ward
after church. We had never met this member, but we assumed that she
had always come to church and that because the ward was so big that we
just hadn't met her yet. Anyway, we visited her and as we talked at
the door, we learned that she was actually a less active member. She
expressed that she had been struggling a lot. She had served a mission
about 10 years previously and said that if it weren't for her mission
experiences that she would probably disbelieve in God completely. She
had had some really hard experiences in the last couple years and said
that she still wanted to believe in God, but that she hadn't felt his
love or guidance in her life so a long time. Because of this, she said
that she had began to doubt if there was a God who actually loved her
and cared about her. It was a tender moment for sister Bettridge and I
to speak with this sweet woman. She confided in us and asked us for
help in regaining a testimony. I have never seen a person filled with
such desire and humility before than this woman looked at this time.
We promised her, in the Spirit of the Lord, that she would be able to
know once again and feel Gods love for her. She agreed to help us
practice the lessons every week with her in Japanese. We are so
excited to teach her and learn from her. Seeing the look in this
woman's eyes made me want to be a more humble servant of the Lord. She
is amazing.

It looks like this letter is going to be a little bit shorter than
usual, but that's okay! :)
I love you all so much. This church is true. God lives and loves us.
He is aware of us and He knows our hearts. He answers our prayers and
knows our thoughts.
Have a wonderful week!
Love always,

Sister Hubbard