The Adventures of Sister Fishburn: New Year, same old (bad) jokes🎉

Kawamitsu Shimai drew me again so you get another picture.

New Years resolution: never use a fork this year. That's only half a joke because I ate rice today with a fork and it was much harder than eating rice with chopsticks. It's also easier to eat salad with chopsticks. Basically, I've been in Japan for too long and chopsticks now hold a special place in my heart (that's kind of a pun and yes, after I typed it I giggled to myself).

This weeks dendō was kind of lame. New Years is a huge holiday here in Japan and they spend it all inside with their families so talking to people and trying to get them to meet is basically impossible. So yeah, not a lot happened this week.. ごめんなさい。

On Thursday we helped clean the church because they do what they call oosouji, or the biggest clean, to prepare for the new year. So we helped the members clean the church and then since Kichijoji has the best members ever, we had a BBQ after and it was delicious. We were supposed to have sports night after the BBQ but no one showed up so it was basically a ward sports night. Lots of fun! Plus I got to wear jeans most of the day on Thursday so I was REAL happy. I miss jeans..

On Saturday we did oosouji for our apartment and spent literally all day cleaning. So much garbage was collected. So much. But our apartment is now very clean and very organized and I am very happy about that. We also went to bed at approximately 11:52 because we tried to pillow talk long enough to tell each other happy new year but as missionaries, when you get tired, you get real tired. So we gave up and fell asleep like 2 minutes later haha. Happy New Year!

On Sunday since dendō would have been basically impossible, President Warnick asked all of us to have a personal study day and gave us different things to study. Basically all we did all day was go to church, read the Book of Mormon and other church affiliated documents, and eat. But hey, I quite enjoyed it and thought it was a lovely day and I high recommend everyone taking time to study just for themselves. 'Twas wonderful, indeed.

Ohhhkay. Now the good stuff. Saturday morning, while waiting for people to show up to kids English class, which no one did, Kawamitsu Shimai downloaded a video from gospel library. So during lunch we watched it. During the whole thing we just sat there silently watching and trying to take it all in. This video was amazing. At the end we stayed very quiet and then looked at each other with faces of just complete awe. The video is called The Hope of God's Light (6:46) and I really hope this link works because I want everyone to watch it. If the link doesn't work, please find it on lds.org or on the gospel library app. It has the power to change lives. Maybe it's because I'm trying to serve people in a country where the idea of God is as foreign as it gets for them, even more foreign than I am, and this video is about a man finding God but wow, I love this video. We have watched it easily 150 times since Saturday. It's so good and amazing and wonderful and fantastic and ridiculously powerful and oh my goodness I could go on forever about it but I won't. Please watch it.

Well. That was my week, folks. I hope all is well in the land of wherever it is you are reading this from. Always remember I love you almost as much as our big brother, Jesus, does