It's official. This is a twenty year old typing this letter

June 29, 2014

Messer Shimai on her 20th birthday, in front of rice fields in Kurume, Japan

It's official. This is a twenty year old typing this letter. EEKKKK I am so old! I think I need to call President and tell him I am too old to be riding a bike everywhere.. ;) I love my bike, we all know that.

This was a great week! It is so fun to be serving with Johnson Shimai! We have been asked three times already to have our pictures taken since we are American! hahaha so that's always funny. Look for us on random Japanese blogs! 

So for my birthday we spent exercise time OPENING PRESENTS! It was perfect because I opened up Aus letter first which had tons of confetti in it and sprinkled all over and made the environment very open-presents friendly! Until we realized our vacuum broke and have had random glitter all over our house for a week now! hahah but it made things fun! You guys are the best, all of the presents were PERFECT for a missionary!! So awesome! That day we just did the norm, went housing, and streeting, stopped by a members house and prayed with them, had studies and what not. It was fun. But this week was EXHAUSTING!! having traveled for p-day on Saturday, so we havent had a p-day in over a week, so i was dead on my birthday. But I blame the old age.

We got to go to Nagasaki this week again from a conference! that is always fun! We always get to sleep on the bullet train, so we dont mind!! But in order to get home in time for our English class we had to leave the conference early. But President didn't want us to miss the last part, so he ended up DRIVING us home! It was about a 2 hour car ride with President and Sister Gustafson, and the AP's. It was fun! until President got pulled over for speeding! hahaha Poor guy, it was raining so they made him get in the police car and fill out papers. It took about a half hour with six of his missionaries just crammed in his van waiting! We took pictures.. don't tell him! hahah You could tell he was a little embarrassed when he got in. He get's in, and goes. "Well, kids do you know what this is? This is a speeding ticket. I am glad you saw this happen so you know that nobody is perfect." hahah I feel like our relationship blossomed even more after that two hour car ride. Unfortunately the ticket happened right at the start of our journey. We felt pretty special to be in the car with him. There are 250 missionaries in the mission, and you know missionaries come, they go, so in the end the Gustafsons will have had tons of missionaries, and we got to ride with him! Holla! 

This week the scariest things of my mission happened. We were housing an apartment and found THREE potential investigators. The last house we knock on, the 30 year old guy opens the door, sees me mumble/screams and slams the door, so we put in a flier and walk out of the building. We hear him rip the flier out of the box and unlocking the door. Johnson Shimai says "run!!" So we run to the back of the apartment where our bikes are, we are hiding right up against the wall and we hear him yell like "hara!!" or something crazy. We are just like talking, calming down, get on our bikes and when I turn around to where his apartment was (second story) His face is squished up against the screen, mesh cover that keeps birds out of the aparment complex and he starts yelling again. I just say "johnson Shimai, he is staring at us. go go. GO!!!!" so we bike. He had the crazies eyes I have seen in my whole life! scariest thing ever!!! WE couldn't feel our legs so we had to sit for a while and calm down..we were paranoid all night long! But we are just glad he didnt follow us! ew!

But now that I left you with that lovely story. I LOVE YOU thanks for all of the love on my birthday!! I love you and miss you all so much!!! Ai shite imasu!!

Messer Shimai