Maryandra was apparently surprised by all the goodies she got in her Halloween package from home!  She enjoyed her candy so much that she played a game with her candy corns!

Here's how her week went in her new area of Hibarigaoka:

Tuesday:

Oh my goodness me, I can't believe that October is almost over already! In literally just two weeks, I'll hit my 11 month mark! Yaaaaaaaahhhh!!!!! Wow! Time sure does fly! Well, we have a meeting in kichijouji this evening, which I'm excited about because it means I'll probably get my Halloween package, but the down side is that we're going to have to ride bikes... And mine hasn't come yet. I got all of my suitcases yesterday, so now I'm all moved in, but it's like my bike has just...disappeared. So, if it doesn't come today, I'm gonna have to borrow sister Eyring's bike, which doesn't have a basket. So, I'm understandably just a little bit upset that my bike hasn't come yet, especially since I don't know why it's not here yet. :s Well, I guess I'll just have to wait and see. At the very least, I can probably pick it up tomorrow when we go to kichijouji again, for the conference with elder Michael T. Ringwood, who will be touring the mission this week. That should be interesting. It's gonna last from ten till four, which is basically the same time as zone conference.  

Wednesday:

We were up and at 'em this morning and back to Kichijouji! It turned out to be exactly what I needed to hear! I loved loved loved it! It was amazing! And Elder Ringwood shook everyone's hands before the conference started, which was cool, and after that, he was very good at getting us to participate during his presentations. He even borrowed my iPad for a tiny bit. And guess what?! He remembered everyone's names! It was so cool, to hear him call is elder something, and when he called me sister miller, I was like "whoa!" And the messages he gave to us were all exactly what I needed! I'd been feeling down without realizing it,many it just helped me feel so much better! I loved it! And it was just...... Oh, it was so amazing! One thing he said really stuck out to me. It went something like this:

God knew that [you] would need takashi Wada as your mission president in 2014, so in 1979, He prompted Elder [?] to talk to a young Japanese boy who at that time was afraid of talking to Americans. He knew you would need takashi Wada, because He really does know the details of your lives, and He sees it all. I know that He loves you, and He knows just what you need, because He knows you better than you know yourselves.

I thought it was just so amazing, because yes I know it's true, but it just emphasized it so much when he said it like that! And that was a really spiritual moment for everyone else as well, I think. It opened up the doors to receiving revelation for the rest of the meeting! Oooooh, it was just so great!

Thursday:

I'm going to call sagawa today, and see if they can find my bike, because it's really frustrating not being able to go very far due to no bike. But oh well...

... Okay. Guess what just happened? So, do you remember when I told you about how we had a district blitz last transfer, and Horrocks Shimai and I gave hand warmers to a girl that was doing advertising for and animal humane society or something? Well, we just saw her today, and I recognized her, and she recognized me! I said hi and told her to ganbaru, and she got this big smile on her face! Yay! Apparently, she goes to all the eki's around this general area. It was cool to meet someone again who I'd helped in an entirely different area, never expecting to see her again! It was just a really cool thing for me to experience! Have you or dad ever had experiences like that? I just think it's so cool!

After that, we went and visited the bishop's house, and heart attacked their door. Then, we tried to do the same thing to the another family's door, but they heard us and opened the door while we were trying to tape on the hearts, and it scared the daylights out of me! But it was really funny, and they invited us over for Halloween night to trick or treat their house and come and eat some snacks and stuff with them and their friends and a few of their neighbors. I hope we go! The sisters here are great and hard workers, but they don't do things like go to game night, despite the elders, even the zone leaders, asking them to. Oh well. I hope that we can still go.  

Friday:

Happy Halloween! I would make a bigger deal out of it, but since nobody really actually celebrates it here, I don't really know what I could do. Eat some of my candy, I guess. I've still got quite a bit left!

Saturday:

Okay, I've had no time to write to you today, but I have a lot to say! Today was one of those fail days you just have as a missionary, or at least it was up until we got to where we needed to go and did what we needed to do. So, it rained all day today, and it still is raining, I'm pretty sure. We got my bike at last from Sagawa today, so we changed our original plan and after doing some contacting, went to go visit a member, who'd had a birthday last week but we weren't able to go then because I didn't have my bike yet. Well, it turned out to be a really hard ride up to her place, at least for me. I was wondering why it was so difficult, and why I couldn't keep up my speed even when we were going downhill, and it wasn't until I was going up a particularly steep hill that I heard the sound of my rear tire rubbing against the rim, and having had such an experience before my mission, I throught "oh shoot! NOOOOO!!! Not again!" It was indeed flat.

But then, because we had an appointment set up with a member at four, and it was 3:15 ish, Reeves Shimai determined, correctly, that we would never make it on time if we walked. Well, no duh. So I had to tough it out and suck it up, and ride my banged up bike with, it turns out, not one, but both tires flat, all the way back to the church, going uphill and downhill, and almost never on the sidewalk, with cars sometimes right alongside me, and me trying so hard not to fall, and to keep myself from bumping up against them. And to make it that much more interesting, my shoe flew off about five minutes into the ride, which made me even slower, trying to get it back on, and getting my foot wet on the process. Gah! But we booked it, me trying to keep up as best as I could, and failing pretty badly, and nearly killing myself. I was exhausted, and not feeling too well, but I felt pretty good about our timing. We ended up being only three minutes late. Woohoo!

Sunday:

We had an especially good time after dinner. We housed a huge apartment complex for like an hour and a half, and we extended a lot of invitations to church and stuff! We met another Christian lady, and met a family that apparently used to come to eikaiwa, before I came here. It was really cool! We felt so good! But while I was doing housing, and here's the funny thing, I started getting down again, and I started to think about how much I missed home and how fun it would be if I was there right now and such. But it was after we met the other Christian lady (not a very kind one. She basically said that she doesn't associate with Mormons, her beliefs are different, and that if they were the same, we might meet again in heaven, someday. But she didn't think so. Yeah, slightly irritating) that I started wondering just what my job is here. And wondering why I was here. And then it just came to me. I have something that not many people have. Something that can and will bring them peace, comfort, healing and joy if they will accept it. And right now, I'm trying to give it to other people. That's not a bad thing to do at all. So,ermines. We get so focused on doing what we have to do that we forget everything m even why we're doing these things. It's sooo important that we don't forget what our message is here, otherwise, we'll become robots, and we will lose track of our goals and what our purpose is, and we will get sad and upset, and think about things that will make us want to go home. It helps me feel so much better to finally realized what I'd been doing and how I could help myself to feel better! It was a really good boost/defining moment for me! Yay!  

This is the view from Maryandra's desk in their little house in Hibarigaoka!