OCTOBER 24, 2016 - MAN, I HAVE THE BEST LUCK

Greetings from Kurayoshi Japan, I'm your hostess Ozu Shimai and I'm coming to you, live (or as live as I can get) to report to you the incident that took place on Friday.

It all starts with district meeting, as does every Friday morning.  Again we stayed in our area and skyped the meeting because no member could sit in.  At the end we receive a call from our shigansha (person with baptismal date), Franco.  He said he was outside of the church.  We went to him and he began to tell us how he wouldn't be able to make it to Stake Conference this weekend because he would be spending the weekend with Jheff, and going to church there. Say what?! Yup that's right! Jheff strikes again at being the best recent convert ever! So good!

After that we decided to take lunch at Indo curry. Yum. So good! After lunch we made our way over to an older part of our area. It was around 1:30 or 2 p.m.

I was standing next to the door in the genkan of less active member, Iwagaki Shimai, Sister Blomquist sat on the hard wood floor of the entrance. We had finished talking about the Plan of Salvation when came the first jolt.  We all got quiet and looked at each other.  It sounded like something had fallen or as if a giant hammer hit the ground.  It was silent for half a second when the next wave came.  The house we were in is older and the frame moved side to side.  Sister Iwagaki, old, no teeth, screamed.  My companion reached for her and I was up against the door.  Things fell from off shelves and the ground shook in a loud rumble.  It was surreal, to feel your world move without your permission.  It sounded as if bombs were going off or something falling to the earth.  It went on for about five minutes.  We were pinned in our spots, and we didn't move.  Then it stopped, but the grounded continued to purr.  A second time the house shook. We all laughed our of terror.  Our phone went off saying,"jishin desu" (earthquake).  Blu, snorted in frustration,"Little late there, don't you think?" We decided to pray and leave.  

We walked out not really sure how to feel about the experience, not ever knowing what to do in this kind of situation we both just kinda walked down the hill that her house was set on and back to our bikes.  As we walked down, two women ran out of their house shouting with terrified voices and Blu and I were just calm, partly because we didn't know and partly because we knew we were okay.  We kinda just walked for a moment with our bikes.  All the traffic lights were out and everyone was outside. We looked at our phone and realized we had no service and a lot of missed calls from the mission office and Sister Welch.  We decided the best things for us to do was head to the church.  On our way there we saw side walks had sunken in or shot straight up. Shingles off roofs had fallen and some parts of houses had huge cracks on the sides. 

We were biking and then a third wave hit.  The store next to us started to shake and another boom hit the ground.  My bike shifted to the side and I was like nooope not today, and hopped right off and started walking it.  Finally made it to the church and looked at our phone and it showed 10 missed calls and 7 new texts.  We first called Welch Shimai and told her what happened.  From there we waited in our church parking lot for about 2 and a half hours with others from a near by store, and just felt the earth growl.   We were told that we were about 10km from the epicenter.  That was exciting. 

We ended up near the end of the day in the Ikeguchi home, helping clean up the messed that resulted from the quake.  The aftershocks were frequent and loud and went throughout the night and the next day.  At night they just showed up but we didn't feel anything this morning which is nice.  Later we saw that houses had shingles missing or giant cracks in the side. There wasn't much we could do as service besides the one member who let us help.  Saturday continued but not as intense and we went around to less actives and members to see if they were okay.  There wasn't much for us to do to help because Japanese people won't let you help them. Bahh! We did see this one building where the glass completely shattered.  Tanimoto san, our neighborhood uncle came and checked if we were okay and everyone did have a sense of love and charity towards each other.  

Earthquakes don't happen in Kurayoshi, so everyone was freaking out!  To be honest the news makes it sound worse than it is. People are okay, not many people got hurt that I know of.  Our members are okay, we are okay! Only one cup broke in our apartment, and our jar of honey.

Sunday we continued to feel aftershocks but we drove two hours with a member to Nimi where our stake conference was held. We are so out in the boonies that the whole stake meets in an actual conference center.  While we were there, I was talking with some missionaries and members, and I look over to the side and see a girl and I thought, "Man she looks so familiar."  I just kept thinking about her and looking at her and so I decided to walk over and I said,"I'm sorry but you look so familiar, a year ago when I was in the mtc..."and as soon as I said that she said, "I remember you!!"  It turns out that we had met each other in the MTC.  Then she and I had just entered and were struggling to communicate.   The only things we could say then was, "I love you and your cute"...Now we could speak and talk and as we talked she put her hand on my check and told me that she loved me and man we just hugged.  She had to return home because of health reasons and so she was very thin when I saw her but we had such a happy moment together.  Her name is Emika Sakamoto.  She told me thank you for serving a mission and that she was proud of me! It made my whole day! I never thought I would see her again.

Thank you for all your prayers, please pray that we can find opportunities to serve others or that this event will soften the hearts of others to hear and listen to our message!  Please pray for all those missionaries who, what ever the reason may be, had to return home early.  Pray that they may recover, stay close to Christ and feel love.  I love you all.  Please take care!

1 Verily, thus saith the Lord: It shall come to pass that every soul
who forsaketh his sins and cometh unto me, and calleth on my name, and
obeyeth my voice, and keepeth my commandments, shall see my face and
know that I am;

2 And that I am the true light that lighteth every man that cometh
into the world;

D&C 93

Love,
Sister Oswald


Tuck-N-Roll (yes did lots of that this week)