Spring

The cherry blossoms are coming!!

Good Morning!! It's so beautiful here in Hakodate. I rode my bicycle to church with flowers blooming around me and birdies chirping. It was super cute.

This weeks ponderizing 聖句  D&C 50:24
"That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day".

It's official I'm obsessed with the word glory. Soooo I looked up the kanji 栄光     栄=flourish 光=light     Glory is flourishing light! So cool right?? Then if you replace light in this scripture with love or happiness it makes it even cooler. Through God we really can have a perfect forever!

This week has been so good! I'm gonna tell you about all my friends.  

New investigators from Vietnam.  They speak no English.  We're teaching them Japanese. 

I ate this GIANT hamburger!!

• Fukuda San- taught her daughter how to pray and what the Book of Mormon was and they both said they want to live together forever
• Takahashi San- wants to be a good mom and be baptized
• Keiko San- prayed that her kids would understand the feelings of her heart so she can get baptized.
• Kanon Chan- takes time every morning to read the Book of Mormon and just found a favorite chapter
• Sato Ai San- let us sing for her and cried
• Narita Shimai- reads the Book of Mormon everyday and asks us 100 questions every time we come.

I love the people here. They all really desire to know how to have a better life and they all really love Heavenly Father and want to be closer to him. I've never been happier and more humbled by the simple things of the gospel.

I love you all! Have a good week!

Sister Zollinger

Splits

Squid

Don't forget to laugh!

Good Morning! How is everyone doing? Sweet me too! I have a request from everyone. I really want to hear stories from everyone of when you have received a blessing from praying, reading the scriptures, or going to church. Tell me what kind of blessings you receive from the gospel. Thanks! :)

This weeks ponderizing scripture is, Jacob 4:7!
"Nevertheless, the Lord God showeth us our weakness that we may know that it is by his grace, and his great condescensions unto the children of men, that we have power to do these things".  


All of us, especially me, have weaknesses.  But we don't have weaknesses just because we're imperfect humans. Though our weaknesses we can learn to rely of Jesus Christ. To put all our trust in him. Then through his love and grace we can become like him. His atonement made it all possible.

This week has been so fun!

1. Got a hair cut right next to the beach, saw the waves splashing in the mirror

   

   Haircut

2. Ate basically a live squid. Fished it out of a pool, the lady cut it up and I ate it! Super yummy!
3. Found out my companions has an obsession with moss :) she likes to stop and squish it!
4. Went with members to promote our English class. Walked around with a sign that said "do you know the meaning of this word?" Confused everyone with "cream puff" :)
5. Pranced around Bay Area with Miho Chan. She's the cutest!
6. Meet 3 foreign exchange students.
7. Taught Japanese to 4 girls from Vietnam.
8. And cried like a small child in church from a simple testimony.

Hey everyone, the church is true. I promise!!

皆さん一人一人で愛してるよ！
(Something like - I love you and miss you all)

ゾリンジャ姉妹
(Zoringa Shimai) 

Miho Chan

After interviews with Kaicho!  He wouldn't smile so we all laughed!

It's the ocean!

Fishing for squid...

Bicycles

We found this in the train station.

Hey everyone! How's it going? So I just wanted to say, I'm sorry my English is disappearing more and more everyday. If there are any errors in this email please forgive me from the bottom of my Japanese heart.

It's 4/11 in Japan right now so, HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAITLIN! You're the best little sister ever!!  Then it's 4/10 in America so, HAPPY NATIONAL SIBLINGS DAY, to all my crazy brothers and sisters! I love you all!

I hope you all got to see general conference, last week. I got to watch it Saturday and yesterday. It was so good! I love the prophet. I love the apostles. I love Jesus. They love you. And they love meです！:) But really I'm going to be in the tabernacle choir someday.  #goals I realized how simple the gospel really is, therefore my scripture this week is

The beautiful Bagenda family from Uganda.

2 Nephi 33:6 "I glory in plainness; I glory in truth; I glory in my Jesus, for he hath redeemed my soul from hell '.  です  I really love the word glory. It's my new favorite word. I want to glory in Jesus forever. Because of him we really can do anything. Literally anything. Because of him we never have need to fear or feel alone. He is always there and he experienced everything we are going though. All we have to do is believe. 

Because a lot of the talks were on families, I just wanted to say thanks mom and dad for all you did. You two are the best parents ever! Thanks for taking us on mommy daughter dates and daddy daughter dates. For buying me yogurt parfaits because you know I love them. For making heart shaped pancakes every Valentine's Day.  For reading Joseph Smith History with us before we got baptized. For buying me my baptism dress.  Thanks for reading Harry Potter and The Hobbit to us when we were small. Then for doing Family Home Evening with us every Sunday night. For saying prayers with each of us before we went to school and work. For tucking us in at night and waking us up on our birthdays singing really loud. And thank you for being an example of someone who may not be perfect but tries every day to be like Christ. I love you Mom and Dad!

We took the train to Muroran.  The ocean is so pretty!!

Lastly thanks everyone for your prayers of safety. We got our bicycles this week! Yay! I love bicycles! So the other night we were riding home and we realized we forgot the umbrellas at the church so we grabbed them and I swung the hooks in my handlebars and we started to ride home. We were riding really slow talking to someone so it was no big deal. But then she left and we started to ride faster. Before I knew it my bike had stopped and I was standing on the other side of my bicycle. The umbrella had swung into the spokes and stopped the wheel and I had somehow managed to gracefully step over the handle bars and land on my feet of the other side. Let's just say the Elders and Murata Shimai laughed really hard and I'm no longer allowed to have an umbrella. :) don't worry mom lesson learned. I'll be safer!

Thanks for all your love and prayers. I love you a lot!

Sister Zollinger

I found some legit sea shells, so I put my earring in it.

Let's Go to the Beach!

Saito San! She bought me a name stamp.

Hello everyone! Happy April! Who loves spring? Sister Zollinger, yeah that's right!
 
So listen, we had transfers! And I transferred! I'm not going to lie, it was hard to say goodbye to the people in Ebetsu. I grew to love the people there so much, and I always felt love from everyone. I realized as I was walking to the church that I got to Ebetsu right at the start of winter when all the grass started to disappear and the lovely Hokkaido winter came to freeze my face off. And last week I just started to see the grass again and woke up almost everyday to birds singing. Ebetsu was my winter wonderland!

My new area is Hakodate!! If anyone doesn't know look it up right now, it sooo beautiful. Right next to the beach. We took as nice run to the beach this morning! Found some sea shells, killed my companion #runnerprops, and saw the main island of Japan! 

Zollinger Shimai and Murata Shimai

My new companion is Murata Shimai! She's from Japan but she's a quarter Japanese and three-quarters Peruvian! We went on splits before and said, "hey lets be companions for real someday!" And then it happened!! She's the best! She's fluent in Japanese, Spanish, and is also good at English! She's a STL. (Sister Training leader) All but one of my 5 companions has been a STL. I have a theory that Nakatsuka Kaicho doesn't trust me so he makes sure I go on splits with the STL everyday. ;) I love being an STL companion because I get to go to so many places and meet so many missionaries and people! It's my favorite! (Don't worry Adams Shimai I'll take care of your friends ✌🏻)
 
This weeks scripture is super funny! Mosiah 27:37
"And how blessed are they! For they did publish peace; they did publish good tidings of good; and they did declare unto the people that the Lord reigneth".  Publish GOOD tidings of GOOD... I just think it's super funny. Really good tidings are good alright! :) But I actually like this scripture a lot. You really do receive so many blessings from bringing peace to others. Like the scripture from last week comforting someone with the news of the gospel is bringing them peace. So awesome!
 
This week has been super crazy! I can't even remember all that happened. But here goes,

• Monday: temple with Saito San
• Tuesday: transfer calls
• Wednesday: picked up Saiki shimais new companion
• Thursday: splits with those two in Ebetsu
• Friday: picked up Murata Shimai and worked in Ebetsu
• Saturday: worked back in MOIWA! With two different missionaries, one that had never been there and the other that had only been there for a day. So we worked off everything I remembered from 4 months ago. Then around 9:20 at night we made it to Hakodate 
• Sunday: Church

  

  Name stamp: It says Zorinja!

  
  

Tonight we are off to Muroran for Zone training meeting.  It all happened so fast. Feel like I emailed yesterday. I'm super excited for this new area and companion! The people here are so prepared to hear the gospel! I'm so great fun for the opportunity to be a missionary. It's the best thing ever! 

Thanks for all your support!
 
I love you all!
 
Sister Zollinger

We aired out the futons - so dinner was in the study room.  

I love Ebetsu Ekaiwa!