Two Carlsbad-ians in Tokyo 4th Ward ?!?

Steve Hallet, who lives here in Carlsbad, CA, is currently working in Tokyo and happens to attend the ward where Emily is currently assigned! He caught up with Sister McMahan last Sunday, April 5, and emailed a photo of the two of them at church! He also took a photo of Emily and her companion, Swasey Shimai. And from the looks of the photo, little boys like to climb and draw on the board, no matter what side of the world they live on. Thanks for the photos, Steve!
April 8, 2009

I love getting your emails every week! Thanks!

Last Friday we had dinner with the Evans family. They have a huge apartment. There was a large window that spanned the wall and went to the floor. Outside it there was a huge cherry blossom tree and if you looked down there was a pond. They had a grand piano with a cello next to it. I noticed two violins in the corner. Their daughter is about to serve a mission in Japan. Their other daughter is graduating from high school. She has a gorgeous voice and wants to study musical theatre. She got accepted at a few places, one of which had 600 applicants and only 22 were accepted. She was also accepted at BYU Provo. Anyways, Sister Evans speaks Japanese very well. Her husband served his mission here. Sister Evans has a Japanese friend whom she invited to dinner. The friend is not a member. So we shared a message about building your foundation on Christ and shared Helaman 5:12 and gave her a Book of Mormon. I got to accompany the daughter on a French song in 3/4 with slow eighth note chords. Then I got to play one of those hymn arrangements by Micheal R. Hicks.

Saturday we did a church tour with a potential investigator who has a Christian background. She had interest in listening to conference. That night we went to 4th ward's activity called "Springtime in Venice". They had Italian food and projected an Audrey Hepburn film onto the wall. There was some Italian music playing. 5 non-members came and we sat with them. They were Japanese but spoke English. Two were the guy and lady who came to Eikaiwa (English class) for the first time last week.

On Sunday we did splits. Swasey Shimai and I went to Shibuya building/ward and Eddington Shimai went to the other church building. There are fufu (couple) missionaries here because we are close to the temple. Eddington Shimai went with one of them. This was one of my good days. I heard a lot of Japanese at church and could dendo very well later in the day!

On Monday we went to our Onigiri service but we took the two JTMC Shimai. Turns out one of them is 28! Whoa. She did not look 28 at all. I would have thought 21. She was very short and very spunky. After that we ditched the JMTC Shimai and went to Bro. Edwards house for the missionary weekly meeting. We had two PI church tour appointments but both were no shows. One even gave us a wrong number. Oh, and in the morning we went running. That was good. I was exhausted at the end of the day.

On Tuesday we had interviews with the mission president. Apparently there is only one more interview with him and then it's the new mission president. We had a lesson with Hamasaki-san. We had two lessons before with her and her son. Today was just her though. We do Eikaiwa and gospel. For Eikaiwa we all showed pictures of our family and described them. Then for gospel we shared the same message about Christ as a foundation that we had shared at the Evans. We gave her a pamphlet about 10 ways to be a stronger family. One of them was to have dinner together and we challenged her to do this, or if that was tricky to choose one of the other things.

Today for Pday we went to the temple then went across the street to the park and had some food we bought at the conbini. Then we bought ice cream at 31 Flavors and ate that. It is getting quite warm outside. I bought some sunblock recently. If I had to choose one or the other I would choose too hot over too cold.

Thanks so much for the package. Yeah, I'll miss the bunny cake :) And I miss being home for Easter and Conference. I can't wait to meet my new cousin. Whoa. Me and the new babe are going to have some major catching up to do!

I love you so much! Thanks for your letters and for being a good family! Keep choosing the right and working hard. Claire and Gavin, keep preparing for a mission. Woo-hoo!

I was thinking how I only get one chance to be a missionary and things are constantly new... constantly. That is what it must be like to be a parent, and what its like to live on this earth. We really must be working hard all the time!

Sister McMahan