Room in my heart...

Note from Sister Jen's parents:

She will be returning home from Japan 

Wednesday, June 5th!

She will be speaking in Sacrament meeting on June 30th at 9 am.  

The ward building address is 14400 South Redwood Road, Bluffdale.

My primary friend, Miku Chan

Dear Family,

I can't believe this time has come. Everyone keeps writing me about seeing me this week, and it just seems so unreal that I will actually be there!!!

Having that said, yesterday at Church was truly a crazy experience. We had nine investigators at Church, and lots who came later (maybe 7), and it was such a powerful testimony meeting. One of the sweet members just started talking about me at the end of her talk, and I was gone. I cried I think the whole day. The only 11 year old in Primary got up and bore her testimony about me, how we couldn't meet a lot but that we both had done ballet, and how much she loved me. Both of them! I bore my testimony to the sweet people who came, so many investigators, and just explained how much Heavenly Father loved them, and how baptism is the way we go to live with Him. It was all so neat to me. I love every one of the sweet faces in that audience. As I bore my testimony, I just kept feeling how Heavenly Father loved every one of those people in the audience, and how each of them was so special. I told my branch how my family didn't worry, because I had a family here in Japan. They are truly so special. I thought that there would be no room in my heart for love after Takamatsu, that it was finished. I realized that Niihama snuck in the back door and is such a part of my heart.

Three of our sweet investigators showed up the first time, a family, bringing Japanese gifts to send me off. Somehow, it all hurt as I talked to the less-active who is coming back with her non-member boyfriend, who we have an appointment to start teaching. The new outfit that my sweet friend Jedley bought me, with her two sweet recent convert girls. 

The hand made and signed fabric letter from the branch. I just love them so much. I've never known love like this, and we didn't even see a baptism here in Niihama. But it is so incredible. Our new investigator who brought us famous towels from a place called Imabari. An investigator who made a mistake last week and went to the wrong Church, another Christian Church close to us, but came this week and said to the Branch President: "This Church is different, isn't it? It is the best." I look up at the night sky and ask, how can I be so blessed? What did I do to deserve this mission in Japan?

The departing missionaries seem to have chances to testify so often. It has made me think a lot about success. Because I love each and every investigator, I want them to be baptized. It breaks my heart that many still are not. But their conversion will be a part of my prayers and a focus of my work until they are there with me, in the Celestial Kingdom, and I can teach them again, rejoice with them, in the Celestial Kingdom. I think success is in keeping at it, even when we fail. I think that if I had never failed, I never would have known the joy of my Redeemer. I think of how sometimes it was so painful. And then I rejoice that there is light at the end of that pain through Jesus Christ.

We truly do have the "good news." I know that my mission will not stop. It will continue. I told my Zone that as m\y time finished here, the thing I feel the most is just urgency. I feel so many unfamiliar emotions lately that I can't put my finger on with all of the change, it is a kind of pain and uncomfortableness, but also just the ever present change that is in our life--because we are journeying back to our Father. Did you know that repentance ties in with progress in the Bible Dictionary?

My heart is so full. I could write so many things I have written before, and I don't know how they would sound. I have had in my scriptures, by Alma 8:1, "June 2013." :)

It is strange moving on. And inevitably, there is pain. Excitement. Remorse. Joy. Deeply learned lessons. Testimony. It's incredible. My mission is nothing like I thought it would be. I look back at this patchwork of scattered experiences, and say, "Huh! That is a mission." No one would have told me before. But I look and know that every mission has a common element--the love that comes for the children of God as we spend time, serving them.

I testify to you that that is true.

See you in a blink!

Love forever,

Your Sister in His Service, Sister Anderson

This hug will be for real soooooooooooooooooooo soon!!!