Matsuda Shimai

Matsuda Shimai was my trainer in the mission (Japan Fukuoka Mission/I started in Miyazaki). She was the BEST! I had her for one month and then she moved away to Kagoshima. However, later, I was sent to Kagoshima (two months later? three months?) and we were companions again! When she met me at the train station in Kagoshima, she RAN to me on the platform (uncharacteristic of most demure Japanese women), threw her arms around me and said, "My sweet dod!" "Dod" is a shortened/nickname form of "doryo" which means companion. Then she handed me a Snickers bar (a rare commodity at the time).

The girl has been teasing me, making fun of me, and laughing at me since day one, but I guess I've been laughing at her as well. We are both blunt which led us to quickly understand one another. I arrived in Japan with a broken finger all wrapped up in a splint which made it difficult for me to squeeze my bike brakes as well as I wanted. I was saddle sore and in her words "wobbly." I lost track of her (she rode fast) while riding one day and decided to stop to wait for her to come back to me rather than risk taking a wrong turn and getting super lost. She came back to me. She was not happy. She stopped and jumped off her bike, skirt swirling around her. She then proceeded to yell at me in nearly perfect English. She told me I didn't have enough faith. She said I needed to have more faith to ride my bike faster because we didn't have any time to waste in finding people who wanted to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I later became a senior companion and trainer and my companions always complained that I rode my bike too fast. I taught them to fish the same exact way my mama bear taught me to fish.

Fast forward to dinner at her house the night before Easter. She has a beautiful family (husband, four kids). She spends a lot of her time in service to others. Service is part of the fiber of her being. She is a great cook! Her home is a place of peace. She is still blunt. She still teases. She remembers every single thing we ever talked about a quarter of a century ago. What I loved a lot was hearing her speak Japanese. I understood all of her words. And then it came to me that her Japanese is the most beautiful of all because she is the one who really taught me to speak it. She is my mother tongue, so to speak. Her Japanese is easy on my ears.

How grateful I am to have been blessed with such a wonderful trainer and companion in the mission field. How lucky we were to meet up again last week. It became clear to me once more that Heavenly Father has placed amazing and wonderful people in my path to guide me along the way. I'll save the stories about bathing at the onsen and fetching garbage donuts and praying for "many delicious flavors of ice cream for sale at the store" for another day (oh, and breaking into the elders' apartment to steal her bike back), but for now, I would like to sincerely say, "Thank you for all you have taught me, Matsuda Shimai."