MTC: Week 4

Kon'nichiwa my dear kazoku and tomodachi! (family and friends!)

 

First off, let me reassure you that I am in fact alive.... I had the opportunity of viewing the picture that Josh Crookston took of me in the MTC without my knowledge. Wow, that was such a bad picture! The MTC is tiring work because it is so constant, but I assure you all that I am happy here and love the work more than anything :) He took the picture of me on a Sunday where there was a lot for my doryo (companion) and I to plan... Namely, we were in charge of a district meeting where we taught about Baptism for a good 45 minutes. As always, it was such a great opportunity to teach. The Spirit was felt so strong, and as we testified of our experiences with Baptism and restablished the necessity for such a saving ordinance, we knew that the words we spake were absolutely true. So yes, I may have looked like a total zombie in Josh's picture- but I was a happy zombie rest assured ;) Also, my companion and I wake up at 5:00 a.m. sharp to do our laundry. There are so many thousands of missionaries here that is almost impossible to find a washing machine at any other time of the day on a P-day. Sunday is usually a recoorperation day from P-day!

 

So, what has happened this week? Lots! Our district has started a new tradition- every Friday is an official "Leggo my Eigo" day. "Eigo" is the word for "English language" in Japanese. So for the full day, we strove our best to speak in "Nihongo." It gave me so much confidence- I never realized how much Japanese that God has really helped me to learn. S. Shimai and I taught our most powerful lesson to our investigator W. San that morning. We testified to him that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, that God will answer his prayers and send him help and comfort, and that through Baptism, he will feel the Holy Ghost more fully in his life. With tears in his eyes, he accepted our invitation. His baptism date is set for two weekends from now. We are so happy and excited for him to be able to learn about the gospel and God's plan for him!! I'm starting to truly understand how God and Christ feel about each person individually. I've never experienced so much love and happiness in my life, I feel inspired every day.

 

I can't even begin to tell you all the stories that happened this week, along with being the most spiritual day of my mission so far, Leggo my Eigo day was also the most embarrassing day by far. It started when we walked out of our classroom (after the Eigo fast had just started...) S. Shimai was busy looking the other way, and was inches within running head-first into a pole. Not being quite sure how to say, "STOP! You are going to run into that pole!!" In Japanese, I flung my hands out like a crazy person to grab her arm... and reached a little too far. Considering the fact that we are the same height, that didn't turn out too well. S. Shimai did in fact miss running into the pole, however, we were both SO awkwardly embarrassed! Not knowing how to say, "Oh my goodness, that was the most embarrassing moment of my life- I'm sorry that I just totally violated your personal space, ahhh!!!!" in Japanese, we both just laughed super awkwardly as I covered my face and exclaimed, "Gomenasai S. Shimai!!!!" A thousand times.

 

If only that were the beginning. The Japanese missionaries have a super strange tradition in the cafeteria. Every time that we are finished eating and ready to leave, we pound our fist once on the table to signify that we would like to leave. Don't ask me where this tradition started... But it has been a long running joke that I am too scared to damage the my hand and make a total fool of myself like the rest of my good friends. Anyway, this particular lunch on our Leggo My Eggo fast day, I hit the table with such vigor that the bracelet I was wearing shattered into a million places and flew all over the cafeteria... And to make matters worse, everyone in my district had left already. So everyone else around me was looking at me like I was a total and complete psycho-path and kept asking me questions like, "....Um, are you alright?" and saying tings like, "take it easy!" of course all this happened on a day that I wasn't supposed to speak any English at all.... (I used a couple words admittedly during this situation because I was so embarrassed over how stupid I had been haha.) Fun times! We had so many good laughs on Friday!!

 

Anyway friends and family- I want you to all know how much I love my mission. I love this gospel. I read the Book of Mormon every day and know that it was written as proof that God loves us all and never forgets us. The Book of Mormon has blessed me so much; as a missionary, it means so much more to me than it ever has before. If you are not currently reading the Book of Mormon consistently, I beg you to please read it. Read it and study it. Read it and ponder it. God has a message that each of us need to hear, but we truly need to put in personal effort. :) I know I'm not the perfect teacher- but this message means so much to me. So make a goal on how you can improve your faith, strive towards it, and I know that our Heavenly Father will help you as you strive to do the right thing in your life. I love you all so much!!! Write me when you can. Good luck on your talk tomorrow Mitch, I loved what I've read and know that you will be a great missionary.

 

Takusan Ai (much love,)

Watkins Shimai

Running into Beth!

Hey Guys! Ashli (Beth's sister) here. I just had to share this picture with you! My awesome brother-in-law, Josh, works at the MTC. Whenever he sees Beth, he sends me a picture of her! The first one was really funny. He used some sort of fancy camera to find her in the crowd (he works with media presentations, so it was during a devotional or something) and my poor little sis looked like a zombie! Sooo tired! I'm glad she's working hard! I was happy to see her smiling face again this week, though. Enjoy! :)

MTC: Week 3

Ohio again Kazoku and tamadachi!

 

What a week it has been! It´s honestly been a bit of a blur, but luckily it is written down in my journal. There are so many stories to share- do any of you have specific questions about the MTC or missionary life that you'd like me to answer?

 

I feel like I'm living an entirely different life than the one I knew before. We study, and study, and study Japanese. It is so amazing how far my district has come. It feels like I understand about 70% of the Japanese words that I hear around me, but now the speech is coming a little bit slower. I know that it will come though, so I keep my hopes up with the knowledge that I can learn this language with God's help.

 

As a district, we started to read the Book of Mormon together this week. The words of Nephi in the first chapter felt so much more real to me. I understand what it's like now to leave everything and everyone I love behind. Humble can't even begin to describe it; I truly wouldn't have it any other way. This is such an opportunity to serve the Savior and God's children, and I love it- even when I mess up... This past week, I accidentally asked my investigator if I could call him "S. Church" instead of "Brother S." The word for church is "kyokai," and the word for brother is "kyodai." Now that took a little bit of sorting out!

 

Anyway, family and friends, it has been a week full of trial and error. I love my two investigators! I had the opportunity to meet W. San (T. Sensei) earlier this week. He was my favorite investigator. When I asked if I could say a prayer before our lesson, he said, "How am I supposed to do that?" And so we pantomimed wonderfully how to fold arms, close eyes, and bow your head. And then he asked a rather interesting question, "How long is your prayer going to take?" I wasn't sure how to say, "as long as you need to to sincerely pray to your Father in Heaven." So my companion took the wheel and estimated that it would take about two minutes.... Well after the prayer was finished, W. San didn't realize that I was finished praying. He continued to have his arms folded (ever so reverently might I add,) until I laughed, "W. San!" to which he promptly looked up and said rather bluntly, "Well that wasn't two minutes!" Like he'd been counting... Seriously, it was the best thing ever. Even though it's just a role-playing scenario, we take the opportunity of teaching investigators in role-playing quite seriously. W. San doesn't speak any English whatsoever, so all of our conversations are in Japanese.

 

But who are W. San and S. K.? They are people that T. Sensei and A. Sensei actually taught while they were on their missions. They act as best as they can like their former investigators- they pull it off so realistically. W. San is the son of a bread maker, who likes to ride around on his motorcycle selling bread for his family. He is in his twenties, likes basketball, and like me, has just one younger brother. He loves to learn, and even though we are not that great at Japanese yet, he's always patient with us and tries to help by explaining plainly. T. Sensei actually still keeps in touch with his friend W. San over Facebook because they got to be such good friends!

 

S. K. is an interesting man too. He unfortunately lost his job, and is just looking for help in his life. Anyway, I probably shouldn't reveal many more details than this. If you post this to the blog, can you change the names for the personal safety of our Japanese investigators?

 

Anyway, I just want you to know that I love you all. I think about my wonderful family and friends all the time, and I hope you're all doing well!

 

Kokoro Kara,

Watkins Shimai

 

 

MTC: Week 2

Ohio Kazoku!

Today, S. Shimai and I started off by writing some letters; so expect some mail soon, family and friends!

Mom- to answer your question... Anybody can e-mail me now; friends included! But I'm really bad at replying to even my best of friends because I like to focus on my family.

So, how has this last week been? Wow, it has been one step shy of crazy all the time. My first kyudosha (investigator) moved away to Tokyo, so we can't teach him anymore. Sad day! But, on the bright-side, we picked up two new investigators. The first of which was rather unexpected. He's very American, speaks Japanese really well, and is acting like he has some interesting psychological problems (schizophrenic!) He has way too much fun acting like our crazy investigator! It keeps us on our toes, and S. Shimai and I have to pray for the Spirit to guide us at all times. The biggest surprise yet was our new investigator that we learned more about on the Fourth of July. We had a brief video introduction so that we could get to know him better... He was T. Sensei!! Our teacher has become our investigator, and our second investigator is also now teaching us sometimes. Both of our teachers are now investigators! A rather strange turn of events, but I can't wait to show them how much they've taught me.... And maybe sing to them again haha.

The MTC is making me so strong! I have been working out every day inbetween everything else, lugging heavy bags of laundry, and am on the top floor of every building that I ever enter somehow. It's great preperation for Japan.

Also, on another funny and slightly sad note... One of my skirts got absolutely destroyed this week! I was stepping down from my bunk-bed and the tan levi skirt that Dad thought would be great for riding bikes with literally ripped like paper. I wasn't doing anything wild to have that happen, and I'm so glad that it ripped now rather than later when I'm actually really active in Japan. It is sadly very ruined, not even ripped along a hem- not that I'd want to risk wearing it again haha! But, one of my roommates is an expert seamstress. I hope it's okay with you, Dad, but I think I'm just going to let her have that skirt for scrap material. Unless you think it can still be returned somehow?

Anyway, it was so great to hear from all of you. To my great surprise, I had 8 full e-mails to respond to! I am so sorry if I don't get around to e-mailing all of you. I never realized how short an hour could be. Thanks for being patient with me! If you have any more specific questions that you'd like to ask me about the MTC, feel free. I'll try to type them into the family/friend e-mail.

I love you all so much and am praying for you every day! Keep me updated and keep smiling :)

Love Always,

Watkins Shimai

Hey all! These are pictures with me and my companion (Sister S!) We're really different from each other, but it's great- we work together with such different perspectives. It's awesome how effective we've been together :) We committed and investigator to work towards baptism next month! 

MTC: Week 1

Ohiyogozaimasu Kazoku! (Good morning Family!)

Expect to receive emails on Saturday mornings (very early!) On P-days, we wake up to do laundry at 5:15 a.m. sharp. There are just so many missionaries here right now, that it's a tad bit crazy. But I love it! I was wrong about 700 missionaries coming in the day I did. There were actually 900 at least. Hard to believe. And the second largest language in the MTC next to English is Japanese right now. I feel so blessed to be here with so many brothers and sisters that do their best to help me understand and know what to do!

So, what have I been doing the past few days? My first day after I was whisked off, I was taken straight to a large room where after a bit of shuffling and name-tag reading, I got a name-tag of my own. It's so awesome! And it's easy to tell where I'm going, so people either start talking to me in Chinese or Japanese... Luckily I understand the Chinese too, and I've confused my doryo (companion) S. Shimai (Sister S.) quite a bit with that haha! She caught onto the fact that I wasn't speaking Japanese though eventually.

I always felt like I had learned a lot of Chinese in high school, but here we are on speed-street. Through the Lord's help, I've learned soo much Japanese already. We know how to pray in Japanese. We have an investigator (role-play; still neet though.) And we are doing great so far.

The days are already a little bit of a blur, we focus very hard from sunrise to sunset.

There's a few things I'd like to say to the family :) First off.... Aunt B is the best! Seriously! The first day I was sure I wouldn't receive a letter or anything like that (I mean, our family has been running around crazy and the MTC experience just started.) Still, my fellow choros (elders) and shimais (sisters.) Had so much mail! I was slightly sad, because I didn't really expect anything. But at the bottom of the letter pile was my first letter from Aunt B. It made me so unbelievably happy! So thank you so much!

What else? Let me tell you a funny story about my investigator and how I about surprised him out of his seat haha. Okay, so as we began our first lesson with him yesterday about God and his relationship to us, I kinda hinted to my companion that I had the words to "I am a Child of God" memorized in Japanese... "If that would be helpful or anything?" Funnily enough, the whole time she'd been wishing that somehow we could add a song to help bring the spirit into our lesson....

So, I when the time came, I asked Y. San (our investigator "Mr. Y.) if I could sing a song for him. He was super confused and thought I was saying the wrong thing. He looked back and forth and then motioned from his mouth like "sing?!" I repeated the word a few times, and he knew that I wasn't mistaken. So then he pointed between the two of us (me and S. Shimai) and asked which one. To which I laughed, raised my hand, and started belting out a solo. That took a lot of courage for me, because I really don't like singing in front of people like that, but it was so worth it. You should have seen the look on Y. San's face, it was like he had never been more surprised in his life. And S. Shimai pretty much had tears in her eyes (I'm not sure if that was because she was trying so hard not to laugh at how crazy it was :) but it went well! It's a lot easier to speak Japanese than to understand it so far. I know what I want to say, and memorization is really coming along well, but understanding someone who (like our investigator) who awesomely enough is actually Japanese, is still fairly difficult. But in a way, I'm not discouraged yet. I've been placed with probably the most dedicated Shimai on the MTC campus. We want to learn Japanese with all our kokoro (heart!) We are teaching our investigator again later, so we have a bit to prepare this fine P-day, but I'm still excited.

I can slightly see why people say that the MTC is like a prison, we stay inside for lessons for four to five hours at a time usually. Luckily going to college really prepared me for that, so I don't mind too much! It's been so great :) My teachers are great too! They will only say one word in English at a time to explain a word, but other than that it's Japanese all the time. It's awesome, I admire them so much and hope to be that fluent when I'm back.

     .

Watashi wa kazoko o aishitte imasu! (I love my family!) Arigato gozaimasu! (Thank you so much!)

Watkins Shimai