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.

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

Watkins Shimai