Saturday, July 6, 2013

MTC week #2

Saturday, June 15, 2012

Hiyo Momma!!
  I'm sending letters in the mail whenever I get them done, so expect stuff just randomly throughout the week. Umm, scrictpure wise for Brother Blake, I have no clue, umm... give him the one in Doctrine and Covenants in section 122, verse 7 I think. The one that says that if even the very gates of hell shall open their mouth after thee, know that it shall be for they good, and yada yada. I don't have it memorzied. :P I absolutely LOVE that scripture. It makes me feel so good.
      And I actually run into Forrester a lot! Way more than you'd think, I usually see him at least once a day and we stop and chat for a few minutes. It's super cool :) I don't know anyone else here, but stinking Elder Shoell knows like half the MTC it feels like! He's ALWAYS stopping and hugging someone or saying hi to someone, it's crazy. We're like, "you're so dang popular Shoell Choro!!"
     A normal day for me is breakfast at 6:45, personal study time from 7:15 to 8:10, class from then till lunch at 11:10, then the next few hours till dinner consist of gym or personal excersise time, additional study time, and other random things. Then after dinner it's more class time at 5-8, which is usually us teaching "investigators". We aren't teaching actual investigators, we're teaching some teachers that are playing the role of investigator. They play the role of someone they taught in Japan, and it's CRAZY serious. You get so into it that you forget entirely that we're roleplaying, it's crazy. And they know these investigators so well that they can very accurately play them. It's really quite a sweet experience. The biggest thing I've learned from doing them is that we need to have love for our investigators. Without love we aren't going to be able to have the Spirit there helping us, and that is the single most important thing to have, the Spirit. The MTC is really quite amazing. There is always a Spirit here, anywhere you go, and it's awesome being able to see thousands of missionaries here doing the same thing I'm doing everyday, it's such a powerful testimony to me of the marvelous work we're here to do.
    You asked how the class instruction is, which is spiritual, which is language. Well, it's both, at the same time. Often we talk about spiritual things and what we can do to help our investigators, all in japanese during class time. It's quite epic, if I do say so myself. Sometimes though during classes in the evening if we're not teaching we'll have just language study, but it's usually combined. It's the weirdest way to teach a language, but it's really quite effective. I'm learning japanese so fast, it's crazy. I'm talking in it all the time, I'm writing it even now fairly proficiently, and I'm absolutely loving it. I still don't have that large of a vocab yet, but it's coming, and with the Lord's help I know I can get it all down. The language has three alphabets, Katakana, Hiragana, and Kanji. Kanji has like, 50,00 - 80,000 characters in it, so we don't study that one. ;) Hiragana and Katakana only have 71 characters a piece though, so we're memorizing those. I can write in all Hiragana, and I'm still working on Katakana, I can write some stuff in my letters in the characters if you like. :) It's SUPER COOL! And so much fun :D
  Elder Brandolino, my companion, got super sick the beginning of this week. Some kind of strep or something, and he's getting the rest of us sick!! :O Haha, we're doing all we can to stay healthy and stay strong, but we're all getting sniffly noses and what not, yikes!! We went to the doctor and he prescribed some HEAVY DUTY antibiotics, I mean like three days of meds and your better kind of heavy duty. He's only taken one dose and is already feeling tons better, it's epic. :)
   Today we have TRC, which stands for Training Resource Center, I think, and apparently during that time we teach actual people, not our roleplaying teachers, and it's ALL in Japanese.. O_O I'm kinda nervous, we just go in blind and wing everything, no preparation at all. I have no idea what to expect, it'll be our first time doing it.
        I absolutely love my district by the way, they are so cool, all the Shimaitachi, sisters, and all my Chorotachi, elders. We call ourselves District B13, it's a reference to a movie or something, I'm not sure, but Goddard Choro thinks it's awesome. :P Haha!! We all get along so well, and we all love each other to death. It's only been 1 and a half weeks, and we're already SO tightly knit, I love it :) Every morning and night we pray together in Japanese and that's so powerful. :) I love this Elders and Sisters so much, I have the best district, I'm so blessed. :)
  If you have anything else you'd like to know just ask me :D I love you guys so much and I miss you all dearly. :)
      Ai shite imasu!! Watashi no kazoku o ichi ban desu!! (I love you, my family is the best ;))

           Love, Mike

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