2nd Week in the MTC

Dear Family and Friends,

 

I hope you got my e-mail from last week...I didn't get a response so I'm just hoping it went through. I LOVE ALL OF THE LETTERS AND PACKAGES!! Oh my goodness! Thanks so much to everyone who has sent me packages and letters! Thanks to Mom, Dad, Aunt Mer, Aunt Jenny, Grandma Rosalie, and Kelsi :) Missionaries love letters so keep em coming!

 

Week 2 is complete!! How crazy is that!? It really has flown by so quickly. Everyday just go by so quickly. All the time I feel like I'm either studying or eating. Haha its crazy.

 

A typical day for me looks like this:

 

6:15 arise and get ready for the day

7:00 Classroom time (Planning)

7:45 Breakfast

8:20-11:20 Classroom with Sensei

11:20-12:25 Classroom Personal Study time

12:25 Lunch

1:20 Gym time

2:45 Classroom Language Study

5:25 Dinner

6:10-9:10 Classroom with Sensei

9:10-9:30 Additional Study time (Planning)

9:30 Get ready for bed

10:30 Lights out

 

If you know me well, you know that I love to have every minute of my day planned. So I'm a very happy girl. I'll give you some highlights of my week but just let me know what you want to hear about in my e-mails and I'll keep track throughout the week.

 

This Sunday was my first normal Sunday at the MTC because of General Conference last time. There are two small Japanese branches. Each week everyone has to prepare a short 3-5 minute talk IN JAPANESE because the missionary will be called on at random!! Ahh! Luckily, they don't usually call you for you first few weeks. BUT i was asked to give the closing prayer IN JAPANESE! So I wrote down the points I wanted to say and said it! Sacrament meeting in Japanese was an interesting experience! But I love that you can feel the spirit of the Lord even when you can't really understand whats being said.

So for the first week we were teaching an "investigator" named Kato-san. But this Friday he became our teacher! His real name is Kosaka Sensei and he is Japanese! We are so lucky to have one of our teachers be a native. We can learn better pronunciation and more things about the culture! We still have our other teacher Clark Sensei and I love her as well. Our lessons with "Kato-san" just keep getting better. We try to use less and less notes each time and try to create sentences on our own. Japanese grammar is very different than English grammar so trying to form sentences can be really difficult! But near the end of this lesson I wrote "Bear your testimony" and didnt write anything specific down. I was able to look kato-san in the eyes and bear a simple testimony that "God is our Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ is our Savior, and we love you and want to help you" I felt the spirit guide me and all though I stumbled a little and went slow, I know it was meaningful. I love teaching! We have a new investigator we are teaching tonight (Clark Sensei) I'm excited to see how it goes!

 

For gym time I play volleyball or basketball! A girl in my district (Sharp Shimai) played in high school too so we have a lot of fun together!

 

I got really sick this week :( The MTC is full of people from everywhere so it was bound to happen. I just has a terrible cold and sore throat. I stuck it out though but after class ended at 9:10 my doryo and I left early for bed. The extra sleep helped. Then I lost my voice. I sounded like a little boy going through puberty. But today my voice is starting to come back, but I'm still coughing up a storm. My whole district has it :(

On the bright side, JAPANESE MISSIONARIES ARE HERE!!!!!!! When I first saw them all I about had a heart attack! I just love these people so much! So just to explain, Native Japanese missionaries come to Provo for two weeks to learn how to preach the gospel (no language training) and then they fly back. So I have been eating with them, talking to them whenever I can! My district calls me the Nihonjin Stocker and I don't mind that because its true! I don't think they all realize what an amazing opportunity it is to have native speakers here! Anyway, they are super helpful when I need to translate something or I just want to talk! I love them!!!

We went to the temple today and when we came out we were standing by the fountain taking pictures and a Japanese lady comes out of no where and starts talking to us/me. I COULD COMMUNICATE WITH HER!! She asked where we were going, I asked her where she was from, she asked where we were from and if we had any language experience. I told her that I lived in Tokyo five years ago and told her where! She told me my that i could speak japanese well! (joozu desu nee!!) That was a long story but the moral is I'm learning!

 

This week my doryo and I joined the MTC choir. We will be singing nearer my God to thee tonight (my voice is now gone but I will lip sync). He told us the story of that song. Its about Jacob and his dream of the ladder! I didn't know that!

 

Anyway my time is running out! Sorry this is so scrambled! Write me back and let me know what specifically you want to hear about! I love you so much! I know this church is true and more than ever I know that Heavenly Father loves each and everyone of His children. Especially the people in Japan. Each day my heart is opened a little more and Heavenly Father shares his love for them with me. I know that I was sent here to this Earth with a purpose and one of my purposes was to serve a full time mission in Japan. I know that we all experience hard times but it is those hard times that shape us into the person we were designed to be. God lives, He loves us so much that He sent His son, Jesus Christ. He suffered and died for us that we may live with our Father again someday :)

 

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!!!

 

 

Love,

Capener Shimai

ケイプナ　しまい