July 24, 2012

Happy Pioneer Day Mina-san!!

Well, week 6 is officially over.  How weird is that? I don’t really have a done to say this week so you’ll have to forgive me.  Not a lot happened. :P  Well, that’s not true.  Lots of things are always happening here at the MTC, but it all has gotten so routine that I forget half of the things.  xD Whatever.

Halfway the Musical:

So this last Friday was our halfway mark here at the MTC!  Yosh!!!  We have exactly 33 more days until we leave for Japan!  AHH!  I can’t wait!  Well, obviously the shimai here couldn’t just let our halfway mark go by unnoticed right?  ;) You remember how I was telling you all about our Bathroom Musicals?  Well, the coordinating sister here decided it’d be fun if we were to make our halfway mark into a musical day!  We wrote a ton of songs about all of the different activities that we would do throughout the day, but we did it secretly so none of the choro would know what we were up to.  Then on Friday morning, we sang all of the songs together.  Each song ended with us walking off.  You should have seen the looks on their faces. :P

Answered Prayers:

This week was answered prayers week.   During gym, Long-shimai and I will usually go on splits because she LOVES to be outside and I really just don’t. :P On Friday (Yes, our halfway mark. xD) after gym, I was in the bathroom blow-drying my hair.  I kept having this thought come to me over and over again. “Find ways to serve your companion.” Elder Bednar said that most of the time you won’t recognize the spirit right when you hear it, but sometimes your thoughts will be so out of place you’ll know right away it’s the spirit.  This was one of those “That was a really weird thought” moments.  Then I had another really weird thought. “Why don’t you pray for an opportunity to serve your companion?”

Bad idea. :P

Guys.  Heavenly Father answers prayers.  I prayed for an opportunity to serve her and, I kid you not, 2 minutes after saying “Amen” Long-shimai comes limping into the bathroom.  I found out that during gym she had sprained her ankle and needed to go to the Health Clinic.  Honestly, it was only a matter a time, but still.  At the Health Clinic they decided it was a really serious injury and that we needed to get to urgent care to get it x-rayed and find out what was wrong exactly.  (Yup.  We left the MTC again. AHH!) They diagnosed it as sprained and gave my companion crutches.  Oh my gosh she hated them.  xD  Long-shimai is extremely independent.  She HATES having other people have to help her. But it did give me an opportunity to serve.

Heavenly Father answers prayers.  Be careful what you pray for.  ;)

Just so you know her ankle is completely fine. I don’t know if the doctors just diagnosed wrongly or if a miracle happened, but her ankle never bruised, never swelled, it just ached for a day or two.  She ditched the crutches after a day of using them. :P  Everything is back to norman.

Well, that’s really all I have to say this week… Sorry everyone! I know it’s really short and not extremely exciting today.  Look forward to next week though!  Tomorrow our Kohai come in!!  That means we’ll be the new sempai!  How weird is that? I’m looking forward to them coming.  It’s going to be fun to have them.

Anyway, Ai shitte imasu mina-san!  I hope you all have a FANTASTIC Pioneer day!  Be sure to write me and tell me all about it!
Love,
Christine

Weeks 4-6 Pictures

 Christine's room

 The "eat me" sign for her snack stash

 Champenois-shimai and Stankosky-shimai. Christine's Roommates

 Long-shimai. Christine's companion

 The view from her room

 Long-shimai again. :)

 Long-shimai, Nakatsuka-shimai, and christine

 Dolan-shimai

 Stubbs-shimai

 Stubbs-shimai, Dolan-shimai, Long-shimai, and christine

 Black-shimai, Stubbs, Dolan, Long, Christine, and Farnsworth-shimai

 About half of her zone

 Everyone takes pictures

 Dolan, Christine, Hanson, and Long

 Stubbs and Dolan

 This is Long in the shuttle leaving the MTC

 Long at the doctors office

 The Choro's, from Left to Right: Smart, Williams, Carter, Lee, Wooden, McKnight, and Fukino

 Christine's letter box

 Christine's Desk

 Christine's bookshelf

 Christine's unmade bed.

 Christine and long messing around with the Sempai

 Again, Long and christine playing with the sempai

 Long and Champenois

 The choro, reenacting Quigon's Death with their fingers.

 Christine's Desk is the one in betweeen Long and the brown bookshelf thingy

 All the Sempai

 Christine and her Disney tomadachi

 All the Shimai

 Hanson, Nakatsuka, Latu, and Dolan-shimai

 Simmons-shimai and christine

 Christine and Dolan-shimai

 Christine and Stubbs-shimai

 Farnsworth, Simmons, Belnap, and Black-shimai

 Nakatsuka, Stankosky, Christine, Dolan, Latu, and Long-shimai

All she said for this picture is "yeah. We're awesome"

July 17, 2012

Ohaiyo Gozaimasu Mina-san!

I hope you guys are all doing well!  I miss you guys a lot!  This week was an emotional roller coaster of a week. It really was.

Testimony Meeting:

So, I actually tend to forget what exactly I’ve been putting in my emails and what I’ve put in letters to people.  So if I repeat myself (whether by email or letter) don’t be surprised.  xD  We have devotionals here at the MTC every Sunday and Tuesday.  After the Tuesday devotionals we meet as a District and have a “Devotional Review” where we all share the things we liked about the talk and just review what happened in the Devotional.  More often than not, Devotional Review turns out to be more spiritual and awesome than the devotional itself.  :P

This last week, we ran out of things to say about the Devotional roughly 30 minutes early, demo we’re not allowed to leave the classroom until a specific time and we didn’t want to lose the spirit. So our District Leader (Lee-choro) decided we should have a mini testimony meeting.  It was really really powerful.  I found out that there is a choro in my district whose family was really struggling. Apparently he was so worried about them he begged the Branch President to let him go home. The Branch President let him call his family and his family told him they were fine and to get back to work. :P  Apparently  that was all he needed.  Nobody in our district had any idea anything was wrong with this choro.  He seemed totally fine.   Demo the testimony he bore after about how much serving a mission has blessed his family was really really powerful.  J The spirit was really strong.  I’m so glad this choro decided to stay and not go home.

Jenny Oaks Baker:

Please tell me at least one of you out there knows this name. :P Jenny Oaks Baker was our Sunday Devotional speaker and oh my gosh was it powerful.  I don’t know how many of you know that I play the violin.  I know all of you know I love music!  What she did was she would share a story about her life and then play a song on her violin that went with that story.  (For example, she played I Need Thee Every Hour after a story about how she and her 3 year old son were nearly killed.)  Honestly, the most powerful part of the whole thing though was her husband and her children.  She asked her husband to get up and bare his testimony.  He served his mission in the Kobe, Japan mission. (My Doryo freaked when she heard that. xD) So when he got up to the stand, he talked for a second in English and then said in Nihongo, “This is for all the Japanese Missionaries, demo I haven’t spoken Japanese for a long time so it probably won’t be very good.” Then he bore a really simple testimony in Nihongo and I’m proud to say, I understood almost all of it. J Igen no tamamono! I feel like I’ve learned so much in just 6 weeks!

The other cool part of the devotional was her kids.  Jenny Oaks Baker has 4 kids aged 12, 9, 7, and 5 and all of them play musical instruments.  They went and played I Am a Child of God. The 12 year old on the violin, 9 year old on the cello, 7 year old on the piano, and 5 year old on the guitar. They were fantastic.  I wish I could play any instrument as well as that freaking 5 year old could play the guitar.  xD  It was so cool.

Kyudosha update:

So, I realized I haven’t been saying anything lately about my Progressing Investigators.. For anyone who doesn’t know, Long-shimai and I currently have 2 progressing investigators (though, we get a third one this week.) Muroi-kyodai and Harukawa-kyodai. Both of them are fantastic. JThis last week and the week before Muroi-kyodai went on vacation to Idaho to go river rafting so not much has been happening there. We met with him for the first time since he left this last week.  He’s awesome. He’s going to BYU Hawaii studying Business.  That’s really all there is to know about Muroi-kyodai for now. :P  I’ll fill you all in more when I know more myself.  xD

As for Harukawa-kyodai we’ve made a lot of progress with him.  I think I told you all about Harukawa-kyodai setting a baptismal date. J Ahh!  Well, since then we’ve been working on preparing him for baptism.  It’s been kinda hard to teach him, demo only because Long-shimai and I are still learning.  And he’s just kinda hard to read.  Luckily he’s started to feel a lot more comfortable around us so he’s been telling us what sort of things he wants us to teach him about. The last couple of times he’s asked us to teach him about the Commandments so that’s what we’ve been doing.  We met with him yesterday and talked about Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy and Following the Prophet.  We committed him to doing both and he was really excited about it.  I think he was mostly excited about the fact that he gets to just relax and not do anything on Sundays.  xD  He’s freaking awesome.  J  Next time we’re planning on talking with him about Tithing, demo I have a feeling that’s not going to be what we end up talking about… Harukawa has a habit of asking us questions at the beginning of a lesson which cause us to throw out any prior lesson plan we had.  xD That’s totally fine though. I’d rather it be that way.

This week we’re supposed to get a third Kyudosha!  I don’t know anything about him yet, besides he’s a guy.  The end. :P I’ll fill you in more on that next week! 

Sempai:

This is the part of the week that made it the emotional roller coaster.  Yesterday morning at 5 am the sempai all left for Japan. It was really REALLY hard seeing them go.  Especially the ones from other countries.  Long-shimai and I really bonded with our sempai so we decided to go say goodbye to them yesterday morning.  We woke up at 4:30 am and helped them to take their luggage down from the Celestial Kingdom to the Telestial world... Then we went back and helped all the Nihonjin.  Then there were lots of tears and hugs and “I’ll miss you so much! You’ll do awesome!  Get Japan ready for us!”’s.  I’m really going to miss them… Although, this week marks our halfway point. J That’s right. I’ve been here for 6 weeks this Thursday. It feels like an eternity. (Random side story, two nights ago there was this girl talking to her friend out in the hallway of our residence. She was like “Oh my gosh.  I can’t wait to get out to Texas.  I feel like I’ve been stuck in this place for like a year!” Her friend asked “How long have you been here?”  and she replied “3 weeks”.  It was so hard for me to not laugh. :P) 6 weeks to go!  Then we’ll get to go join the Sempai in Japan!!  I’m so excited.

Well, that’s my report for this week.  Sorry, it’s kinda long.  I actually wrote down the things I wanted to talk about beforehand this week! :P  Maybe I shouldn’t do that.  Oh well.  Ai shitte imasu mina-san!

Oh, one last thing. My doryo and I wanted to end our emails this week by bearing our testimonies in Nihongo. 

私は証を分かち合いたいと思います。神様は私たちの天の恩父。天の恩父は皆さんを愛すると知っています。ジョセフスミスはほんとに預言者と知っています。この復員が大好きです。神様とイエスキリストを会い知っています。神様は私たちの祈りを答えると知っています。イエスキリストのみなによってお祈りしますああめん。

Ai shitte imasu!

Love,

Christine

Pictures from weeks 1-3

 Christine and Her companion, Long-shimai.

 I believe this is Champenois-shamai, and Stankosky-shamai:

 This is Long-shimai. :)

 Christine's room