Week #6: Crandell Kyodai

Lost of great experiences this week in the MTC, some sweet and some bitter sweet . . .

We had the opportunity to go to the temple to do endowments and it was awesome, it is cool that we get to go every week but I hear in Japan the Tokyo temple might be closed sometime around when we get there. Hopefully we get to go to it idk if its true.    I guess some missionaries never get to go to the temple while on their missions, so I will consider it a blessing if we get to go.

We taught some TRC lessons to some members and was definitely awesome as I felt like when I wanted to say something, I could.  I was able to express everything I thought of and is really cool to be able to use the language, so something must be sinking in and some progress is being made.  I still have much to learn and love it, so excited to learn more.  I received my katakana name tag meaning my name-tag with my name in the katakana characters . . .
ウイルコツクス (wi-ru-ko-tsu-ku-su)or (wilcox tsu )  is wilcox pronounced in the Japaneese fashion... anyways cool we got them and next week we will likely get flight plans I hear.. our di sen pi (6-9 weekers) are packing up and leaving weighing their stuff and what not.  They will be leaving later this week.

Sadly,  Crandell kyodai is leaving.  He is an awesome teacher,  he is going to Boston for an internship for 4 months working with Mitt Romney's son or something, he studies finance at BYU.  He is a very great teacher sad he is leaving, demo a few more days with him.

One thing that I notice in the MTC and it doesn’t seem to be getting better is that I (and others) are sleepy and don’t know what to do because I literally just want to fall completely asleep.  I don’t know if that will every change, definitely tired now I was thinking maybe I should try to go to bed sooner but kinda cant’ do that with 5 other roommates, maybe this is one of the things that prepared us for life, like college roommates, a house full of kids that won’t go to bed.   I hope sooner or later my body will adjust but honestly probably not...

Our sensei game us some advice this week, here are some quick notes:

Notes
• nihongo.
• The capacity to love is a gift given to us by god.
• If ever you feel like god forgot about me and dendo sucks, you lose all motivation and don’t won’t to continue and it happens to everyone, every senseitachi went through it here.
• Jesus didn’t take the easy way he took the long way to places and healed people on the way, even when he was at sea he went through storms he didn’t do it the easy way...
• God doesn’t do easy things, senkyoshi don’t take it easy they take the longer way because they are striving to be like jesus
• Eye single to the glory of god qualify him for the work.
• God sees people with a filter of love.
• Being able to love people qualifies us.


Notes from today our final lesson with Crandell kyodai
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• You don’t feel like a successful missionary everyday... sometimes nobody talks to you... it can kinda suck....

• Everyone has the same problem, its really hard to keep people active, its hard anywhere you go...


• A bad district was having problems, they hated each other... they were like 6 year olds without nap time krandel said.

Matthew 7:4

1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

• Society can be backwards in nihon, young people are super motivated and hard working, old people stay up late and dye their hair different colors and pee on sidewalks, but the kids are motivated studying working and and striving.

• It is so easy to hate japan, it is really easy specially as a missionary to be miserable if you allow yourself to, it is much harder to choose to love the people over there but when you do they return the love and love you 10 fold.

• In the mission hardest part was having to say goodbye, but I hope you get your heart ripped out over and over again, because that means you put your whole heart into it.

Crandell  kyodai  was an amazing teacher that was definitely life changing, I  learned  so much more then before and cant believe I never knew or had learned what we were taught. There are some amazing teachers at the MTC they are always return missionaries from a mission by yours and always really are amazing.  It is  sad he left, so many people cried.
I am excited to leave and head to Japan.  The MTC is great and all but I want to  get out and see what the real  mission stuff it all about.

The Nashville Tribute Band came and played again this week.  They do an amazing job.   If i were to describe it, its like a story telling music thing and its super spiritual and emotional. There is one song they played this time and last time that are awesome for sure some really good music and I am not just saying that because I haven’t heard music in forever. They are really amazing and would watch them again and again.  There is one song they sing at the end every time that is pretty dang cool I wish i remembered the lyrics going something like . . . “19 years of dreams left in my room . . .”  I  would google it but can’t [Dad can and the song is linked here]

I loved this week!   My conversion is growing stronger and stronger, and my faith in Jesus Christ and understanding of him and his love through this gospel is remarkable and I feel more ready everyday to leave to Japan and start teaching and serving.

Week #3: Nihongo studies

Well another week down, I am a bit tired as I continue to adjust to missionary life.  We taught two kyokaiin (church members) today and we are making it through the language little by little.  I feel like I need to practice japaneese all the time to be prepared, and this leads to my mind being tired so not sure what to write.  Today we went through the temple I enjoyed it.  It is so nice for it to be so close and be able to go there each week.  Not to mention it has nice A/C and it has been hot here.  Also today, P-day we mostly just did laundry and replied to family and friends it's ard being away but will feel great when I can see them again. I honestly just really want to learn this language so just got a lot of work to do, It's kinda amazing I guess if I look, how much we've already learned.

Today we had a good lesson and learned why teaching in  nihongo (japaneese) is actually better than teaching in (english) eigo. Basically and most simply when we speak in eigo we have a deep knowledge and vocabulary and will tend not to keep it simple. Though the Nihanji people need the simple truths of the gospel they do not know that God loves us. They don't understand that God is there for us, to answer us and these simple truths are all we really need to testify of even in eigo. We need to testify that just as James directs we can ask of god if we lack wisdom. That we can learn truth through the spirit and know it s the spirit as we receive a kimochi a feeling that delighteth us to do good. Today also was williams shimai ,our teacher's, birthday and we sang happy birthday in nihongo and gave her some a popcorn box signed by us. It's her birthday and she worked all day here.  What dedicaiton. Anyways she's an awesome teacher she's a tenshi such a kind soul, and so is our other teacher krandel kyodai(brother) they really are good and its sad krandel kyodai is leaving in a month. And we still have 7 weeks so it will suck to see him leave b4 we do. I love how much we are learning and can say already. Now each day we are teaching two investigators and there's no stress about it because if we need to we can read straight from notes but we attempt to keep eye contact and have a conversation but vocabulary and knowledge of sentence structure is still limited and needs to be studied again and again, today was just more of the same stuff and a bunch of fun. But anyways just the same old same old would write more but out of time good day.

My companion and district are great, it is taking some adjustments in attitude, but it is all good.

On Friday, we had pizza,  which well was cool I guess,  pizza is always nice, not sure why I am telling you this.  The words are just flowing.  The day flew by, we had our normal teacher williams shimai who was amazing as usual, an awesome teacher!  Then after her class and lunch we had our other class but no teacher showed up, but luckily our pre-mtc tutor Brother Cook that wee all skyped with beforehand to learn nihongo was just visiting and was like you don't have a teacher? Well I will teach you... and well he's pretty awesome.  He broke his femur, I don't remember how and didn't want to ask because I'm sure he has been asked a million times.

I will share one of the  super short stories he told us.

He was in his first area with a trainer and he stops this guy and his mind goes blank can't think in english or nihongo(-japaneese), he thinks, I will fake a cough and buy some time, but the man thought he was trying to headbuttt him and ran away. When he went back to his trainer he was like what did you do? ...pretty funny.

Oh and Randell kyodai he did a simple but cool excercise, where we taught the message of the restoration in 10 minutes. Then taught it in 5 mins then in 2 mins then in 1 mins. The lesson we learned is that to keep it simple specially since our nihongo forces us to sometimes our english teaching would expound too mucn, when honestly the nihanjin need the simple truths they don't  need to instantly get our profound knowledge they need to actually understand. What they need is the simple truths that they lack a knowledge of. The knowledge that god is there, the knowledge that we are his children, those very basic things we can say is what is important .

Day saturday: well today zoomed by we studied a bunch more japaneese of course went over plain form yada yada. Today i made flashcards for about 100 words and memorized maybe 70 of them super well the other kinda, so it was just a flashcard day inbetween classes, I cant think of what else to write about today.

Wel during one study period we have some of the missiomaries for 2 hours straight talked about spongebob yes spongebob, Im like ok.?. Anyways ya then they moved on to avatar the last airbender as i was sitting there on the side studying very productive so you can tell here you have the choice to be the one of the two guys in the highschool weight room, anyways maybe good for them to take a break so they dont go crazy because well 7 more weeks left still, but still suprised.I remember when my father banned us from watching the show because of well how well lame it was, anyways ya just an interesting bunch there. Oh and ya been trying all that weird japaneese candy theres definitely some crazy weird things like giant cheetos that are pretty much a bar to some spicy roman and grape cotton candy, some cola hi chew, ya some fun and cool stuff roomates have for sure liked it.

Today we didnt feel like playing volleyball for excercise time so instead we went to the fitness center, ran/lifted weights and stuff, really nothing different today. Dont know what to say two 3 hour classes and a one 3 hour study period is the basic day with of course meals and excercise but ya time for bed tomorrow is sunday which means devotional and church and wear a suit.

Well today was cool we had our usual meetings and temple walk, this weeks topic was enduring to the end. And we got back late so like practically no time to write in my journal, though today our devotional was by Steven B Allen he talked about well us as missionaries, in companionships definitely a funny guy made us all stand up for various reasons, funny because he's like ok everyone who is writing someome special stand up and he says next everyone that is here thats already been dear johned stand up , about 10 guys stood up, he tells us its ok the mail comes tomorrow there will be more joining you guys. He was definitely a funny dude he worked with the people that created the old weird mormon commercials and showed like 10 of those during the devotional, ill give some names of them...

Play ball,potraits, conference call, braces and glasses , splash and a few more we watched...

Today we studied a lot more and I cant think what to write, I have to shave pretty often and I am thinking it might be good to get an electric razor for me because it seems to grow fast because they are fast and easy.  My teachers are great I really am enjoying them and I honestly think I got the two best, one is the fun but super spirtual one and the other is the super kind helpful teacher. I got called as district leader. Today we had subway, cheeseburgers, and i forget its hard to remember things when you are studying these words that are so weird all day. Hmmm fun word to say though is wachiatai  (wa-key-chi-eye-tye) meaning I would like to share.  Tomorrow is tuesday which means no excercise time sad face (sundays and tuesdays dont have exercise time) but then we have Wednesdays which is our day of rest if we want we can sleep. Wednesday I think we have more japaneese missionaries coming in, more newbies, so we won't be the newbies.  I don't know if that is good or not but I guess I will find out.

Today was full of a lot more studying I kinda lose a sense of what to study sometimes i think im gonna buy this one book they have for Japanese it's like 12 bucks called 501 Japanese verbs, has a bunch of verbs and sentences to us. I feel like I have a sense of how to say stuff but nowhere in a confident zone because half the time Japanese flips itself backward and then backward again. But I definitely have made progress to where i can understand and talk with some good ability. Today was well a devotional day we heard from bishop W. Christoper Walden who talked to us about looking outwards and seeing the people we teach their needs with spiritual eyes. Trying to find where their hardship is and how Jesus Christ can help them and change them and ultimately lead them towards the temple, our ultimate goal. He talked about numbers and how we don't baptize numbers but what our goals is conversion to the gospel to christ to the Book ofMormonn ensuring they develop that testimony. Our branch president, President Stevens, told us about a missionary this missionary went to Finland I believe a really hard language to learn the missionary when he got to the field could only say one sentence. But when he got there his senior companion was teaching a lesson taking charge he'd gesture to his companion and he would say I know this church is true. And in the end when this man they were teaching was interviewed for baptism he was asked what made you decide to be baptism and he said the words of the companion, telling him he knew the church was true. The spirit conveyed this truth to the  man's heart in all its simplicity. This speaks to the power of the spirit to testify of the truth and how it touches lives and bears truth to the hearts of god's children.

My favorite time of the day though is for sure is lights out 10:30-11:00 bedtime stories, the bedtime stories are the best for sure. Anyways off to bed till tomorrow....

I can say without a doubt my current companion is my best companion yet so far no doubt.  Anazlyze as you will...