The Gift of Tongues

Hello peeps!

Another week of me telling you random things about the MTC. Let's begin.

So this Monday we received 24 (I think) Japanese native missionaries (Nihonjin). It has been kinda interesting. We were in the middle of practicing teaching the other district and all of us sudden a ton of them walked into the room. It was like Christmas!!! I don't think I have gotten that exciting since I entered the MTC. So in our broken Japanese we talked to them and I found a buddy who is going to Sendai at the same time as me. We have talked a few more times since then and he is a pretty cool guy. Yoneda choro is his name. Also I think a lot of the sisters are going to Sendai so that should be fun because they are super nice too. It was super cool though because after like 10 or 15 minutes working through understanding each other I finally asked, "Do you speak English?" (in japanese of course) and he just shook his head. It really hit me at that moment, everyone one else I have ever spoken to in Japanese has also at least known English but I was actually communicating with a Japanese only speaker. Crazy sauce!!!! Definitely a long ways to still go but we are getting there. Also is fun when the Kohai try to talk to them and they just kinda look at us with the, "What in the world did they just say?" look and we translate. Puts those Kohai in their place. He he he.

So I was in line for lunch yesterday and I look over at the line next to me and all of a sudden I recognize someone from my previous life, he turns around to face me and who is it but none other than Brother/Elder Hill! Ha. I didn't even know he was going on a mission and I have no idea what he is actually doing because his name tag said "Military relations" and all else I know is he is going to Hawaii. That was a pleasant surprise, sometimes is nice to have reminders of your previous life in here especially when it is a person in the MTC with you.

Now for our investigators. Kinda hard to remember what I have told you about and what I haven't. Morimotosan is still having problems with the Word of Wisdom but he committed to try harder last time so we will see tonight how it has been. I don't know if I told you last time or even when his baptismal interview was but he didn't quite show he was prepared enough there. This Japanese culture is already annoying me, he just keeps saying, "Its good to be different in America, its not that way in Japan." Anyway we keep working on them. Mayumisan is doing pretty good not much to say about her or our Missionary investigators. They just keep slowly pushing forward.

Thank you both for the update on the sister in Utica. That is so sad! In our mission conference on Sunday President Brown (MTC President) talked about her and also two missionaries that were in the MTC one who while in the MTC had his mom and aunt die suddenly and another whose dad died on a Tuesday and the next day the elder entered the MTC. This work definitely isn't without its trials. Both of those elders were staying on their missions though, makes my trials seem a whole lot smaller.

Oh little Cecil got his mission call, how cute. That is kinda funny that it really is to Fukuoka. It is interesting to note that basically everyone he in my zone has some kind of connection to Japan. Whether it be learning japanese or having a family member that went to Japan so I guess that fits the mold here. I'm sure he is super excited. Who knows, maybe he will be able to work with Elder Clayton, Beckstrand, Maxfield, or Henderson.

Thank you for sending the mission president letter. Glad he hasn't forgotten about me. :-)

So I did find out that there will be no DearElders when they move the mailroom here so that is basically a bummer and a half! However the Japanese has a word for this, Shoganai (there is nothing we can do about it). I guess I will get a taste of what like Japan life will be not getting a letter everyday.

Its funny that you would mention figuring out Japan's holidays because we were talking about that in one of our classes the other day. As our sensei put it, "The Japanese people just like to celebrate" so basically it sounds like they have a ton of holidays even though they don't know why its a holiday such as Christmas, apparently not a lot of Japanese people understand what it means or where it came from.

Also a random thing about Hymns. It reminds me of Christmas Story at times because Japanese doesn't have an "l" sound as you may be aware so in hymns when its like "Halleluah" or similar its super funny sounding with our "Harereura" all the "borrowed"/stolen words they use from English sound like a 2 year old which I get a kick out of.

So this week Smith Shimai (Formerly know at Whetto Shimai (AKA the sensei that ditched us)), was a sub for our class so and I actually forgot most of the time to ask her about Sendai because I always forget that is where se went. Anyway so half my district is going to Fukuoka and so they always talk about a big dialect there called Kanzaiben. Its kinda weird and they speak it sometimes. Anyway, Smith Shimai instructed me I have my own dialect and told me one word in it so that was exciting! Ha. Random yes.

Travel plans come next Thursday and that shall be a joyous day!

Anyway family. Love you. Actually talk to you soonish (in a few weeks). Take care of abby and can't wait to hear from you.

The Downhill Slide

Hello family!!!!

So I feel like there is much less to talk about in these letters the longer I am here the less I have to say.

So Monday we moved classrooms so we aren't in the scary 1-way mirror room anymore and have a real window that has right smack dab in the middle the temple. Basically a Celestial window. Also we are closer to the all the rest of the Japanese Elders and Sisters so that is more fun although we really aren't part of their ingroup so we are still the outsiders a little but whatever.

Yeah I would say that is a little bit scary with Mandy especially when I read dad's letter first and it says stuff like "the stress of our daughter", "Mandy's situation" I quickly jumped over to mother's letter to see what it was all about. I'm glad she is starting to feel better now. That had to be terrifying and a half! Not really a surprise though with Mandy, that woman works until her bones hurt and her body rebels. They have actually talked a little bit about crazy things that happen if you stress yourself out too much during your mission here. On of our substitute Sisters got tonselitis (I think thats what it was) from working too hard and she is pretty sure she made it so that doctor would never join the church because it was filled with crazy people that volunteer to work so hard their bodies freak out. Now lets just hope she can learn from this and enjoy these last few months. I know God does take care of his missonaries.

Let's see as for our investigators. So we have Morimotosan who who knows if he is still having problems with the Word of Wisdom, I'm not even sure, he won't give us a straight answer. Yesterday was our last lesson with him before his baptisimal interview which the only other person that has had him have an interview he didn't pass because he didn't understand repentence so hopefully he has an understanding of that. If not we shall keep working with him. Then our other Sensei investigator is Mayumisan who I am not sure if I have talked about before. She is the new teacher's investigator. I don't know what it is about her but we just fail miserably everytime we teach her. Our lesson yesterday we talk the Plan of Salvation and it was kind of a disaster. If she was a real investigator I'm not sure if she would have invited us back. I think Ige Shimai her self was confused with this lesson and she has been a member her whole life. Nevertheless, I guess we learn from these experiences and become better......I hope. Then our two members of our district that we teach are doing ok, there lessons are a tad different. They just seem super lazy about the gospel.

So the strange thing is with addressing like Law of Chastity, and Word of Wisdom issues the sensei are no help at all. When we ask them questions they say stuff like, "Its different for every investigator", or "Look at that in PMG" which I'm sure it is very different for every investigator but also I have a feeling there is certain approaches that work better than others. Then PMG as awesome as it is is not as tuned towards our missions as the sensei knowledge is. Its a little frustrating at times.

On monday we get 20 nihonjin (japanese people) that are here for 3 weeks and that leave with us so that will be cool.

As for this protected picture on my camera card that would be the doing of Elder Clayton and I did not know he had done that so yeah don't worry about why I would have done that.

So the MTC is moving it's mailroom and as a result I have heard that from September 9th-15th there will be no mail delivered. This seems slightly odd and I haven't been able to confirm it but may want to look into that.

So story time. So we get to play "Name that Speaker" for the devotional we had on Tuesday:
Part of the missonary oversight department or something like that
Born or lived in St. George (Not sure which but he does has a connection there)
Is part of a kind of important quorum in this church
Has no problem sternly rebuking those that listen to him.
Last name starts with "H"
Dad loves this man quite dearly
So by now maybe you guessed. Elder Jeffery R. Holland!!!!!!!!!

It was intense. We were waiting to go into the devotional (an experience every week in of itself) and the security people were making a much bigger deal about backpacks and pictures during the devotional which was wierd but we try not to get our hopes up. But then the main usher guy comes up after we are all sitting waiting for it to start and starts talking about how we should stand if a member of the 12 was to walk in the room tonight. That sealed the deal. I was on the opposite side of the door he walked in on so everyone stands and then I finally see who it was. Exciting and a half. Its was the talk of all talks. Going from expressing tons of love and how awesome we all are to sternly rebuking us that if we ever walk away from this church now that we will be answering at the judgement bar for this. It was crazy. Also an interesting note that if you get any information on my district would be very interested. He was talking about missionaries of old and about how they gave all they could including their lives for this work and how that has happend throughout ages. Then he got all choked up and then with tears in his eyes looked out at us and said, "the most recent of which just 4 hours ago" so this was on Tuesday at 7:00 pm. Therefore whatever happend happend at like 3:00 on Tuesday but we can't find any info about it. But anyway. As you would expect it was the bomb! Our little district review after the devotional I don't think there was a dry eye in the place.

Love you all. Thank you for all your love and support and awesomness.

Elder Carter
カーター　長

Kohai Everywhere!

The District

Kyle with his B2 roommates from Utah State

Pondering the Temple

Hello Family!

Another week has come and gone. I´m glad you had fun on your little city trip (I think that was last week, not sure, might have been two weeks ago). Also hope that Shakespeare was fun. I miss those plays! So off we go with random comments this week that make no sense but are things I felt I should tell you throughout the week.

Let's see, as for Kudosan she officially dropped us as an investigator this week. AKA: She is not teaching our class anymore and is now teaching a kohai district (A "kohai" I am not actually sure what it translates to but kohai is used for junior companions, senpai is senior companion). So that was sad. I really liked Whetto Shimai (Now Smith Shimai) (shimai = sister) We got a new teacher this week Ige Shimai and she is pretty good. Likes to have a little more fun than our other sensei so that is good. Also we have been doing pretty good at tricking out subs into telling us culture so even though we don't get it schedules we are finding ways of getting it. Also with Ige shimai we received a new investigator which I will be honest I can't remember her name. Our first lesson with her we walk in and she has two friends with her (two other senseis). That kind of threw us for a loop. That lesson didn't go well at all. But alas hopefully she takes our commitments and runs with them. Morimotosan we have only taught once this week because Bishoff Sensei (the sensei that is Morimotosan) has been gone. So we taught him yesterday and he is still having Word of Wisdom problems so baptism has been pushed back. Yay! :-( Oh well, after he gets baptized I don't know what would happen with the times we are suppose to teach him anyway. Being an investigator is a unique experience. Its kinda hard to figure out what kind of questions I would have or concern or vocabulary I wouldn't understand. Sometimes its a little strange but they always talk about we need to know what our investigators need to "know feel and do" in order to be converted so I guess this is one of the best ways to do it.

A random thing I learned this week. At least in Tokyo and I believe in other places throughout Japan there are a lot of people that speak spanish. We have had some of the Senseis talk to us and they said they came back from their mission knowing Spanish better than Japanese. Some mission presidents even told them to stop devoting time to learning Japanese in their language study and to start learning more Spanish. One of the senseis even said he had an English, Japanese, and Spanish stakes in his area and when they all got together it was crazy tri-lingualness! So......I may also be learning spanish.....fun. :-)

So for the kohai. They are EVERYWHERE! Holy cow, they outnumber us 2 to 1. I still don't even know who they all are. Thank goodness for nametags that are in Japanese. I have talked to a few of them and threw sneaky ways found out where all of them are going and .....(drum roll).....10 new Sendai missionaries! I even think 1 or 2 of them are sisters. So we went from having just me as the only Sendai missionary in the MTC to having 11! I think we have more than Sapporo now......possibly. It has been an adventure. Some of the kohai scare us. We had our coordinating sister go talk to the first new missionary we saw and guess what, she has a minor in Japanese. Wonderful. Then we meet an elder who is basically fluent. Are you kidding me!? Thank goodness they are the only two we have found. Although it does bug us little because if they know the language they shouldn't be here this long. We will try to pressure them into testing out of the MTC which I actually think they could do which would mean they would leave with us. Nevertheless, probably won't be the case.

Ha. Yeah I knew about Merrick, he was on the floor two floors down from me. I actually talked to him a few days before he got sent to his new area. That has to be frustrating.

I must say father. This grave site idea is pretty spiffy. I think you should look into NFC though because QR is a thing of the past. (Partly a joke but actually would also be cool).

Elder Clayton told me he had his Zions accounts allowed for international use so yes please do that, I had meant to tell you that after he told me he did it so I'm glad you thought of it.

I must comment on how many letters I am still getting. Must say I'm a little surprised that I still get this many, my district always jokes that you two don't have much of life cause you write me so letters. I don't mind though. :-) Its fun to get lots of letters. Also feel like I am still informed on how things are going at home.

When you send my camera card back you should put a video of Baby-A crawling on it! I need to see this little moving guy. At least Abby has someone to play with now. They will be the best of friends. :-)

カーター長厷

Another Week of Groundhog Day

Hello peeps!!!!

First a little maintenance answering questions. Um we come early to do laundry and 5:30 so we have more time to write letters and such the rest of the day. Kind of annoying to wake up this early but it pays off after. Yay for Kreigh's school!!!!! I'm excited for him. I know he can do great! Yay for little Atreyu and being a moving little guy now! He seems to have grown up so much since I left just over a month ago! Crazy! Sounds like you guys had fun in Wyoming looking at windmills and such. Kind of shocked you two went rafting but I guess as you two get older you might get a little crazier! :-)

Anyway now for MTC stuff. Again organize in random order.

First investigators. So we still haven't taught Kudosan again because she is still on her trip to "Tokyo" but we get her back next week so that will be nice. We got Morimoto san through all the required lessons and he is doing so good.....except he won't give up his tea and "sake" (alcohol). Goodness. I knew that was going to happen so kind of why I didn't want to teach the Word of Wisdom first but whatever. His baptism has been scheduled for next wednesday but he is never going to make that. :-( Nevertheless we will get him there. We also had a bunch of subs this week so we also teach them sometimes. Depending on who they are they can be really nice or really annoying (and real). Nevertheless those didn't go so well. None of the teaching goes horribly well, I still just have a problem thinking of what to say let alone in Japanese. Can't even teach these lessons in English. I hope that ability comes fairly quickly cause this is getting annoying. Nevertheless. We teach a lot. Oh and we picked up two new investigators being two missionaries in my district who act as investigators and also I get to act like a progressing investigator now. Its quite an interesting experience. Although language barriers become "less" of an issue because we all know the same words and such (kinda).

Moving on to the random stuff. Sundays are good. There is just a lot of studying which normally turns into us watching movies on LDS.org. Its great fun, I swear we will have seen every movie on there by the end. We have already seen every Mormon profile. There is also priesthood and sacrament meeting where we have a musical number like every time which is cool. As for companion things are still going pretty good. We have our moments that he pushes my buttons or always needs to be in control but nevertheless we survive. District is also going pretty good. We are going to be getting a new room in two weeks which is sweet!!! Our one now is not next to any Japanese speakers on Spanish, we have no window only a one-way mirror, and its just small. New one is the bomb though! Ok so apparently I didn't make this clear before and Elder Clayton wanted me to make sure you knew. We have STACKS of food in our room now. Ha. I got three packages yesterday which I appreciate but I really doubt I could eat all this food in the next few weeks. We can't really munch on it throughout the day we have 30 minutes each night to get ready for bed, write in journals, prepare for the next day, eat snacks, and get to bed. So no more food. :-) Ok now for a shirt I was told about that I think would be legit. Apparently in Japan you can get these English shirts that say, "Send ai" as in "Sendai" but the funny thing is "ai" means "love". Therefore "send love" :-) I thought it was funny (jokes in here are weird).

The senpai are now gone off in Japan. Just a crazy thought to think. The day after they left we sat down at our "Japanese table" for lunch and I felt compelled to sing a little "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" in honor of them. They were super excited though. It was like a graduation the last Sunday. Lots of pictures and hugs and all that jazz. We get our kohai next Wednesday which is scary! I'm not old enough to be a senpai! (Age is measured weird here too). Adding to the stress there are 43 coming in!!!!!! Holy cow! There will only be 24 of us senpai. There will also be 8 new sisters to add to our 2 now. Finally in a few weeks when we get our nihonjin (Japanese missionaries) there will be 20 more of them too! So many!!!!! Ha. I'm excited though. So we have started to come up with analogies we could make about how the MTC works. Our first was that they are programming us to be Gospel Spouting Robots. This is a pretty good analogy and one of our sensei agreed with us. But our new one is that it is real life "Groundhog Day" Every day is exactly the same!!! Ha. It gets kinda annoying. Never the less its cool. Enjoyable most the time.

Random things I learned this week. Apparently every companionship in the Tokyo mission received a laptop to do all their business on with teaching records that ties into the ward and stake and all that jazz. Pretty awesome! This church is getting the picture of the future. Also random note for our "workshop" (more on these later letter) we got to go around the MTC and watch movies on iPod Touchs. Kinda interesting. One thing that is kinda sad that I was looking forward to from your (dad) stories was learning about culture. They don't do that anymore. Whenever we ask they just say, "We are going to teach that, just rely on your gaijin power" (Gaijin being "foreigner"). Apparently you get away with a lot as a foreigner. Although yesterday we did have sub that loved talking culture so that was fun. She told us fun ways to proselyte and what works and what doesn't. Apparently if you ask for people's names in Japanese they brush you off but if you ask in English they get all excited to speak English and want to talk to you. Fun stuff.

Answers to Questions:
Competitive 4-square is hard to explain. Its really fast. The squares are like 5 times as big as elementary school squares. People do tricks, there are alliances, backbiting, all that fun stuff.

The devotional speakers have been good. Not sure if I have had a favorite. Our last one was about Heavenly Father which was basically the best talk about Heavenly Father I had ever heard cleared some cool stuff up. We hear lots of cool mission stories. Really simple concepts like "Faith" are blown up so you can better explain it to investigators. We finally got up to a member of the first quorum of the 70 so we are moving up. Mostly we get missionary department people.

5 weeks into this experience it kinda still feels like the first week. There are many times I don't feel like I am getting anywhere and others I think I'm doing pretty good. Something that I think sums up the language at times is what Elder Clayton told me one day. We were just sitting there studying and he turns to me ans says, "Does it every just hit you that we just taught someone the gospel in another language?" Pretty awesome to be able to share the gospel first of all and second to do it in tongues. The food is a little getting old but its actually quite good but there is so much of it. Also Clayton choro doesn't allow me not to eat all my food because he says it is ruining mother earth. We have got into a few discussions about that but nevertheless.

Anyway. As always love you lots and lots, talk to you next week!

Food From Babylon

Hello All!

So if you haven't realized by now (and I may have said this already) but I kind of just write a list of things to say each week so thats why its random and weird. First off, every friday night we get food from the outside world like Pizza or something but that doesn't really matter I just really like what people call it, "Food from Babylon"! Also this week we remembered that in Japan people do things called seizaing which is basically just sitting on your feet in the most uncomfortable positions ever! So we started doing duing each of our "Language Study" times trying to seiza the whole time. This led into people not being able to walk for long periods of time and then we asked one of our teachers about it who informed us that no one really seizas for long anymore so that practice ended. Also I think of something that is pretty neat is that we are always talking about getting investigators through missionaries giving English classes (I believe that is the reason we have all the progressing investigators we do have). It shall be super interesting to find out what that is like and if I will be doing English classes for Japanese people. Quite a good possibility in fact. Speaking of investigators our life is SUPER focused on them. Every study time whether it be Personal, companion, language or whatever is focused on what the next lesson will hold which is good but grows tiring when you don't even know the language and are trying to get yourself prepared but nevertheless. To answer your question father only language-oriented classes (kinda) are SYL and that is only teacher SYL not us constantly speaking the language but it is encouraged. We have started even during our teaching practices amongst each other in class to speak Japanese. So basically I have a feeling I led you astray with thinking that it was SYL all the time although my district is going to try to SYL all day today. Clayton Choro and I haven't really started yet though. We have also come up with a new way to judge time, they are called MTUs (Missionary Time Units). Nothing makes sense here with time, you never really know what time it is or what day it is cause it all blurs together so MTUs expand and contract based on how slow the day seems to be going. Some day I will figure out what this means. Basically its our way of avoiding saying the same thing everyone says that "The days feel like weeks and the weeks like days."


So apparently i'm taking from the forwarded Mandy email that she is your favorite missionary......excuse me!!!! Youngest=Favorite thank you very much! ;-) Let's see if you get more emails from your second favorite missionary (If I'm even that) ;-)

So to answer your question a little better pa. We basically have our days separated in a few things.
Personal Study - We do spiritual study of some sort of our choosing (in English)
Companionship Study - We study as a companionship, basically lesson planning goes here
Language Study - Basically we study the language how we wish alone
Group Language Study - Teacher teaches us the language
TALL (Technology Assisted Language Learning) - Computer program that lets you practice the language (Probably written by a BYU CS major, SO MANY bugs!)
Anyway that is the bulk of it.

Also something crazy, I'm still getting used to saying "Watashi wa Matsujitsu seito iesu kirisuto kyokai no senkyoshi desu" (I am a missionary from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints). Crazy!!!

So more updates. Last Thursday Whetto Shimai left to go and get married (soon to be Smith Shimai) so we haven't taught Kudosan since then which was when we committed her which is FREAKY!!! Morimotosan has been just coasting along, we got him to commit to come to church with us on Sunday so that is cool, I hope he does it and his date is set for a seek from next Wednesday! So close, fake investigator but I'm still excited. Next lesson we have is on Word of Wisdom and Chastity, can you notice we put those off? :-) Hopefully it goes well. I'm kinda terrified of what will happen but he has been faithful. Tomorrow we get our profiles of becoming investigators ourselves so we will become progressing investigators for each other so that should be interesting. Other than that the investigators have been fairly quiet. We have had a few subs that we have taught and those lessons went well but they were one lesson and then no more progress.

Yesterday we had this talk thing with my whole zone so all Japanese Elders and Sisters which was THE COOLEST!!!! So we go in there and its different than a lot of meetings because most aren't just our zone so they introduce everything in Japanese and then we have this speaker who says he wants to give us his conversion story, he was Japanese. So he first goes over some vocabulary with us which was Buddhist Oriented and family oriented. So basically he gets contacted in high school by the missionaries. Takes the discussions decides to pray but first had to pray to Buddha to say he was going to praying to Christ for a few weeks to try it out (I thought that was funny) and then he decides to get baptized (interesting not adulthood starts at 20 in Japan not 18). So he has to get his parents permission and his dad freaks out, runs into the kitchen grabs a knife holds it against his stomach and says he will kill himself if this speaker goes through with it. Basically he prays about it. Has basically a vision which was legit and a half! Then through a course of items he is baptized, serves a mission, works for the MTC then had his brother come to allow the district he taught to "practice" on this nonmember brother and at the end of the lesson these MTC missionaries committed his brother to baptism and the brother accepted. Awesome!!! One of the coolest experiences I have had here (oh and the whole thing was in japanese and I understood).

Anyway no time. Love you all.


Random request, as we have been working with the Book of Mormon this week during some of my discretionary study time (they actually don't really give us this but sometimes I need a break) I looked up Elder Holland's talk from a few conferences back about the Book of Mormon called "Safety for the Soul" super awesome, everyone should go read it again.

Insights into the MTC-August 5, 2011

Hello Minasan (Everyone)

So I'll start off addressing the fact that appararently I said something that made you parentals think I was not ok based on the number of "You can do it" emails I got this week so I will just say I'm doing well. No need to worry, things are hard but that is to be expected but overall it its wonderful. I don't know if I mentioned this in my last email but basically I make a list of things to mention to you in my email so that is why I probably sound so all over the place. Thanks for answering my many questions last week, its helpful information.

So some random "nuts and bolts" things that I think are interesting but have no meaning basically. So I discovered this week finally why some people will put a country's flag under their nametag. It tells everyone that they are SYLing for the day, very interesting to me that they don't even break if people only speak english. Next so constantly there are announcements over intercoms throughout this compound kindof like a school telling people to go to the main office (another random thing about that is that they also have microphones like a school so you can be in the residence hall and hear, "Elder Carter are you in your room?" Then you just yell "Yes" and you can conversate like this (never have done this yet but I want to)). So everytime people hear "Excuse me Elders and Sisters" over the intercom people will throw their hands up with a number of finger up as there guess of how many people are getting called to the office. Its quite entertaining to watch during meals because there are so many people. Finally check out LDS News and look at the new in-field training that they are putting in place. Apparently I will be having 12 more weeks of training once I'm in the field. The church is definitely mixing things up. Also, the whole MTC is now the pilot program as I mentioned my first week as of August 1 everyone switched. The computers have not opened up so we still have counters on these but the other districts have had 1 investigator this week and next week I believe they switch to 2 like my district has now. Even the senpai have been switched so in classes they only speak Japanese (non-religious classes, if its about how to teach or something they speak English but if its related to Japanese its japanese only). Also speaking of Senpai they got their travel itineraries this week! They leave a week from Monday! I feel like I barely know them and they are already leaving us! I need to learn so much more from them! Crazy sauce. Moving on.

So yesterday Elder Clayton and Elder Beckstrand with a group of the Senpai tried out to sing an arrangement of a song for one of the bigger meetings in the MTC. Actually a little backstory. So they did this arrangement in sacrament for fun but who was visiting but none other than the MTC president, after they sang he pulled Beckstrand choro aside and told him to try out. They didn't this week so we get a knock on the door yesterday from the MTC music person saying she was requested by the MTC president to have them try out with her, He really wanted them. So they tried out and last night they opened the mailbox and they had this awesome stationary saying they would be singing at the mission conference we are having this Sunday so in front of the whole MTC. Crazy sauce with 2 days to prepare so this morning on our day of rest we woke up at 5:15 to do our laundry so that they could practice during the day. I won't lie, it sucked to wake up but after that it was nice to just be able to chill in the laundry room with not many people (ends up the Senpai do it all the time so they were there too) and then not have to worry about it all day.

Now for answering questions. My district has 8 elders and 0 sisters (there are two sisters in another district that entered at the same time as us). We have Beckstand Choro and Maxfied Choro who are also in our rooms. Elder Maxfield is from Arizona, also into fitness, is a pretty fun guy but kinda has been acting like a 2 years old today that I have been on splits with today so he has almost got slapped today. But beside the point we are buds. Then we have Henderson Choro and Nukya Choro. Elder Henderson went to BYU, was big into Japanese before he came here, has mad skills, break dances, and is possibly the most sincerly happy and nice person I have ever met. (His dream side kick was not a bear or lion like some of people, it was a walking Sunflower....that tells you the kinda man he is). Nukya Choro is a Japanese-American that doesn't know Japanese. His brother is in one of the other districts here with us. He is one of the hardest workers I have seen in our group yet he has had the hardest time with the language but he is my study inspiration. Then finally we have Perry Choro and Singleton Choro. Elder perry is from provo, went to byu, and likes to call me a girl.....not sure why to be honest. But he is a pretty chillax guy so thats nice. Elder Singleton is our Canadian! Yeah! So he has lots of stories and is another just really nice guy. Basically everyone is awesome in the district.

Moving on because I'm running out of time. As for the TRC, it didn't really stink that bad. Its super weird because you just see this camera on the wall of this living room moving around watching you but other than that it is super cool to teach someone "new" and its kinda weird because they are themselves. Like the first guy told us he was a member and served a mission so kinda weird to teach him, the next guy we did said he didn't believe God existed so that was different but it went well. Tomorrow we teach our investigators how to pray and recieve answers so wish me good luck on that. Next our two Investigators, Kudosan and Morimotosan. First of Morimotosan of Bishoff Sensei as he really is is not a good actor and is super chillaxed. He just sits back, doesn't ask questions and just kinda nods along and tells us to teach him everything. Last friday night we had a lesson with him and we invited him to baptism and he accepted. Tis awesome. He has been doing well this week and we are teaching him tonight again....I think. I have a sinking suspicion that he is hiding something so I'm worried for our next lesson but if we make it through that then we have succeeded so yay. Kudosan or previously Satosan or really Whetto Shimai is an awesome actress, she cries on demand seems super sincere when she is sincere and super bored when she is bored. Anyway we inviteed her to be baptised earlier this week but she said it was too fast and her husband wouldn't like it and all this stuff. Anyway we got in with her last night and our new companionship problem came into play, Clayton Choro talks nonstop in lessons so its kinda hard for me to get into so after 15 minutes of him talking straight in our lesson of 30 minutes she just looks at me and asks when I was baptized and how I felt. In very broken japanese I testified to her and all that jazz (running out of time for description) and the Spirit was aweomse, craziest experience of my life, tears came to her eyes and push come to shove she accepted baptism yay! She is actually German not japanese mom. She is the bomb. 10 seconds left.

bye

Random thoughts of the MTC-July 29, 2011

Ok so I have this counter that  counts down thirty minutes so I have no time to write emails if I read your emails so don't email me just dear elder me if that is ok with you guys.
 
I am good
The food is crazy and there is so much of it but its actually really good.

Nice that you guys are having grandma over.  Hopefully she is ok with people cooking for her, she has always been a good little server of others fulfilling their needs. 

Father our devotionals are actually on Sunday and Tuesday nights so hope that clears that up (although I don't think it really matters).

  Update on the B2 bretheren. I have now seen Andrew and he always sit at the Japanese table so we see him a lot and I got word that Colton has recieved his call to Seattle which is wicked awesome!!!!!! 
 
Ok now for how I'm doing stuff and this is really just going to be a random assortment of thoughts that I have written down throughout the week.  So we have the pamphlets to give to investigators and it wasn't till this morning that we found out that the pictures are different in them between the english and Japanese ones.  The English one has americans and the Japanese has Japanese people its super funny but makes sense.   Another random cool thing about class this week.  We were kinda talking with our Senseis (teachers) and one of them was telling us how we have basically the authority to call upon heaven for the gift of tounges. Random and I probably should have known that but I thought that was super duper awesome so yeah. 

The district is doing pretty good we have had some fun moments.  The MTC is tough.  We have had one elder just break down crying in one of our "Coaching Studies" (basically the sensei comes around and helps you study more effectively) and we have had the district leaders companion basically tell our district leader to sit down and be quiet so oh the fun of the drama of the MTC.  Tomorrow we have a "District Inventory" which basically should be called a "district roast" so that should be.....different.  Something dad would love is how many Moleskin notebooks I have seen here it is crazy.  I thought they weren't very popular but I have seen quite a number and the funniest part is the people I have talked to about it were basically all gifted them by parents that love them.  :-) 

Lets see tomorrow we have a TRC (can't remember what that stands for to be honest) basically you go into a fake living room that looks right with a fake investigator and a camera so your senseis can watch you. All the senpai call them "TRC Beatdowns" because they say you just get so discouraged and beat down after going in there trying to teach for 35 minutes in a foreign language.  I'm quite terrified of them to be honest. I hope they go well.  Now for the new progressing investigators.  So last Saturday we say our video intro to them the first one was one of our teachers which was not a big surprise but his new name is Morimoto san.  And then the next new investigator....the screen turns on....who could it be......Satosan? Yes it was the same person as Satosan but now apparently her name is Kudosan and she is 40 years old and have kids (the "actress" is actually 22 so its a little awkward to talk to her about 40 year old woman stuff).  anyway So we started teaching them.  We taught Morimoto san and he was interested in Christ so we taught him a lesson about that and the Book of Mormon and all that jazz and tonight we have another lesson with him where we are teaching the Doctrine of Christ.  Kudosan has also been fun.  We had our first lesson with her and were able to really push families which she seemed to eat up and after the lesson we go into our district classroom and have our usual "postop" on each lesson when all of a sudden Kudosan walks in the room, not only were we talking about her but we had never seen her leave her "house" so I was terrified.  Then she turns around and points her her newly put on nametag which says "Sister Whetlauf  - Teacher" Yep, she is our new teacher.  Ha. Now we have Satosan, Kudosan, and Whetto Shimai (Sister Whetto (super hard to say Whetlauf in japanese)) all rolled into one person.  she's a good teacher though and she got off her mission from Sendai last year so extra awesomness. I will have to talk to her about what to expect.  Tonight we are also going to try to teach a lot more by memory than having our "cheat sheets" with up so I'm a little scared especially since I tried it yesterday and basically all I could think of is "Baptism is good" etc.  Anyway.  So much to say but we are getting in the swing of things which is good I guess although its already a tad monotmous and they kinda are getting mad at us for being too fun (what they would call, "not focusing").  Hopefully the language keeps coming and the lessons get a ton better but I'm glad that we get this opportunity to practice so much, it shall be invaliable when we get into the country.  Anyway, love you all, hope all is well at home or wherever you are reading this. Peace out.
 
Elder Carter