This
week has felt like a month at least. SOOO much has happened and time seems to
be at a standstill here. I guess I'll tell you
all how my week went in sequential order.
Wed:
So the longest part of Wed was everything that happened before arriving at the
MTC. It was like every hour was 4. For
my last meal before prison, I mean the MTC, I went to Cafe Rio with J______ and
K_____, two of my friends who also entered the same day. In there some random
guy asked me where I was headed and I responded Japan. He got super excited
because he was going to Japan as well. Unfortunately, he was going to Tokyo and
I am going to Sapporo. Weird thing is though I haven't seen him since. After
that long meal I headed over to the MTC. After that the day was a blur. I got
there, got my materials such as my nametag key card and room key. Got a
MOUNTAIN of books. Like no joke a mountain. Dropped off my luggage and went
straight to class. I did a short orientation and then my senseis (teachers) asked
me where my IPad was. My host forgot to take me to get it. So I headed over
with a teacher to go get it and there was another guy there getting his IPad. I
asked him what his name was and he said Elder M__________. Lo and behold it was
my new companion. So since then we have been stuck at the hip. So now I
have my IPad but it took me about 2 days to fully set it up because I kept
having problems. After that we did a welcome meeting where I saw J___________
(friend who entered the same day). Then we had another huge meeting on how we
are teaching people not lessons. It was all about how to teach others by
looking for their needs and listening to the Holy Ghost. There were 3 people
they brought in at separate times and as a group of 100 missionaries we had to
teach them things we thought they needed to hear. I was the only person who got
some praise by the person doing the meeting because everyone said pretty much
the same thing except me and what I said really had to do with what they
needed. After this we went back to the class and our senpai (upperclassmen –
missionaries who have been here longer) did a tour for us, then we had an
elders devotional at the residence (which we do every night except tue and sun
where we only do prayer) and then went to bed.
Thur:
So first thing we did was go to morning class where we did some introductions.
There are 3 sisters and 5 elders including myself in our district. Then we ate
breakfast. The food here is actually not bad. Most of the meals are pretty
good. After that back to class where we learned how to do introductions in
Japanese. We also learned about how to ask people Gospel related questions in
Japanese. Oh did I mention that our entire class is taught in Japanese? That's
right the sensei's rarely speak English with us. then lunch and then back to
class. We found out we had to go to another meeting on teaching people and we
had a meeting on the IPad safety precautions. that took pretty much all of our
evening. Somewhere in there we ate as well. Btw I’m just going to leave out
when we eat it's not too exciting
Fri:
We had class in the morning and did some renshuu (practice) on what we learned
yesterday. Then we were taught the cycle of how to teach kyudousha
(investigators). As soon as we were taught this the sensei's said alright so
you guys have to prepare a lesson to teach a kyudousha now. They showed us a
brief vid of him telling us his background and how he met some missionaries in
Sapporo and thought that our religion is interesting and wants to know more. We
had about 45 min to prepare a lesson which had to be taught in, you guessed it,
all Japanese. Surprisingly it didn't go all that bad. We taught him about God, Jesus, and the
Atonement. He took it pretty well. We then explained prayer and committed him
to pray. Then we scheduled an appointment for him the next afternoon.
After that some more class and then bed.
Sat:
Class, class and some more class. Just to explain we have class 9 hours a
day. Ya 9 hours. So we learned some more Nihongo (Japanese) and then prepared a
lesson to teach Ota-san This lesson didn't go as well as the first. We had difficulty in trying to explain what
we were teaching. We were trying to explain to him what faith was and about
repentance. We were able to teach about faith but repentance was a bit harder.
We had to explain that we have to repent and as we do we start to see the world
as a brighter place. That's why missionaries are always so friendly. (Which is
why he approached the missionaries in the first place). However we didn't know
how to conjugate (still don't) and didn't have the right vocab so it was more
difficult than when we had pamphlets and stuff. We committed him to pray about
repentance and to find out for himself if it was true or not. We got a follow
up lesson on mon. After this more class. I got to know the people in my
district a lot better because the last 3 hours of class are without a teacher
so it’s either self study, companion study, or we just talk as a district. Then
we went back to the residence and went to bed. Oh and somewhere on this day W_________
Choro was called as DL (District Leader) for our group. We also met our Branch
Presidency and did some interviews.
Sun:
Sunday was awesome. We went to our class where we talked with the sempai-tachi
and eventually we had sacrament meeting. Oh I forgot to mention this but
everyone has to write a 2 min talk in Nihongo on the theme for that week. This
week was repentance. I wrote mine on Sat. We had some really good talks which
was awesome. Then we went on a temple walk which was really cool because we got
to leave the compound for something other than exercise which we do almost
daily. It was really cool to see the temple and have a nice walk with the
entire zone. After that we went back to the classroom...again. Then we had a
devotional but M_________ Choro, the shimai tachi (Choro = Elder and Shimai =
Sister) and I got stuck in the overflow. We watched the character of Christ
which was a talk by Elder Bednar (one of the Twelve Apostles) it was really
insightful. Then right after that Elder Bednar came out and we had a Q and A
session with him. We were really sad we weren't in the gym to see him. The Q
and A sess was also really cool. Then bed.
Mon:
. So more class and we taught Ota san again. This time we taught him about
Prophets and about the scriptures and what they were. It went alright. Language
barriers SUCK. We committed him to read a little bit of the Book of Mormon and
scheduled a lesson for tue. Then we had more class. We also found out we were
accidently put on the advanced track and had to fix that. We also had to clean
our class for inspections. Then bed. And at some point in the day we found out
Ota-san is going to be our future sensei. We managed this by prying about him
with one of our teachers.
Tue:
Something really interesting happened this morning. We had our first district
meltdown. The Shimai-tachi left to go talk to someone so we Choro-tachi decided
to play a prank. We built an altar out of chairs, turned off the lights and
held a piece of chalk over the altar. Just look at the pic it will tell a
better story than I can. Then we had more class and taught Ota-san again. So
Ota-san read a bit of the Book of Mormon which was great. We committed him to
try to read everyday. This time we taught him about Baptism and its
importance. It went very well. We were able to answer his questions and
did a good job explaining it (I feel) and asked him if he would be baptized. He
said He wanted to learn more first before making a decision. We then told him
we would of course teach him everything we need to before he gets baptized. We
shared our experiences of being baptized and asked him to pray about it's
truthfulness and its importance so he can know for himself. Then we had a
Devotional by Elder Clark. He taught about the importance of obedience and
diligence. It was pretty inspiring. One thing I wrote down that came to my mind
during this was Our performance in this life is based on our diligence. I'm
going to have to really try to figure out what that means. Then we did some
scripture diving with Daniels-kaichou. It was great we all really learned a lot
more about obedience from the scriptures he shared with us. Though the coolest
thing he shared with us was about Lucifer and what happened in the premortal
life and how we have power over him when we speak in Christ's name. He shared
with us Moses' story when the devil tried to tempt him. Then Bed.
I'll
share what happened today next week (if anything interesting happens)
Aishitemasu
Harvey
Choro
The altar in class.
My district at the temple
Class time.
My zone eating in the cafeteria.
No comments:
Post a Comment