Hello!
It sounds like things are going great at home. I'm glad everyone is having such an awesome summer - your activities and such sound like so much fun :) Mom, thanks for sending my package and taking care of all those odds and ends that I didn't bring. I haven't received the package yet but hopefully soon. I forgot that you were going on your cruise this week. I'm so happy for you! That'll be so much fun. Party time. I'll be expecting all the details on that count. It was awesome running into Kelly and Jen Mills in the cafeteria; they're the greatest. I'm not sick of the food yet - it's pretty good considering how many people they feed. The one thing is I sometimes just feel so gross because all I do all day is sit in the classroom for 10+ hours with 3 breaks for food. Kinda weird. And the other bummer is that our dinner is at 4:10. And we're in our classroom till 9:30 every night. But it's all good - I've adjusted to that schedule. One thing that's nice is about every other Saturday or so when we go to the temple in the afternoon we eat lunch at the temple cafeteria and the food is heavenly. :) Seriously though, it's great. So I saw Marni this morning at breakfast and she said she's leaving tomorrow. Crazy! Fun thing though - today is our exact halfway mark! 1 month ago I entered this lovely place. And I depart in one month. It's been 4 1/2 weeks. It seems like longer in some ways, but shorter as well. Basically my sense of time these days is completely distorted. Ah well. And everytime I see Connor he still yells HEY ALYSSA. It's weird but makes me laugh at the same time.
Cool thing of the week - I was able to meet Heaton Shimai's family because her dad was the speaker in our Sunday night devotional/fireside thing. Our whole district had seats front and center. It was an awesome talk, and it was really cool meeting all of them. I know I basically have said this a thousand times, but I have been so blessed to have her as a companion. It's the greatest. We have so much fun together (fun in a totally missionary kind of way, of course :) Japanese is still hard. But I still love it so much. It is such a beautiful language. I can't believe I'm halfway done with the MTC. Next thing I know, we'll be leaving for Japan. CRAZY.
So on Tuesday I was able to be a part of history. Aka we had our devotional at the Marriott Center (the first ever) and it was such an awesome experience. As we were walking across the parking lot, I looked both directions and saw so many missionaries. It really hit me - we are God's army!! We are here to do his work and share these truths that we know to be true with all of our brothers and sisters. This is an incredible opportunity!
Anyway, so Heaton Shimai and I have been doing the MTC choir and it is the greatest. This past Tuesday devotional had almost 2,000 missionaries in the choir - over half of the MTC. We sang an awesome version of Called to Serve and I definitely got goosebumps. I love being here. The speaker at the devotional was Elder Arnold, of the quorum of the 70. He had so much passion for missionary work and gave a powerful talk. Crazy story of that night is as follows: We went back to our classroom to discuss favorite points from the talk, and so on. One of the boys in our class was talking about it and said "This is so incredible to me. I love my savior Jesus Christ" and right as he said that, our door swung open and someone came marching in saying "So do I!" It was Elder Arnold. He came to our classroom and shook hands with all of us and thanked us for doing the Lord's work. Heaton Shimai's dad has some great connections, that's for sure. Oh and the funniest part was as he was shaking all of our hands, Elder McClane (one of the elders in my district) vigorously shook his hand and said "Thank you! Um.. who are you?" He looked at him and said "My name is Elder Arnold." Elder McClane went beet red. We were all dying of laughter, it was hilarious.
I don't know if I've told you how our sacrament meetings work or not but it's pretty cool. Our branch president served in Japan, so the ward business and opening stuff is always all in Japanese. We sing all the hymns in Japanese, the sacrament prayers are in Japanese, and each of us prepares a talk every week (in, wait for it....Japanese!). President Johnson calls 3 missionaries up each week and they give their talks, then usually he or one of the counselors finish up with a spiritual thought. I love it so much. It's beautiful!
Another fun thing for the week -- to help us with our Nihongo, we've begun to SYL (speak your language) like nobody's business. As in if we're just talking during the day and say a word in English that we know in Japanese, whoever slips up gets a tally mark. At the end of the day, each tally mark is 10 seconds of a wallsit that we have to do that night. The idea is basically we're doing better with SYLing and working out at the same time. Fun stuff. I know I basically say it all the time but I LOVE my companion, district, and senseis. I've learned SO MUCH from all of them. I am continually growing and learning more. Don't get me wrong, this is hard. But I learn more every day! We've still been teaching Kuaharasan and Watabesan, our progressing investigators. I love them so much and love the experiences we've had with teaching them. Oh and another story - last week the TRC was awesome. We taught the sweetest lady and the experience was super powerful. I love it here so much. Well I know I probably will remember a thousand other things to tell you as soon as I finish this, but I guess they'll be saved for next week. I love you all so much, thank you for everything!!!
Ai shiteimasu!!!
-Flake Shimai
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