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If you haven't watched the Mormon message "Because of Him" watch it!!!!!! It's awesome! Don't even think of continue reading unless you've seen it. And even if you have, watch it again. It's really quite amazing. I feel the spirit every time I watch it.
Wow a lot has happened this week but at the same time, not really. Yesterday was pretty awesome! So our district hosted for the 3rd time. Hosting is so fun. Hosting is when you're the missionaries that meet at the curb and show them the ropes. Every time I realize how long I've been here..... 7 weeks! It seems like forever since I was dropped off at the curb. I've learned so much here, just in 7 weeks. It's crazy. For instance yesterday we helped out with the new missionary teaching
experience. So this teaching experience happens your first night here at the MTC. Around 30 missionaries meet in one room and there is an investigator there. Some missionaries that have been in the MTC for a while. They knock on the door and start out the visit, demonstrating "how to begin teaching" skills and what not, then the teacher cuts it off and leaves it to the room on new missionaries to teach the investigator from there. And the guy that was in charge of this whole thing asked My District to be the starting out missionaries! :D It was awesome! I was kind of nervous, but way excited! So they split up our companionships into rooms. So me and Doi Shimai started two lessons. I just loved it. I felt that same love for the investigator as I did my first night here at the MTC. It's amazing! Me and Doi Shimai after were talking about how far we've come. Cuz if you remember that first night, me an Doi Shimai actually started the 3rd investigator lesson just as newbie missionaries, all nervous and what not. But yesterday we were focused on the investigator and knew what to say. I've just
been so blessed. I have SO much more to learn, but I've learned so much already! The language is coming! I can actually say that! There are times when someone will ask me a question in English and I naturally respond in Japanese! Gift of
Tongues! It's real! WOOHOO! I won't get too cocky. I still have a long way to go.
But even spiritually I feel like a different person. My teaching skills beyond have gotten so much better than before. I have great Sensei's to thank for that. I have one Sensei who is probably the wisest return missionary I have ever met. He's amazing. I want to be a missionary like him. He talked about teaching people. How you hear "love the people" on your mission. But he changed it to "love the individual". It's almost easy to love Japanese people or any kind of people as a whole, but to love an individual who is hard to love, that is were it truly matters. He talked about missionaries are meant to be people that investigators can open up to. Someone who they can share there fears and worries with. Someone who is a friend to them, before they're a missionary. That's one thing he said. "If you go into a lesson with the mindset that you're
sitting with someone other than a friend, then you're doing something wrong. That the kind of missionary I want to be. Someone who is real and genuine.
Sunday was just a freakin' suberashi day! Being a mission, you recognize that you have so many weaknesses. It just comes with the territory. You just see them more clearly than you would anywhere else I think. Which isn't a bad thing, unless you let them get to you. The previous week I just felt like all my weaknesses, in Japanese, in teaching, were all laid before me. And it's kind of disheartening. But I just prayed the Heavenly Father to help me overcome my weaknesses, but also to help me recognize my strengths. I'm not the best at doing that. And Sunday was just the answer to my prayer. Elder Anderson and the BYU men's choir come to the MTC! It was so great! The music was amazing and Elder Anderson was great as expected ;) We've just been so blessed with so many great and awesome devotionals. We feel spoiled.
"It's like God loves us or something!" Hahaha inside joke with me and my roommates. But really, it's been such a blessing.
Sunday night we watched a movie. We were going to go to the Joseph Smith movie, but we ended up in the wrong room which was playing The Testaments. Now, it's not like I didn't like that movie before, but if you've ever watched it, you know it has some serious cheesy parts, which used to drive me crazy. But when I watch it that night, I just loved it. I felt the spirit so strongly. I left that movie with a burning testimony that Jesus Christ does live. Christ lives. He does. No, not just 2000 years ago. He lives today. He's real today. He is the savior of the world and he did IN REALITY come to the Americas and administered to the Nephite people. It's not just a Book of Mormon story that your teachers taught to you. It's was a real event in the history of this world. He was an actual person. Not just a person, a son of God. And I know Christ will come again. I know that because of him...... because he was he first to rise from the grave, we will all....all of us, me and you, live again and be resurrected. We will all have perfect bodies one day, because a perfect being was brave and bold enough to do it first. I love him for that. I know this church is true! It is his church. in the name of Jesus Christ, amen ;)