Teaching experiences

8 December 2013

This week was pretty cool; it started off with an interview from President Wada. Every Transfer (6 weeks) we have either a mission conference or interviews. The interview is short and is just a check up to see how we are doing, but after we get to talk to Sister Wada. Sister Wada gave me a kanji lesson that was really useful.

We've had a couple of lessons this week. They were both really good. We are teaching an older Gentleman named Sakurai, he is really interested in the bible but is not a Christian. We alternate weeks of teaching him English or a lesson from the Bible. The lesson that he chooses was Matthew 6. Part of it talks about to first seek the Kingdom of Heaven. He asked us what he needs to do. Because he doesn't have faith in even Christianity I asked him how he could seek after something he doesn't believe in, and then suggested maybe his first step in seeking the Kingdom of Heaven is to gain some faith. He hasn't ever done a lesson from the Book of Mormon but he agreed that for his next Bible lesson he would study Alma 32 (A chapter in the Book of Mormon about faith). Our other lesson was with Norihiro. He's an interesting guy, but we teach him every week with half Book of Mormon reading half English class lessons. He’s really good at English and has travelled around a lot of the world to study politics.

We also had a presentation from President Wada this week in our area. He does presentations every once and awhile for anyone to come to that are just little life lessons. We watched 40mins of "Life is Wonderful" and then had a discussion about it. It was really cool because as a missionary we don't really get to watch movies, so 40mins of an actual movie was a nice little pick me up. We also had 2 investigators come to that with us. One is a High School student named Takafumi. His parents really like us and want him to become friends with us. These Grandparents did a homestay with a Mormon family in America a long time ago that left a really good impression. They think that the Mormons would be a positive influence on him, and also because we are American we can help his English. The other guy is named Ryo. He just turned 20 and is a college student. He's got a bit of an interesting background. The college he goes to is kinda like a BYU for another religion. That religion though was a made by a Japanese convert who joined the Church years ago but then after finding out he couldn't just advance to being a prophet left the Church and made his own. They have some interesting beliefs. Like tithing is a must there's no agency or freedom to choose to pay it or not. Also they aren't allowed to talk or learn about other religions once they join. We aren't sure Ryo is a member, maybe his parents are and that’s how he got in the college, because he is a way cool guy and he's talking with us....so I guess we'll find out.

We also went to a Christmas Concert this week. It was called Little Witnesses and was done by the Church. It was way good. I guess it's a big deal. They had a camera crew for a live stream on Facebook. Also Sakurai and a friend of his went with us. I think it was a great experience, plus it was good to get the Christmas Spirit going :D

I hope all of you are felling good as we get closer to Christmas!

Elder Davies

First Letter from Japan

Hey Mom and Dad,

 

These first few weeks ave been a little weird and I haven't really had access to email or P-Days really. My first week P-Day got moved to Thursday but we had to travel to go have Thanksgiving so I didn't get to email. And this week the Zone Leaders needed the lap top and the computers at church were locked. I did get permision though to write you today.

 

These first few weeks in Japan have been awesome! I've talked to a lot of people and have really had a good time. My new companion/trainer is Elder Johnson. He's is really tall and all the Japanese people wisper about his height as we walk by. He is also very good at Japanese, he only has 30 weeks in his mission left and has been in the area we live in for over 6 months (thats a really long time for a mission). The area I live in is called Kohoku. I live in a really nice apartment that the Stake President built less than a year ago as an extension to his house. In the apartment there is 5 of us all toghther. 4 Americans and 1 Elder from Okinawa. Soon though there will only be 4 of us, Elder Hill goes home the 13th of this month. We have 4 investigators. 2 I haven't met yet though. They both have really crazy scheduals and don't get home until after our curfew, but it's because they have really big test comming up, after the tests their scheduals should clear up a bit. The other 2 take private English/Religion classes from us. One we do the class half religion and half english. The other we trade off every week, but when we teach english he brings three friends and they also might start comming to the religion class with him too. He's actually an interesting old man. He's not Christian but he has a very deep interest in the bible. He finds it hard to understand though so he likes to meet with us so he can talk about his questions.

 

So a cool experiance I've had since I've been here happened last monday. My companion and I got a little lost but found a railroad crossing. There is only one railline that goes through our town so we knew roughly where we were. We ran into a man at the crossing and asked were the nearest station was, he replied that he was heding there and could just walk with him to the station. On the way we started talking and he intited us to go get a drink with him. We told him we donn't drink but we would love to hang out. So he ended up inviting us to the dinner he was on the way to with his fiance. And we happily joined along. He explained to us at the restoraunt he was meeting his fiance and also his friend played the acourdian there. We ended up going to a restraunt called Beer Hall. It was actually a really classy establishment that had a German theme to it. We had a really nice dinner with him and his fiance, his friend played us a couple of Christmas hyms when we found out we were missionaries. We ended the night and traded contact information. Even if he doesn't contact us it was an awesome night that I think he'll alwyas remember. We also had a cool experiance last night, we went to a 7/11 to get money from the ATM. The guy at the counter asked us if we are from a church. We said yea. He then wanted to know if we had a Christmas concert comming up, it so happens that we do this weekend. We are going back today to give him an invetation and invite him to go with us.

 

So to all my friends that have written me in the past 3 weeks I have read your emails, and I love them. But these last few weeks have been a little weird to I won't be able to reply to them till next week.

 

Elder Davies

 

Last week at the MTC!

Last Email from the MTC!!!! I get to leave Monday, and then I probably won't the chance to email again till Monday the week after. This is also probably the only email I will have time to write, so if you don't get one this week expect one in a week and a couple of days. I've been packing a lot lately and getting ready to go. I'm blessed that I'm such a light packer. Most of the study materials that I got here I'll be able to take because I have so much room. A lot of people have to leave behind really good books because they can't afford the extra weight.

This week has been really cool. We had L. Tom Perry come and talk to us at a devotional. He talked about the relationships that you should strive for in your companionships. It was a really good talk and made me excited to meet my new companion. I hope no mater who I get that I will always be able to build a good relationship. Also I finished the Book of Mormon this week. I started around my second week here. It was awesome. I was a little worried what it would be like to go two years without reading a normal book. But as I read the Book of Mormon this time I connected with it like never before. It was great I always felt in the past that it was hard to read certain parts, this time however my attention was caught the entire time. 

This week we saw a lot of people for the last time, It was a little sad. I am really going to miss both of my senseis. They are way awesome. I think it's amazing that they took this as their job. Both of them not only taught us so much but cared for us in a way like no other. I could always feel their love every day. I wish I could bring a small version of them so much, just for little pick me ups. The good news is if I have Facebook in the field it will be easy to keep in touch.

Anyway that's all the time I have, I still need to clean some things.

Love you all,

Elder Davies

We got our travel plans!

This week over all has been a really good week, but it doesn't feel like I've done a lot. On Tuesday we sang in choir "Like 10,000 Legions Marching" it's in the Hymn book but it's not sung very often. The MTC has its own arrangement and it was probably the best song that we've sung so far. We also found out that Tuesday we'll have Elder L. Tom Perry come talk at the MTC, I think it'll be a really good talk.

Wednesday we hosted the new missionaries coming in. It was a lot of fun, I got to meet a lot of new people and watch a lot of moms cry. It's probably a good thing my parents didn't drop me off, I can't imagine how my Mum would have been. Before I left my Mum was writing my name on everything I owned. I found my name in my tie this week, literally inside of it, it was on the backside and was a little smudged so it took me a little to work it out. I'll be honest, it freaked me out a bit. So, it was probably good she had to stay in Germany, though I do love her tons and it was nice to have a bit of her.

Yesterday we got our travel plans! They are such a boost to moral. Most of us are getting a little tired of the MTC. But we leave the 18th of November at 4:30 a.m. and land the 19th of November at 4:55 p.m., the perfect time to be able to go get a good Japanese dinner. So this is our last full week and then we get to head out! Today we had a really good TRC. TRC is time that we get to teach church members in Japanese. Both Elder Quilter and I really excelled at the language and then the church member we were teaching was the sweetest lady ever. She was originally from Tokyo but now lives in Salt Lake. We only were able to talk but by the time we were done we were best friends and was kinda hard to leave.

Well that’s all that really went on this week. We’re planning to really work hard this last week and prepare ourselves as best we can for Japan.

Elder Davies  

This is the SYL troll that one of our shimai drew. SYL or Speak Your Language is a system that encourages you to practice and always to speak in your language when possible. One of the senseis described that he would imagine a troll prodding him to do it. Also include is the vegetable versions of our district our senseis included. I'm the leek and my companion is the corn 

Sick this week

2 November 2013

This week has been a week of sickness. Everyone has been getting sick and then when you get better, someone passes it back to you. We had a few days with half our district missing. I ended up going to the clinic and was just sent out to go buy some drugs. It was weird going off the MTC it was my first time leaving in about 7 weeks. I was sick at the beginning of the week, got better, and then last night caught it again. So lately I've just been pondering the question of how the body can store so much snot in a place so small as your nose.

The language is coming along awesome we mostly study how to teach in Japanese, so it's not super useful for real world talk. However I'm lucky and have studied Japanese for 6 years, I feel as though I can say most things now. Like "can I go to residence in order to take some medicine." except I still need to get better at thinking Japanese because I ended up saying "Can I take medicine in order to go to residence." Close enough though, right? They really encourage us to SYL (speak your language) here and that's probably the best thing to help improve the language.

Halloween was interesting. The MTC really didn't do anything besides offer caramel apples at dinner and lunch. But everyone from Utah (and thats a lot) got huge packages from family with cookies, and other assorments of goodies. I dressed up as my companion, so we switched name tags, ties, and watches. I also did my hair, which is weird because I can't remember the last time I put a comb through my hair.

On Wednesday we had a Skype lesson with people from Japan. We had a sister and her little girl, who was three. She was probably the cutest thing I've seen for awhile. She would keep popping up on screen to show us her toys. And then at the end when we were saying good bye she let out a "Bye bye missionaries do your best in Japan!" It was about the cutest thing ever. But it was really cool at the same time because when we practice here at the MTC we do lessons with our teachers or volunteers and it never came to mind that in real life we might have children in our lesson. And it completely changes the way you talk and present things because you want the child to understand too.

Well we have 16 days left at the MTC so you'll only get two more of these letters and then they will be filled with adventures in Japan. Hope everyone is having a nice week!

Love,

Elder Davies   

Losing a Shimai

This week has been a little sad. Not much of interest has happened, that's exciting or good. However we lost one of our Shimai (sisters). Hansen Shimai has had a bone spur in her ankle that was pressing on her achilles. She's been going to physical therapy and tried a variety of boots/ casts to try and fix the problem. However she found out Thursday that they would have to do surgery. So she will be sent home to have the surgery and then will have a 9 week recovery period, and then will come back to the MTC for 2 weeks, and then head out to Japan. She has had an interesting time at the MTC though. She was somehow set to leave 4 weeks after we got here (she had no Japanese experience) and then our somehow Sensei got it fixed, she had gone to the travel office 3 times to get it fixed and they never were able to change it. She is dearly missed. And with her leaving, the sister that was her companion was moved to another district. So we lost two of our 4 beloved sisters. 

Other than that not much is going on, we've just been focusing on our language a lot. The daisenpai leave Monday, so we will be the daisenpai as of Wednesday of next week. And then we will be on our last leg of the MTC. One of the perks of being daisenpai is that on Wednesdays we get to skype call people in Japan and do lessons (with Japanese Members). I can't wait for this, I think that it will be an awesome experience.

Love you guys tons,

Elder Davies

Pennies for a missionary

19 October 2013

This week has flown by it's crazy. I feel like it was just the other day that I was writing one of these letters. This week marked my one-month point at the MTC. I'm starting to get a bit tired of the food here but sometimes in the evenings back at residence you can find something good. One such thing I found was Mrs. Renfro's salsa. Probably the best salsa I've had in a long time. It has a ghost pepper in it apparently, I don't know if that's true because ghost peppers are supposed to be insane.

Also, the devotional that I was curious to see who was speaking was this Tuesday. It was Elder Oaks. For those of you who don't know who Elder Oaks is, he is part of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles in our church. It's a fairly big deal to have had him speak here. He gave a really good talk about how to transition from teenagers to missionaries. He also talked about respecting other people’s faith and encouraging them to keep practicing everything in their faith that is true and good. This really speaks to me because going to Japan I think the people there are amazing. And I want the church to be able to improve their lives not completely rebuild it.

So in our district we have an Elder from Brazil. Elder Siedschlag is his name. A couple of weeks ago I found a penny on the ground and gave it to him. He was kinda offended. He made a remark that he was so happy because he could feed his family for weeks now. I felt really bad. I didn't mean to offend him. Picking up change is just a habit I have. It's free money. So I decided that every penny I found I would give to him :D This went on for a couple of weeks and I got my room in on it. And slowly the entire floor got on to it. We would find tons of pennies everyday in the hall left for Siedschlag. However, Thursday was probably the peak. I think we probably gave him around 250 pennies in just that day. Now he’s no longer offended by it, but it was become a bit of a game. I still have a drawer of pennies, and we hide them in his stuff, and clothes, and food. And it's awesome to see his face when he finds it. He says at the end of our time here that he's going to buy a ton of snacks for our district with all the pennies. It kind of reminds me of the law of particles. That if you continue to do small things. Even if at the time, like a penny it seems worthless, that something great can come of it.

That pretty much sums up this week except for the fact that Elder Sawyer dislocated his ankle. It popped back in but he says it still seems a little funny. I'll let you know if anything comes of that. I appreciate all the love that I've been feeling from my friends and family while I've been here. 

See you guys next week,

Elder Davies