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    

My MTC companion - Elder Quilter

12 October 2013

So this week we have all become Senpai. Meaning we are no longer the newest group of missionaries going to Japan. We had a group leave for Japan, among them was Cuba Chouro. I was lucky though to inherit many things from my good friend. Including another blanket and about another five pillows. My sleep has much improved since then. With the loss though we have gained a group of kohai (the new kids), it is not a very large group though. One of the rooms only has two people in it and considering they are built for six they are really lucky. 

The end of this week also marks the beginning of the half way point of my stay at the MTC. The days are going faster and I can't wait to be leaving, even though most likely we will have to wake up around 2 in the morning to go get our plane. The language is really coming along great. When we first got here we got a big bag of books to help with learning the language. I just started reading one that we call the sumo. I really like it, it focuses more on kanji. I like this because it allows me not only to learn new words but how to read them as well. All the books here have nicknames, and most are really cool. There is the Sumo, Katana, Magikarp (most people think it's useless, hence the name, I call it Garidose because I really like it), Ninja, Pikachu, Mr. Miyagi, and a little green sheet of paper called Bulbasaur. 

I've been asked a few times to talk about my Dourio or companion a couple of times so I will. His name is Jacob Quilter he is from Orem, Utah so about a 30 minute walk from where we are now. He's really awesome, I think we would hang out a lot even out of the MTC. He always has a smile on his face. He describes himself as an awake person. He's not a morning or evening person, when he's awake he is who he is. He's super selfless and always does little things to help me out. He took three years of Japanese in school but it's been awhile so it doesn't help him much. Overall he's awesome and I'm super glad I have him as my Dourio.

I want to thank everyone who has been sending me letters, it's awesome to hear from friends and family. If I don't write back it's not because I'm ignoring you, but I only get an hour every Saturday to write emails and sometimes it's not enough time to write everyone.   

Meeting an old friend at the MTC

6 October 2013

So this week was really cool. On Tuesday we had a devotional by one of the Seventy, he talked about the differences of our church to other churches. The thing that was cool though was that it felt like he was just reading out of the Bible the entire time. He explained the reasoning of our belief and others all through the Bible, it was a really good talk.

I've started running during our exercise time, it's good to feel some pressure in the legs again. One of my roommates, Sawyer Chouro (Elder Sawyer), wants me to get him in a bit more shape so I've been helping him with his running. It's a bit of a fair trade though he helps me every night with my pull ups, so I thought I could help him with his running. Also we had a cool competition this week, who can catch a Peachie O' with their mouth from four stories. Sawyer Chouro won but I dropped it for him so I feel a bit of accomplishment. It had some after effects though. Sawyer’s inside lip was bruised and the thing under your tongue well that swelled up. I mean it wasn't too surprising something like that would happen, because everyone had marks on their faces from missing their drops. 

This week I had to get a flu shot. And while I was waiting in line the two guys next to me were talking. One says to the other, "where are you from?" The one right next to me replies, "Wyoming." To this I jumped in and said, "no way I used to live in Wyoming!"  The Elder turns to me and both our minds blew up. The Elder was Elder Briton Groesbeck. Yep one of my best friends from when I lived in Wyoming. Luckily he recognized me, too. We got our shots and made plans to meet up again later. We also ended up watching one of the sessions of conference next to each other. He is going to Brazil and got here the same time as me. It's really cool to have found another friend especially since Cuba Chouro leaves tomorrow. I'm gonna miss him a lot but I know he's super excited to finally get to Japan. I wouldn't doubt that one day we'll end up as companions.

So that's about it for this week. I want to send some pictures but the computers here are really secure so I haven't figured out how to do it yet. I know you can, so maybe by next week I will have figured it out.      

Days seem like weeks and weeks seem like days.

27 September 2013

So this was my first full week at the MTC. And it's a pretty weird and special place to be. It's strange how the time flows, at the end of every day we have time to write in our journal. And it's a struggle to know what to write. The days seem so long it takes focus to remember all that’s happened in one day. Most nights someone in the room will bring up an event and even though it happened that morning it would seem like it happened three days ago. At the same time though, the week flies by. To think about Monday just seems like hours ago. You hear the expression a lot here "days seem like weeks and weeks seem like days" and I can't think of a better way to express it.

My roommates are awesome. There’s only four of us in a room meant for six so there's a lot of room. There's Quilter, Sawyer, and Bunker. We're all really relaxed people and we get along well. We make up stupid competitions in our free time, the most important of them is who can get on top of the bed. This involves starting from lying down on the bottom bunk and then holding yourself up and crawling onto the top from the bottom side. It's actually fairly hard because once you start you can't touch the bottom part of the bunk again. We also make it harder on ourselves by putting two mattresses on the top to get over or only being allowed three appendages. We also have currently a system for slowly removing some of our vocabulary. We have a list and every day we add five words to the list. if we ever use a word on that list in English at the end of the day we get a punishment. And the punishments add up. The first day I had 13, today so far I only have 4 so it seems to be working. The punishments are just some sort of physical exercise, 70 crunches, 25 push ups, 7 pull ups, 4 dips, or holding a plank for 1:30, any of those can count as one punishment.

Watanabe who was our pretend investigator is no longer Watanabe but Murray Sensei. We got two more investigators with the loss of Watanabe though, these two investigators we'll have until we leave the MTC so I expect that it will be much harder than Watanabe. I find my self really looking forward to Sundays. In the evening we have a chance to watch past talks given at the MTC and a couple of other movies. Last Sunday we watched a talk by Elder Bednar called "Character of Christ.” If you haven't seen/read it before I highly recommend it, he also does a really good cookie monster impression. The language is coming along awesome, I think I'm learning the grammar better than I ever have. 

I love you all very much and miss you,

Elder Davies