Life at the Top of the Food Chain

Konnichiwa Minasan! So this week we got rid of our oldest group of missionaries and recieved 2 new districts full of missionaries. Which means that we're officially Daisenpai and are the next ones to leave! Crazy to think that I'm not just going to be stuck in this bubble forever and that I'm actually going to go to Japan soon! On Tuesday, we taught one of our investigators his second lesson. His name is Ryan and he's 17. (He's actually Wilkes Sensei without a tie on, but that's beside the point.) We were just teaching him from the first lesson about how God loves him and how the gospel can bless him and his family. He asked how he could be happier and what he needed to do to recieve blessings and before we knew it, we had a baptismal date! August 24th! It was really quite exciting. :) We had a missionary from Brazil come in this week that's part of our zone. Since he's international, he arrived at the MTC a day early, and the zone leaders and the Sister Training Leaders (us) got to take care of him until the rest of his district arrived the next day. His name is Elder Pessoa and he's actually called to speak portuguese in Japan, but he's here learning Japanese. Not exactly sure how that works. We hung out with him and showed him around on Tuesday night and the people told us that's all we needed to do because he had a schedule of things to do Wednesday before everyone else arrived. Wednesday morning we see him at breakfast, and ask if he knows where he's supposed to go etc, and he says he's just fine so we let him be and say Ja mata! (See you later) A few hours later, an official looking man comes to our classroom and says "Do any of you know where Elder Pessoa might be?" We all look at each other and respond that the last time we saw him was at breakfast. Apparently our new international missionary had gone missing! We said a prayer as a district and hoped that he was ok. So now we're all wondering what on earth we did and where he might have gone. I was convinced that we freaked him out the night before and he decided to ditch the MTC. When we go to lunch we see his name on the TV and it tells him to come to the front desk as soon as possible, so obviously he was still missing. The man came back another time and asked if we still didn't know where he was, and we still had not seen him. We felt like terrible zone leaders and sister training leaders. Later that day, we see Pessoa Choro walking down the hallway without a care in the world. "Where in the world were you?!" We ask. "What do you mean? I was just in the computer lab doing what they told me to do" he responded. Apparently he had always been where he was supposed to be. It was slightly anticlimatic, but relieving at the same time. Wednesday night we had our first TRC skype session with someone in Japan. It was.... interesting to say the least haha. Usually our visits are only 20 minutes and we usually teach people that know english as well as Japanese and can help us out when we're terrible at speaking Nihongo. This time, however, we had to teach a 40 minute lesson to someone who spoke practically no english whatsoever. Our volunteer was an old man who lived in the Nagoya mission boundaries who's name has escaped me. He was really nice and friendly, but he just spoke so fast! And with so many words that I had never heard before. It was long, painful, frustrating, and also super humbling. It was a good experience though because in just a matter of weeks we're going to be in Japan with people like that. Although it made me realize how terrible my Nihongo still is and made me want to just work harder so that I can actually somewhat communicate in Japan when I need to. The next two weeks, we'll being doing Skype for TRC once again so hopefully the next two weeks will give me more hope :) Wednesday night we also got to welcome all the new Kohai to the MTC and give them a tour. That was a fun experience. It's just funny to be with missionaries on their very first day at the MTC and see how they're doing. So many of them just have a dazed-what-did-I-get-myself-into-? kind of look on their face. Others just look exhausted. While there's those few that are just excited about life and want to know every little bit of Japanese that I've ever learned. I brainwashed all the new kohai into thinking that 4 square is the coolest thing ever here at the MTC. It might have been a mistake because on Friday when they came to gym EVERYONE was playing 4 square and the line was miles long. But it was still fun and I really like the new missionaries :) Well, my timer is running out once again, but the MTC is a wonderful place to be, Japanese is a wonderful language to learn, and the people that I'm here learning with are some of the most amazing people I've ever met. Love you all! Wells Shimai