Senkyoshi for Life

So last Sunday we're eating breakfast and I'm thinking to myself "Hmmm, I think they're going to call new Sister Training Leaders today, I wonder who it'll be..." We walk out of the cafeteria building and on our way back to the classroom Willis Kyodai (A member of our branch presidency) is just standing there waiting. He looks at me and my companion and says "I need to see you two." Shimata. (Japanese for dangit) He says with a big smile on his face "You two get to be our next sister training leaders!" The thing about being a missionary, is that you don't get callings, because you're calling is a missionary. But you get assignments and you're expected to do them without question. So what does a sister training leader do exactly? I wasn't exactly sure myself at first. Turns out, we have to go to meetings on Sundays with the branch presidency and zone leaders. We have to interview all the girls in the zone whenever we have free time, which is literally a joke, because at the MTC, free time doesn't exist. We have every minute of every day scheduled for us. So free time just has to be during our additional study. Also, each night we have the opportunity to go say goodnight to all the Shimaitachi in the zone and make sure everyone is doing well. There's 30 Shimai in our zone if I counted correctly, so this usually takes about 20 minutes every night. Then we have to be in bed my 10:30 every night, which is quite the struggle with our new responsibilites. Let's just say my journal entries have consisted of about 1 line for the past week. We also get to check out the Daisenpai when they leave at like 3 in the morning on Sunday. They said we can do it the night before though, thank heavens. ALSO we get 2 districts of new Kohai this week and we're in charge of their orientation on Wednesday night along with the zone leaders. As if being a normal missionary wasn't already enough. But I will admit, that I've really liked this responsibility. I've gotten to know a lot of the girls in our zone much better than I otherwise would have. I'm convinced that this assignment is going to help me more than I'll be able to help anyone else. Even though I've had a lot less time for myself to study Japanese and prepare lessons and things, I don't feel like I'm falling behind. I know that God provides a way for us to accomplish the things He asks. I've been somewhat ill for the past couple of weeks and I started developing a cough on Tuesday. Of course, the only time that I've ever started coughing uncontrollably had to be during the choir musical number at the devotional tuesday night. Literally seconds after we all began singing I started hacking up a lung. I could not stop for the life of me and I was just hunched over coughing throughout the entire song. After the devotional our Chorotachi (elders) were like "That was you!? I thought someone was dying!" So that night Willis Kyodai (The member of our branch presidency) basically forced me into having a blessing. It was definitely a good thing, and I'm really glad that he's the one that performed it. He's probably one of the most perfect people I've ever met. He's actually Gordon B. Hinkley's cousin. Not joking. I'm convinced that he'll be translated any day now. It's weird that we're almost the Daisenpai. That means that we only have about 3 more weeks! Which is really exciting, but also really scary. We started teaching each other as investigators this week. It's actually been a pretty neat experience. I really like being on the recieving side of a lesson. It makes me think about how an investigator might think about our message and I think it makes me want to know more about the gospel and study my japanese more so that I can answer people's questions effectively. Next week, we have a skype session scheduled to teach actual Nihonjin (Japanese people). I have no idea if they'll be able to speak any English whatsoever, so this could be really interesting. If all else fails, I know how to bear my testimony in Japanese and hope that they can get something from it! Whenever I start to think that I might be getting better at understanding Japanese, I learn something new and realize how far I still have to go! It's really been a great experience though. I enjoy learning and I'm having fun just throwing random Nihongo words into my daily life. The MTC is funny that way because you've got a bunch of people here learning a bunch of different languages so everywhere you go you hear things that don't make any sense. Also, in Japanese, the word "Hai" means yes. So if I'm ever talking to someone going to another mission, I'm in the habit of just saying "hai" instead of yes. People always give me the look like "Why on earth do you keep saying Hi to me?" because that's what it sounds like. The funny Nihongo mistake of this week happened to a Shimai in my district. They were teaching one of their investigators about the word of wisdom and telling him things that he can do besides smoking. One of the girls was trying to say that she likes to visit her chuch member friends. But the verb to visit is "homon suru" and the verb to excommunicate is "Hamon suru". Apparently she used the wrong one and told her investigator that she likes to excommunicate people haha. Also theres the mistake of calling people carrotts (ninjin) instead of humans (ningen). It's always an adventure in the life of a Japanese Senkyoshi. Well, time is running low and I've got plenty that I need to get done on this junbi no hi (P-day). Hope everyone back home is doing well! Kono Kyokai wa shinjitsu to shitte imasu. Kamisama no imashime ni shittagaeba shukufuku o ukeru koto ga dekimasu! Sayornara!