Week 2 - February 22, 2017

Hello Everyone, 

This week has been soooo crazy! This week has got to be one of the busiest, hardest, but yet most uplifting week. First of all I can't believe it's already my second week here at the MTC. I honestly feel like with the amount of things that I have learned It feels like I have been here forever! Don't get me wrong though it's a good kind of forever.

My district at the temple

So last week we started teaching our first kyodosha (investigator) it was super tough, I remember planning what we were going to teach, then going there and having our whole plan fall apart. I remember thinking to myself during the lesson how can I do this, how am I able to teach people in Japan if I don't even remember how to say the simplest things. Then I remembered that it was ONLY my first week, and that I don't have to know everything, so When the next few lessons came, more things came to place. There was this one lesson, our 3rd lesson with Yamashita and I remember going to the lesson having confidence that it would be better. During that lesson, that day it couldn't have been any better for our 2nd week at the MTC. It wasn't better because we were able to say things in Japanese, but it was better because we were able to teach with the spirit. It was amazing, though our Japanese were broken we had such great spirit in the room, and it allowed us to testify to her that the church is true.


Yamashita before she became our sensei

After a few days of teaching Yamashita, we sadly had to say goodbye which sucked because everyone in our district finally got connected with her and was starting to get used to teaching her and got excited of the next lesson to be able to teach her. The chorotachi ( elders) at our district was sad because they all had this plan in inviting her to get baptized. So after the class we decided we wanted to have our district to have a picture with our first kyodosha, so we did, but after we did she wanted to talk to us, and without any hesitation, she takes out her name tag that indicates that not only she works here, but that she was our new sensei teacher, crazy eh? We all had a laugh about it as we felt embarrassed of the many mistakes we had when teaching her. It was a big laugh at the end though. 

Me and Larsen Shimai, and Bitton Shimai matching.
With everything going on this week. I really had a point where I struggled a lot with the language, I struggled with understanding and knowing if I can actually do this. This week we had a devotional that really made me think of where  I am. We had a bunch of spiritual moments that reassured me that when we invite spirit and heavenly father into our daily activities and our lesson then we can be able to surpass any obstacle. Sometimes when Im put into a situation where I'm  not used to, I begin to panic, and I forget the reason for our lesson. I start to lose the spirit because I focus more on us.  I had this lesson this week where we did a mogi (role play) with one of our sensei, and before I got into the lesson I started to freak out because of what one of the elders said. Well, long story short our lesson was bad. But one thing that our sensei said that really made me think is that, when we teach our investigators, it's not about us, it's not about how we feel if will mess up or if we will succeed or not. It's about our kyodosha it's about how they feel and how they can come closer to Christ. 


As for my Nihongo (Japanese), I'm not perfect at it, but I have seen a lot of improvements since my first week. I've finally can say a full prayer in Japanese, I'm able to testify and invite people to read the scriptures, and also to read hiragana! It's super crazy how much you can learn here at the MTC.  

Hope everyone is having an amazing week!

あいしってます！！！！

Bamba Shimai😙
 







 Our Sunday temple walk ( it was pouring rain)




Me after a temple session, with the beautiful snow





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