Hey guys!
So excited to be sending my first email home! I hope the house is still noisy enough without me.
Guess I'll start at the beginning for you guys. I walked off with all of my luggage and handed it to an elder helping out with new missionaries. He brought my stuff around while I picked up a couple things like my keycard, some papers, a lock...etc. Then, we headed to the residence and dropped off my stuff quickly so I could get right to the classroom. I was then directed to the classroom I have most of my lessons in. I met one of the teachers, Brother Huber, and members of my district started to trickle in.
Let me take a moment to say that I have the most awesome district, seriously. It is literally made up of a total of six guys, or three companionships. All of us except for one elder are going to Sapporo, Japan. All of them are clearly here for the right reasons, including my companion, who I'm really getting along with. About three days after we all met, one of the elders commented, "I feel like we've all known each other for so long." I can't wait to share the rest of these weeks with this awesome family I've found here.
Conner and his companion, Elder Embley (from Arizona) -- Two desert boys!
On to the rest of the first day, I attended a cool orientation where we sang the "army of helaman" song, except we sang, "and we are now the Lord's missionaries to bring the world his truth." Singing that made the moment feel really serene. Later, we were divided into groups of about sixty people and split off into separate rooms, where we as group practiced teaching converts who were pretending to be themselves before they converted.
We finally retired to our residences (I'll attach some pictures). My companion and I are rooming with another companionship from a different district, though that might change soon (these rooms can house six people, and we have lots more missionaries coming in in a couple weeks, so our district might eventually just share a room, which would be awesome).
Thursday was kind of an explosion of information. I don't remember too much, but I took some good notes for later. In Japanese, we memorized Moroni 10:5 in nihongo*. It was a pretty good way to remember words, so I'm gonna try and read some Book of Mormon in Japanese at some point. That night, the Branch leaders (were branch 5) tried to interview all of the newcoming missionaries, but they underestimated how long it would take to interview 51-ish missionaries, even with all three leaders doing individual meetings. We ended pretty late, but got through them all.
*In Japanese, Japan is called Nihon (日本), and the Japanese language is called Nihongo (日本語) (-go means language).
Friday, we met another one of our teachers named Brother Cox. Other than that, it was a pretty basic day learning Japanese. We've been learning key phrases so we can use them at will, including phrases for how to pray in Japanese, though I'll feel more comfortable when I have a large vocabulary and can just say what I want. For now though, we're being encouraged to use whatever words we know in simple conversations with each other and build our vocabulary with words that come up we don't know.
Saturday was much of the same, except Brother Huber pretended to be a Japanese investigator named Nakastukasan. My companion, Elder Embley, and I taught him fairly well about how to pray. Later that afternoon, each of us wrote a talk in mostly Japanese, because Sunday sacrament meeting is a random call up session where you speak the assigned language on a specific topic. I finished the talk and encountered a puzzling dilemma as to what I wanted. On the one hand, I could get called up and have the chance for being called ever again be practically zero. On the other hand, I didn't want my poorly written talk to see the light of day.
Sunday came and luckily, I did not have to talk. The day was pretty packed, going from one meeting to the next. In the afternoon, our district joined the MTC choir, where we sang "consider the lillies of the field." It's no Coronado madrigals, but it did have several hundred people, so that made up for it. That night, I listened to the most epic talk I've ever heard by Elder Bednar called, "The Character of Christ." He talked about putting off the natural man and becoming selfless, like Jesus Christ. He said it was impossible for us, but through the atonement, it was possible. He even quoted my mission scripture.
Monday, we breached the point of what I learned in two years of Japanese, at least grammar-wise. Still working on vocabulary. It'll take time, but I have a few weeks to spare. It's our job to learn the vocab, and it's the teachers' jobs to teach us how to put them into sentences. Everyone is progressing fairly well, even with the writing system.
Tuesday was typical except for the devotional, which Branch 5 helps to set up every week (we also take down Sunday devotional). I sang with the choir in the devotional itself, and the speaker was Elder Walker, a former member of the seventy. He talked about ways to be a happy and successful missionary. He was a big fan of President Hinkley quotes and included his famous story of writing his dad on his mission.
Now, it's preparation day. I did my laundry, studied and wrote this. That's about it so far. It feels good to have a little break from class after class. My future emails probably won't be this long or detailed, but this should give you an overview of what the week's been like.
aishiteimasu (I love you)
Elder Brown
Mom note: We spoke to Conner today for about 10 minutes (the connection was spotty). He looks and sounds great! He is taking full advantage of the meals in the cafeteria and had 4 corndogs for dinner last night.
I can totally hear Conner's voice when I read this! I'm so glad he likes his companion so much. Hopefully they will serve together in Japan :). 4 corndogs?? That's awesome!
Posted by: Katie M | 07/18/2019 at 08:53 AM