Monday, December 29, 2008

First Email from JAPAN


Our P-day is on Thursday but on Thursday everything will be closed because of Shogatsu, the Japanese new year.

 My Japanese is very poor. My companion says I need a lot of work. I think so too.There is so much catching up to do and so much learning that is is easy
 to get discouraged. There is so much to do that I dont’t know where to start!
I’ve been riding an older elder’s bike. Mic Shimai salvaged it for me. It is too big. Right now after email we are going to buy me a bike. I spent all the money in my account. INEED$500 MORE USD IN MYACCOUNT
ASAP!!!!Your first transfer you spend a lot.

People here think I am crazy because I only have short sleeved shirts. I am going to buy some lobg sleeve shirts.
In Japan they have multiple flavors of kit kats. One is cherry blossom. I ttastes like cherry and strawberry mix.
I approached my first person on the train just now. She is from Bolivia and came here one month ago. Just as we got to our eki (train stop) I thought I should speak spanish to her.

We are in Kanagawa area but cover two wards, Kanagawa and Yokohama.I really like the young single adults in yokahama.as of now i am still in my comfort zone.if i am to be a missionary i must get out of it!
elder holmes is our zone leader. i’d heard about him before the mission from the missionary mom website. he knows me friend jesse from byu idaho! jesse sent him a christmas card.

we do a lot of bike endo, missionary work on your bike. while i had the elder bike it was hard to stop on my bike. you pedal and then stop when you get to someone. in our mission (and i think all of japan) sisters can only talk to girld and elders can only talk to guys.

it gets cold. the other day i couldnt feel my toes.now i wear socks under my tights. sometimes they still get cold. 
the kyokai (church) ia a 5 minute bike from our apartment. i finally got used to people driving on the left side of the road and to being right next to cars. sometimes you could just about reach out and touch them.

the only way you learn japanese is to speak it. you have to force yourself to do that. it takes a lot of work. as a missionary you are always tired. i go to bed at 1030 and get up at 630 every day and am still exhausted!

you may have noticed i stopped with the punctuation and capitalization. the apostrophy is found on shift7. 

there is no central heating in japan. we baracade the heat from the wall unit into two rooms- our study room and our sleeping room. there are four rooms in our apartment. the biggest room is slightly smaller than my bedroom. there are tegami mats in the study and bedroom. everything else is wood, or it looks like wood. we only have a clothes washer. we dont have a dishes washer. we sort our trash into burnables and non burnables and then plastics and cardboards. something like that. each day of the week the people pick up a certain type of your trash. 

in the sleeping room there are two bars across the ceiling. you hang your clothes. there are special square hangers that you hang and they create more space.

i wish id known more about missionary life and the effort it takes while i was in the mtc. i would have studied till i could study no longer!

our mission president has us read the entire book of mormon in japanese. we have a year to do it. he gave us a reading schedule. we get a new president next year. i hope we still have this goal. i think we are the only asian mission to have the missionaries read the book of mormon in the foreign language. from what i hear it does wonders to your language ability. elder clark, our district leaders companion says his language changed overnight when he did. i cant tell you how painstaiking it is now. it is hard at first but then you get to understand a recollect the words.

i already i see how the only way to work is to forget yourself.in order to get the language learned in these 15 months you have to work your tail off. my senseis in the mtc pushed us and challenged us and now i see why those challenges were important. it is much better to le
arn in the mtc than on the fly! you come knowing how to talk about the gospel and forget that theres actually things people talk about besides the gospel.

we have a progressing investigator named jani. (jay-knee) she is from china but she also knows japanese pretty well. her english in incredible. we teach her english and the gospel at the same time by sharing scriptures in english and having her learn. she is really really smart. my goal is to be more outgoing and syl!!!!

well gotta go, we pay to use the computer. i love you.
mcmahan shimai 

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