MTC #10: Ready to Run

Thank you for your love and support. It's hard to believe that I've been here for just under ten weeks! I leave for Japan on Monday. Am I dreaming? I have been wanting to go to Japan for quite some time now, and it is just about to happen! Hontou ni waku waku shi te imasu!

Well, we are STILL waiting to find out whether or not Elder De Menezes will be getting surgery. The consultation with the doctor went well, and the surgery would be very beneficial, so now we wait, some more.

Thursday last week was SO awesome! We got our Flight Plans. We'll fly from SLC to Los Angeles, and from there to the Narita Airport in Tokyo. I'm not too worried about packing, because it looks like I don't have as much stuff as I thought I did.

Ooh, part of last Thursday wasn't so good. . . Well, it was, just interesting: While Elder De Menezes went up to Salt Lake with a service missionary/interpreter for the consultation, I stayed with my class, and joined Elders Everts and Sheffield to teach in the TRC. It was actually really cool, being able to switch between three people. The flow was really fun. However, the "investigator" was a little rude in my opinion. We were constantly searching for ways to keep the investigator involved, asking questions, trying to relate it to him (well, maybe we could have done more of that), and etc. However, quite a few times throughout the lesson, he would pretend to nod off to sleep. Even when I was in the middle of doing my best to give the Joseph Smith experience with real testimony, he nodded off right then and there! I almost got a bit frustrated, but instead took a chill pill and tried to remain calm.

That's one thing I'm still working on though, focusing on the investigator. I'm getting better, but I kept sticking to the weird idea that I had to start at the beginning every time. Like yesterday, we taught Sister Woo at the Teaching Evaluation Center, and it went pretty well, but we could have taught toward her needs a bit better. Good experience, nevertheless.

The Referral Center on Saturday was awesome. I spoke with a man named Roy Wright. He had ordered a Book of Mormon a while ago, and had read a little bit of it, but it had been a while. I challenged him to read the introduction, and more of the Book of Mormon, and he accepted. I then offered to send the missionaries by, and he almost declined - but I said they would call first to set an appointment, and he agreed! Awesome!!!

Sadly, I still haven't been able to get a hold of Amy D. again, but I called and left a message about how she can go to LDS.org to read the Book of Mormon. Oh well.

Oh, I bought a new set of scriptures. I had been wanting to for a while, my old set is so beat up and worn out, and marked way too much (it's hard to read some of the pages because I was so careless). Elder De Menezes gave me the advice that he heard from a General Authority: on the mission, you have a new life. New life = new scriptures. So I did it. I will most likely send my old quad home, after searching through to find the items I would like to transfer over.

Ooh! Thank you SOOOOOO much for the package. Elder De Menezes was so happy when he saw that you bought him a 4 gig memory card (ME TOO!) And all that EFY music made me so happy - hearing music from my childhood! Thank you so much for the cinnamon sugar pop-tarts. They really hit the spot. ooh, and the Japanese snacks! Good stuff! Perfect ties, I'm trading them up! :)

Thank you for everything! I love you!