Ohayo kazoku to tomodachi!

Life is good at the MTC. Just living and loving the gospel! Nihongo is coming along slowly but surely. It's hard. But I'm continuing to try to learn it as best as I can.

Thank you so much for the dear elders and emails and love I receive! I love knowing what's going on in everyone's life. Dad, I love the weekend updates I get from you and mom. SO JEALOUS THAT YOU GOT TO SEE ENDER'S GAME. I'll be excited to see that when I get back. :) I'm so grateful for everyone's support! Feel free to dear elder me more though and write as often as you can. It makes P-day a little more fun when you have people you can write back to. :)

Sooooo nothing much happened this week at the MTC. I guess I can just go over what a typical day looks like...

6:30 wake up get ready

7 District devotional

7:15 breakfast

7:45-8:50 personal study

8:50-11:50 class

11:50 Lunch

12:50-1:40 Gym

2:10-3:10 Language Study

3:10-4:10 TALL (online language study program)

4:10-4:50 Additional Study

4:50 Dinner

5:35-8:35 companionships in our district rotate teaching our investigator.

8:35-9 Additional Study

9-9:30 plan for the next day

These things rotate depending on what day it is but this is what a typical day looks like. 

So as you can see there is a lot of study time. And I seriously love it. I never feel like I have enough study time, even though looking over this it seems like I have oodles of time.

Oh! Something exciting I realized that happened this week is that our first investigator, Suzukisan, stopped being our investigator and is now our sensei (teacher) instead! All of the shimaitachi in our district talk about how great he is all of the time because he seriously is pretty great. All of our sensei are probably the most beautiful creatures we've ever beheld. That's not even just the shimaitachi talking, it's the chorotachi (elders) talking as well. So now we have 2 new kyudosha (investigator) to teach this week. Yesterday my doryo and I taught one of them and I was not feeling good at all yesterday. (Don't worry mom I'm talking lots of Airborne every day. Even though it tastes REPULSIVE.) And so the Seirei was not in the words I said at all because I just felt so horrible. It was disappointing. But this whole MTC thing is a learning experience. So I'm going to do better next time.

Sorry this isn't a very exciting letter but after the first week nothing is super exciting anymore. I'll send a few pictures in another email of some things that happened. But here it is! The life of an American senkyoshi (missionary) trying to speak Japanese! Love you all and I'm so grateful the people I have in my life because you all are the greatest! Continue to love the Lord with all of your heart!

Ai Shiteru, 

Aulick Shimai