Dear Family!
I have made it to my first P day! I can not believe that I am actually here it is incredible and very humbling! The first three days have been long and kinda tough getting into things..but today has been perfect timing having a p day and getting to write home! i hope that you don't mind my bad grammar..we only have one hour of writing and i want to get as much in here as i can! so the first day was long..and very confusing but good! we got all of our necessary equipment (badges, tags, cards, keys, book, etc) and we were actually able to go to our rooms really quick and take our bags there! once we dropped them off we went to our classrooms and thats where we met our companions! my companion is Von Niederhausern Choro, he is from the beaches of florida and is a pretty cool guy! he is a super hard worker..and we get along pretty well so i guess thats good since im going to be in here until august! haha so our sensei gregory, will not speak one word of english to us. so we have been in class for 3 days with him and we have not heard one word of english! it is all japanese and it can be very frusturating to figure out what he is trying to say. but i am picking it up. it is slow..i am definitely not fluent yet hahaha but i am learning and working at it. things were definitely overwhelming that first day..i didn't know what i had gotten myself into haha but it has been getting better. and the older elders have just been saying "get to sunday and you will be feeling better!" haha so i am just working for that!\
Ok so we had our first lesson with our first investigator yesterday, wow. It was an incredible experience! i can not believe that we did it! because the craziest part was..it was 100% in japanese! we could not even use any english at all because our investigater only spoke japanese! so he wouldn't understand us if we spoke any english! it was so humbling! we got in there and we had most of our lesson written out in japanese so we first introduced ourselves in japanese, and then we asked if we could pray with him! so we kneeled down and my doryo (companion) offered a prayer in japanese. it really brought the spirit and then we got up and began to start the lesson. we asked him what his thoughts were about god and he answered something along the lines of "im not really sure, i think he is good but i don't really know?" haha so i then bore my testimony in japanese to him. i told him that i knew god was real. i told him i knew god was true and that he was a living god. i then bore my testimony on jesus christ and that he is gods son. it was really short but i tried to bear it with power and with the spirit and i really felt like it came acrossed well. we then had him read a scripture (which we had to find in the japanese book of mormon which was not easy, moroni 10:3-5) and he read that for us in japanese. i could not understand what he was saying. but i knew the spirit was there and that was very special. we then asked if he knew how to pray and we went through the motions of prayer and taught him how to pray. then after we had showed him, we all kneeled and asked him if he would say the prayer. he agreed and said a wonderful sounding prayer. i could pick up on certain words and phrases, ten no otosama, (heavenly father) and kansha shite imas (are grateful for) but i really couldn't understand what he was saying. it was a great way to end the lesson though and i feel like it went extremely well.
so now it is our p day and so far it has been great! i wrote one letter that i had been working on since i got here that should be coming in the mail if not today soon! i hope that you arent too upset that i didn't get anything out any sooner but it really is true when they say you have NO TIME here in the MTC. i am excited that we get to go to the temple today! i think about going and i think about you mom! going with you that last time in draper, it is such a special memory to me and i want to thank you for making me go! it was such a blessing! it is a little stressfull in here, so it will be nice to go to a session and just relax and enjoy the spirit in there. it is crazy because when you have down time like personal study and different things, you can never rest. you are always trying to improve, either in your knowledge of the gospel, or in your native language and they are definitely long days of work! but the days do seem to kinda blur together and the thought of me already being here 3 days is a little weird. they have definitely been long days, but good long days and when i lay down at night i am exhausted! thank you so much for shipping my dopp kit! i can not believe i left it..i got it out to shave the morning i left and i completely forgot it so the first two days i was in survival mode! but today was so nice to be able to brush my teeth, shave and all that fun stuff haha! it was kind of nice because it really came as a relief!
well i love you guys so much and know that i miss you! but also know that i know this is where i am supposed to be. it is VERY hard. but i am loving every second of it because even though i think that it is going to be forever long now, in the long run this time is so short and i want to make the best of it and know that i worked my hardest every day. the MTC is definitely very routine...but it is good and i know that it is amazing and very capable of training missionaries to the best of their abilities, and trains them the best it can for the short amount of time we are in here. 8 weeks seems like forever, but when that time comes and i am getting on an airplane it is going to be amazing to have all the knowledge i receive here and be able to use that as much as i can and even continue to grow. i know this is the true gospel, if i didn't i would not be here. if this church was not true NONE of these young men would be sacrafising two entire years of their life. that in and of itself is a testimony. i love you guys so much. seriously you amaze me we have an incredible family. pray for me, because you all are in my prayers!
with all the love in my heart,
Logan
(Cottle choro)
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