Hi minasan,
Hope you're having fun in Sado and eating lots of gohan and nori and really yummy Japanese food. I'm definitely excited for all the delicious stuff I get to eat in a few weeks. Two weeks left! Not that I'm counting or anything. Travel plans come on Thursday.
Today 6 Japanese missionaries flew in--one sister, 5 elders. The sister is staying with us so we're pretty excited about that. It will be good practice for our Nihongo. Speaking of practicing Nihongo, I gave my first official talk in Nihongo in sacrament meeting on Sunday. I forget if I already mentioned this, but every missionary writes a talk every Sunday with the anticipation of being called up to speak on the spot. I've managed to fly under the radar until now so I got up there and gave my little bit on "Enduring to the End". All the new missionaries were sitting right in front of the podium, and I'm pretty sure their eyes were going to bug out of their head. Not because my Japanese is so impeccable or anything, but because I think I was speaking so incredibly fast I'm not even sure what came out of my mouth. Afterwards I got a lot of "That was so beautiful, even though I have no idea what you said ... " So I have things to work on from a public speaking standpoint. Ha.
Our district always makes Japanese study a good time. The latest form of entertainment is translating songs into Japanese while we clean. Like "P.Y.T." M.J., RIP.
Today was a little crazy since I had a minor incident. We were playing a game of district volleyball a few days ago and I sort of miscalculated and ended up with one big fat purple right hand. I should have sacrificed my face or my foot before my hand, or just have ducked all together. #iguessimjusttoovain I was proud of myself for not crying in front of the elders but let's just say that my hand is pretty much useless. But pleeeeease don't worry, Okasan, because I went to the radiologist this morning and got it X-rayed, and I just tore a few ligaments in it. No breaks or fractures or anything, so they just put me on some anti-inflammatories and it should be completely healed in a couple of months. They gave me this splint thing so I look really lame but I'm just grateful my piano career isn't over or anything, haha. But this time, I really am taking a break from any sport that requires a team. My district pretty much just sends me to the track when we play anything now. Probably safer for everyone that way. On the bright side, I got to walk down the street to the health clinic and they had a real live TV with Fox News on it. And I met a radiologist named Skip.
This week my goal for teaching lessons was to not talk so much because I have a bad habit of monopolizing. Keeping this in mind, we walked into this lesson the other day and spent literally half the lesson talking about Alaskan king salmon. (Me trying to translate king salmon into Japanese = really good joke for our investigator). But afterwards, I decided to just take a chill pill and be happy that we have the ability to talk about salmon for that long in a foreign language. I'm learning not be uptight, I think. Maybe our investigator just needed someone to be his friend and talk about fish with him, I don't know. Besides, it was a really good segue into how Jesus was a fisherman. Plus we got to bear our testimonies. Good times.
This week I listened to the best talk by Elder Bednar entitled "Recognizing the Spirit." He says the most frequent question he gets is "how do I know if it's the Spirit or me just making it up?" He said to "quit worrying about it." The majority of the spiritual impressions that you will receive will come in the form of you being a good girl or boy and allowing the Lord to make you an instrument in His hands. If you are a good kid, then every good thing comes from God. Don't just sit around waiting from some dramatic message from heaven. Just press forward, and He will guide your steps. Elder Bednar told a couple of stories where he did things that he couldn't explain why he did at the time, but in retrospect he has every confidence that it was absolutely a prompting from the Spirit. I guess I really needed this talk because sometimes I worried if going on a mission was "the absolute best decision" that I could have made at that point in my life, but I decided that it was pointless to just wait for a lightning bolt to hit me. I figured if I wasn't supposed to go, I would break my leg or something. Just do what you feel like is aligned with the Lord's will, and it will work out. And so here I am, and I really love it. Also, I got a letter this week from one of my friends and he recommended the talk "Learning to Recognize Answers to Prayer" by Elder Scott from the 1989 General Conference. It really made me think about prayer differently and why sometimes we feel like prayers aren't answered. I highly recommend. Both talks are extremely helpful on the subject of personal revelation.
Be safe traveling back! Thanks for your letters. I got some really lovely ones this week that truly made my day. Mucho love to you all.
Love, Magi-chan
"Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short." -The Miracle of Forgiveness
Shoutout to Mr. and Mrs. Turner for having the most charming wedding announcement of the SUMMA.
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