Week 2 in the MTC

Hooray! This one came with pictures!!

Here are some of the rad dudes in my district. My companion, Elder Chab, is the guy on the left with the Captain America Shirt.

Here's the entire zone. Love them all to death. The one holding the flag is from Brazil and barely knew English when he first got here. He studied English and Japanese, but he was called to the Japan Kobe mission speaking Portuguese. Crazy Right? He's also super nice.

Some peeps from the zone that I've become friends with. They wanted to take a picture with me before leaving for Japan on Monday.

Judas! The MTC is chalk full of secret combinations. OK, maybe just one. So in my first week I attended the MTC choir practices which have been AMAZING since music is strictly prohibited around here. At one of the practices, they passed around a survey paper and told us, "It's just a quick survey about how you enjoyed your choir experience. It's optional, but we'd like to have it for statistical purposes." No big deal, right? I figured I'd be nice and fill it out, BUT they ran out of surveys by the time they got to my row. No worries, right?

Wrong! Next morning rolls around and people are checking their mail. Some people go invitations. Turns out that they used this survey to get info, and they used said info to decide who they wanted to invite to be in the MTC General Conference Choir. I didn't even get a chance! Also, for the first time at the MTC, I was completely ticked off! But, I've got spilled milk to worry about so that didn't last too long.

I lied. There's another secret. Our 'investigator' mentioned in my last letter is actually part of the MTC staff. In fact, she's our other teacher now besides the wonderful and absolutely legendary Strauss Kyodai (Brother Strauss). Her name is Waddell Shimai (Sister Waddell) and she's an awesome teacher. She's also a very good actress because she had me and Elder Chab completely fooled! Apparently it's tradition here to convince all the new guys that their mock investigator is completely real. That really messes with your nerves considering we had only been here 2 days and our 'investigator' spoke no English, whatsoever.

Other than that it's pretty much been the daily routine here. The morning workouts still leave me sore, but at least I know I"m putting in work. I'm still amazed at how fast the language is coming, yet I know that its still so little. We have a group of Elders and Sisters here who are native to Japan and only speak Japanese. It's been fun to understand a majority of what they're saying. I just can't speak the language for the life of me!

The Spirit is never ending here and I'm glad I got the district I got. These guys are absolutely hilarious and provide much needed comic relief. The days are really starting to move fast which kinda makes me sad because now it seems like there's less time to savor everything. I love it here. It may seem like a bubble, but this is a bubble I don't mind being in.

Check out Mosiah 4 whenever you've got a chance. It's still my favorite chapter.