Wednesday, July 27, 2016

July 27, 2016--Sprinting to the finish! Of the first lap...


Class aquarium (special thanks to Jenn)
私の 愛くるしい、ほほえましい、あざやか、佳、うるわしい、しゅうれい、丸っ切り 管状 (まるっきり かんじょう) おかあさま、

(My cute, charming, bright, beautiful, lovely, graceful, totally tubular mother,)

If you ran a 5K around a track, it would take a little over 12 laps. And when we leave to Nihon I will be 1/12th done with my mission, how crazy is that? So basically the first lap is over. Our branch president said that the MTC will be the hardest part of our mission, so the next 11 will be a piece of cake right?

Also, you should get the app "imi wa." Never trust google translate with hiragana haha. Osorubeshi is the closest thing to "awesome" that I could find, although the kanji works for awe or fear or dread, so I guess it's a little closer to "dreadful" connotatively. But yeah just get imi wa and what I'm trying to say will all make sense ;) 

I'm getting much better at バスケ、(basketball) so good that my feet were on fire. Literally. And it burned a hole in the side of my shoe. So it is currently taped up, and I will need new shoes sometime...I can probably buy them in Japan right? If not, would you guys be able to order new ones and bring them and have Taylor give them to me? I'm not super worried, I think they have some life left, just basketball is hard on them. But size 10 saucony's would be lovely if you guys have time in the next couple days. No biggie if it's not possible in this amount of time.
Also, this may be a stretch, but if Taylor could bring in something from Jamba Juice or Roxberry I would be eternally grateful. 

Yeah I got the package! Everything was perfect! Love the jikou shokai book. And the muffins were totally intact. That was an impressive plastic wrapping job! You must have had a lot of practice wrapping things tightly, like putting small children in straight jackets and leaving them in the garage as a random, non-specific example. But there were 4 muffins and our district has 9 so I figured it would be hard to share and I decided to eat them all. Is that selfish? I shared the other candy though haha. Thanks so much for sending it!

Also got a package from Aunt Sara & fam yesterday, that was so nice! It had some lovely treats and a lovely note. They were some chocolate/mint cookie balls that are so amazing! Our whole zone is obsessed with them. Also, Nathan Chōrō got 2 boxes of food from his family yesterday too. So we are loaded for our last weekend. We even have food left that our Senpai gave us when they left to Nihon, haha I'll have to send you a picture of the pyramid on our table.

This week, I drank the orange juice for the first time. Everyone always says never drink the orange juice, but I figured that after being here 8 weeks my stomach could take anything. Big mistake. That stuff is a natural laxative, let me tell ya. I won't get into the deets. But to all current/future missionaries: the warnings about the orange juice should be heeded.

We tried to play volleyball in the rain, but then they made us go inside because of lightning. Bummer. The rain was nice though, it gets so hot.

On Sunday we got to sing with the Nashville tribute band for the devo! For Pioneer Day. It's pretty funny because half of the missionaries didn't know what Pioneer Day was. And then the other half are from Utah. But it was so fun, it was nice just to have something different. They are very talented.



Last week one of the teachers had a talk with me and Nathan Chōrō and basically said we need to plan out our lessons better, which was really good because I think we definitely should have been spending more time planning and prepping. So we have gotten a lot better, this week has been really good. And having the language limitations makes it so that we never get too off track, because we literally don't have the vocabulary to get off topic. Haha but I feel like we've done a good job of having a plan that is suited to each individual investigator, and then sticking to that plan but still answering their questions and making them feel like we care about them individually. Teaching will probably be a little different in the field, but I think it's good practice.

We have been getting up early this week to exercise. Yesterday we did spin bikes for 30 minutes, that was super nice. Even after just a couple days I feel like I'm in so much better shape. I need to weigh myself before I leave and see if I've gained any weight. But yeah I'm feeling a little more ready to be biking everywhere, hopefully by Monday I will be back in marathon running-shape.

2 of our Shimai tachi left this week, both for Medical reasons. That leaves us with 3 of the original 6, which is kind of sad actually. Please pray for them!

Everything is going well overall, just beyond excited to see Taylor and to head out to Japan! We are leaving the MTC 6:20 a.m. on Monday, then our flight leaves SLC at 11:15. We get into Tokyo 3:15 p.m. Tuesday (Japan time) then we have a 3 hour layover and then an hour flight to Sendai. So we're supposed to arrive in Sendai around 7:40 p.m. Tuesday night, which means technically we will arrive in our mission 25 hours and 20 minutes after we leave the MTC. 

Thanks for all you do!

いつも あいしています!
Elder Paskett

Jet Lag


Color coordinating with Black Shimai

52nd Ward represent!


with Elder McCauley

with Elder Baldwin

making music



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