Konnichiwa ai suru Mamasama!!!
Arigatou for the DearElder letter! I only had to look up like 10 of the words in it, so I guess that's good. Demo, romaji ga dai suki desu! Hiragana wa tokidoki muzukashi desu. (Romaji [using our alphabet to spell out words] is my favorite; hiragana [Japanese phonetic symbols] can be sometimes difficult.) I can read hiragana but it takes me a while to read each symbol individually then separate the words. So romaji is subarashii (wonderful) for now ;)
It definitely feels like a firehose--but I feel like the Lord has increased the diameter of my esophagus and I am able to swallow almost all of it. It's alot of fun, I love our district and senseitachi.
But yeah I am so good!! I love it here, I feel the spirit so much. Nihongo is coming along well, I am learning quickly and I feel so good until they have us attempt to teach an "investigator" who only speaks Nihongo. Our investigator right now is Kuwahara-san, she is literally the perfect, ideal investigator but we are terrible teachers so she is progressing slowly haha. I am getting good at using the few words I know to figure out more words--we were teaching Kuwahara-san about the tree of life in Lehi's vision, and I didn't know the word for fruit, so I asked her, "ki no tabemono wa nan desu ka?" (What is food of tree?) And she was like "kudamono?" So I assumed that meant fruit. I hope it does, because we taught the whole rest of the lesson about how that "kudamono" represents God love for us.
Funny story--our DL taught Kuwahara-san that '"Kamisama no unko ni yotte," we can be cleansed from our sins.' I wish could've seen her face at that moment! He didn't even realize until later that day when senseitachi taught us the word Onko. (I'll just let you each look up that word...suffice it to say it would be shocking to hear it. :))
I am trying to teach without just reading from pre-translated sentences, but usually that ends up with a lot of awkward silence. It's especially hard because sometimes she will ask questions that are hard to answer even in Eigo. Like "what do you mean when you say Christ took our sins upon himself?" and "I already have a dad, what do you mean when you say 'Kamisama wa watashitachi no Ten no Otousama desu' ?" (God is our Father in Heaven) So teaching is rough. But it's getting better, I am learning so much more every day.
So my doryo is Nathan Choro--he is a 6'4" half-New Zealander, except he acts nothing like a 6'4" New Zealander. He is huge and brown and so good at basketball but he loves anime. He basically has the personality of a shrimpy white boy that was homeschooled his whole life (because he actually was homeschooled his whole life), I love it. His mannerisms are totally not what you would expect from someone who looks like him!! It's so funny.
So I told you about that super bunk-bed we made with our extra bunk bed...Bro Turpin put the kabosh on that literally our second night here. Bummer.
Nathan Choro is a vocabulary master! He knows so many words in Nihongo, but he hasn't studied very much Bunpo so he's not a ton of help during the lessons...it's all good though. I think he gets a little discouraged with Nihongo so I am trying my best to help him as much as possible.
The other 2 chorotachi in our district are Titel choro and Akagi choro. Akagi choro's Dad is Nihonjin, but he said he never learned any Japanese at all growing up, and he's worried the Nihonjin in Tokyo will look down on him because he looks Nihonjin but won't be totally fluent in nihongo and will have an American accent. He and Titel choro are both going to Tokyo. Actually, everyone in my district is going to Tokyo except me and Nathan Choro. Our teacher Stratford kyoudai served in Fukuoka, so he thought it was super cool that you and Dad went there too.
We started a barbershop quartet with the 4 chorotachi in our district. Haha we are getting pretty good at "Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy," it's way fun. We actually don't sound bad, and it's way fun to sing. We pretty much sing everywhere we go. The other choro tachi actually love it when I sing--especially in a super high falsetto. Total opposite of my roomies at BYU haha. One of the shimai in our zone actually told me I have the voice of a Disney Prince! Haha but I referred her to page 33 of the white handbook, don't worry.
I have been playing volleyball a lot. Usually everyone isn't super good but one time I played with a bunch of Brazilian chorotachi--most intense game EVER. They hit it so flipping hard. Excuse my potty mouth. And they play with no serving or rotating, so you just throw the ball back in the game when it goes out. I got a super good workout because the rally is continuous the whole time, and we had a super good setter that would have me hit it so much. I also may have broken my pinkie blocking this INSANE brazil-jin choro who hit the ball so hard. Like Ben Patch hard. But I still blocked him a couple times, I was pretty proud of myself.
Hope everything goes well with girls' camp!! You'll have to let me know how it is. I'm sure whatever you plan the girls will love.
Glad the Boise temple found my recommend! Pres. Read told me destroy it if I ever found my old one, so I delegate the responsibility of destruction to you.
We haven't been to the temple yet. We did a temple walk on Sunday, but obviously didn't get to go inside. We will go this afternoon though! I've actually never done endowments in the Provo temple, so I'm excited. After a few weeks, we might get headphones for a Japanese translation and see if we can understand it.
Sunday was fast sunday, and our branch is small enough that almost every single person got to bear their testimony. I shared my feelings about a devo we heard that morning (quality of sacrifice is more important than quantity) and shared a scripture from Phillipians 4...verse 13 maybe? It says I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me. Powerful scripture, you should look it up and read about all the context and stuff, it will make it more meaningful. I think it applies to a mission perfectly.
Last night, we got to have a Devo with Elder Bednar!! It was all about how the Lord loves us individually--even though the atonement is infinite and applies to everyone, it is also so individualized. Elder Bednar wrote a song about that idea and we (the MTC choir) got to be the first ones to ever sing it! It is supposed to be in the New Era next month, you'll have to keep an eye out for it.
So on Friday we will get our iPads--which means I will have as much time as I need to email. Today, I only have an hour to read all of them and respond, but with an iPad we can read them whenever we have free time and draft responses, but we just can't send them out until P-day (Wednesday). So next week should be a more detailed email, sorry this one is so short!
I love it here, but I still miss and love you! I pray for you and the rest of our kazoku every day, many times!
Love,
Elder Paskett
P.S. Tell everyone to tell Maddy happy birthday!!! I sent her a card on Monday, hopefully you guys got it in time!
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