August 22, 2016--re: Deja vu weekend

私の 愛する、かんぜん な うつくしい 母、

Glad to hear moving in went well, and that's fun that Taylor has a mission buddy there! And sounds like Brent will be in his ward then?? So fun! That is too bad about the 2:30 p.m. church though. But tell Taylor to still set an alarm for church the first week, just in case. Learned that one the hard way ;)

So this week, it has still just been blitzing the streets...the hardest thing is how insanely busy everyone is! Our investigators H and R have so much potential but they are crazy busy with school and work so we haven't been able to meet at all this last week. Hopefully next week will be better with those two.

Usually we'll get contact info for at least one or two people each day, but the hard part is setting up an actual lesson. A lot of the time (again) they are just so busy, but also pretty often people aren't really interested but they're too polite to say no, so they keep coming up with excuses why they can't meet. So it can be hard to gauge whether we want to keep pursuing an appointment or drop them.

Last Monday, we visited a recent convert named T Kyoudai who just moved from Sapporo. He is 22 and was baptized about a year ago, and he moved in a month ago. We're not sure how active he is but we'll definitely be visiting him again. He is super friendly, we are thinking that he will potentially be a huge help in finding and fellow shipping new investigators. We had a lesson set up with him on Thursday but then he had to cancel last minute because of work, hopefully we will get something set up for this week.

On Tuesday, Nathan Choro and his doryo stayed in our apartment to do splits with the ZLs! That was way fun, except they had to sleep in the kitchen because that was the only place we could fit 2 more futons. And our dinner table could barely fit the 6 of us. It was a good time though, it was good to see them again.

It has been so rainy this week. Really rainy, Like Japan rainy. And we're not allowed to ride our bikes when it's raining so we have been doing lots of walking, oftentimes walking with our bikes. On Tuesday we were pretty far out and then it started raining, so we decided to eat out so that we didn't have to walk our bikes all the way back to the apartment. We went to this とんかつ (tonkatsu) place that was soooo delicious. Reminded me of having とんかつ at the McCuens. とても おいしかった。(very delicious)

We blocked out that evening to call all of the Potential Investigators that we had accumulated, and it wasn't as fruitful as we were hoping. We ended up dropping nearly all of them, but there are a few that we are still hopeful about. 

Wednesday was even more rainy--we broke out the raincoats, and it was あるくこと だけ (only walking) all day. The weird thing about the rain is that it is still hot. I'm sure you already knew this, but it doesn't cool anything down, it's really just 100% humidity plus the normal heat. So I'm not really the biggest fan of this Japan rain thing.

On Thursday we housed into a lady who seemed super interested, especially in Eikaiwa. She even had a friend that she thought would be interested, so we gave her an extra restoration pamphlet and Eikaiwa flier to give to her friend. But then she texted us the next day and said that she can't become a Christian because her grandfather is a Shinto priest, and it would be disrespectful to him. And she has work both days we do Eikaiwa so she can't come to that either. So that was a bummer, we are still trying to see if her friend has any potential.

We got ice cream from a dainty little shop down the street, it was actually maybe the best soft-serve ice cream I've ever had. We talked to this little family inside, it was a Mom and her 2 little kids. The kids didn't want to talk (I think they were scared of us), but the Mom was really friendly. Kind of the opposite of how things usually are.

This weekend was the dedication for the Sapporo temple!! We saw a broadcast for the cultural celebration on Saturday, except the broadcast was super spotty so we only saw about a third of it. What we saw was great though haha. There was a lot of dancing and I think there was a little play/skit about the history of the church in Japan. Then they all sang Happy Birthday to President Monson at the end!

On Sunday the broadcast was really spotty as well. We actually ended up seeing all 3 sessions of the dedication (because they needed us to check recommends at the door) so between the 3 I think we got the gist. Most of the talks were in English, and they would repeat each sentence in Japanese, that was fun to listen to. I would try and beat the translator in my head. He usually beat me though. And then Elder Stevenson was conducting the meeting, in Japanese, so that was a surprise. I think they had a romaji TelePrompTer or something. And the white handkerchief part was way fun in Japanese! Overall, I just felt so impressed by the faith and dedication of the members in this temple district. I think living as a member of the church in Japan must be so much harder than in America, just because of how small it is and just of the general opinion of Christianity here. I'm so excited that they have this temple now though! Even though Tokyo isn't that far, it's a lot easier (for the people in Aomori at least) to make a trip up to Hokkaido than to go down to Tokyo, so it will be much more accessible for the people in our branch.

So that's been my week! Hope you have an amazing week! Don't get too swamped with Cantus and RS and all the stuff you have going on. I'm excited to hear how everything goes though! 

Thanks for all you do!

いつも 愛しています！ (love always)

パスケット長老

Elder Paskett

August 15, 2016--日本 week 2! Adventures in あおもり

Hello my wonderful mother who is mine,

So I found out that President Smith doesn't allow us to use the iCloud photo sharing...so that's why I haven't posted anything this last week, you guys can send me pics over email but I can't view them through the iCloud thing anymore. Maybe it'll change next July, I guess we'll see.

We have still been doing almost all just finding, but we have found a lot of potentials so I think we will start teaching more and more. THis week we also did a couple mogi (mock) lessons with members, both to practice teaching and to BRT. So hopefully we will be able to get referrals from those members eventually. But yeah it feels slow to me but Hancock Choro says we are getting more contact info from people on the street than he's ever seen before, so the Lord really is helping us, I think we'll be teaching more and more from now on.

On Tuesday, 大きい きせき を 見ました！(saw a big miracle)  We were trying a new method of streeting--we divided up our area into 10 sections, then we prayed and separately chose 3 sections. Then we would compare our choices and whichever number we had in common, that was the area we went to. We got #9 on Tuesday, and we actually didn't even make it to that area but I know it was inspired because on the way there we ran into a guy named りょう きょうだい。 (Brother R)  We just started having a normal conversation with him, we asked about where he was going to college and what he was studying. We actually didn't even talk about the gospel for like 10-15 minutes, but then he asked us why we came all the way here to Aomori from America. Classic mistake--it was a straight せいれい (Holy Ghost) punch to the face from there. We talked about our purpose as missionaries and taught a little bit about God and Jesus Christ, and gave him a すくい の けいかく (plan of salvation) pass-along card. He asked about the picture of the temple on it so we explained what ordinances and covenants are, and how they've helped and blessed our lives. Then that led perfectly into the first ordinance, baptism, and we invited him to be baptized. Right there on the street. AND HE SAID YES!!!! So we asked if we could teach him more about it and our church and he said he would love to learn more. We got his contact info and he has been really busy this week but we will start teaching him as ASAP as possible!

One weird, less spiritual story from streeting this week...we stopped this guy in the street and started talking to him, and once he saw that we were gaijin he said (in his thick Nihonjin accent) "アイム ワキング デード (I'm walking dead)" then put his hands in the air like a zombie and walked away slowly. True story.

Hancock Choro and I have been going hard coming up with better ways to do finding. We have been brainstorming ideas this week, and the ZLs are in our apartment, so they decided that that would be our topic of discussion for Zone Training Meeting. Dad had a lot of good ideas too. What did you feel like were the best ways to find/connect with Nihonjin?

We just taught a few lessons this week...we taught the ふなはし かぞく (a less-active family) about gratitude, they have been coming to church more and more lately so hopefully it will continue to improve! We taught two もぎ lessons to members, one on the Restoration and another on Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy. The mogis were helpful partially because we (but really just I) need the practice teaching, but also we are trying to build relationships with the members and start to use them more in our dendo efforts. We thought that teaching them would help get them excited about sharing the gospel, so hopefully it'll work.

This week I had 2 must-have cultural experiences--Ramen (real Japanese ramen) and Mr. Donut! The ramen place was good, I could only read half of the menu but I just got the #1 regular ramen bowl. They bring it to your table and then heat it up right in front of you using a little canned flamethrower thing! So cool.

Mr. Donut was fun, they have so many different flavors. I got 3 but my favorite was this inside-out maple bar churro stick...maple on the inside, cinnamon in the outside, とても おいしかった。(Very delicious) Did they have Mr. Donut when you were here?

At Eikaiwa this week I was teaching the "advanced" group so basically we just had a conversation in English, and I helped them with pronunciation. One guy had super good English but he studied in Italy so he was a Nihonjin speaking English with an Italian accent...was not expecting that. We ended up talking mostly about the Olympics so I got all the good deets from them. I thought Michael Phelps was done, but I guess he's still getting gold medals? Isn't he getting old? It made me miss swimming a little bit. And they said Japan wasn't doing as well as America, but Japan's gymnasts and judo wrestlers are better at bringing out the beauty of their respective sports. Haha gotta have something I guess.

On Friday we had zone training meeting, which meant that I got to see all my Doki! Me and Nathan Choro sang/beat boxed a little bit of Joseph, just like old times. The ZTM was fun, I got to tract with Nathan Choro and Livermore Choro (from my Doki) for a little bit while our trainers were in a leadership meeting. I think we did a really good job of talking to everyone we saw, even though it was hard without any "experienced" missionaries.

That evening we went to Mr. Donut again--I am convinced that revelation can come through the stomach, as well as the heart and mind. We had met a woman named S earlier this week, and she said she was interested but she was pretty busy this week and we couldn't schedule any lessons. But she is apparently an employee at Mr. Donut! So we saw her there, she actually came up to us and said hi, and it wasn't very busy so we spent a while talking with her and the other employees. She wasn't able to come to church but she was really excited to see us, hopefully she'll be able to start taking lessons soon. If she can't then we might just have to try and teach her at Mr. Donut. And then if she gets baptized maybe the mission would reimburse us for all the donuts!

The spirit also guided us through our stomachs on Saturday--we went to get some ice cream at a conv. store right before Eikaiwa and we talked with the cashier for a while. His name is M, and apparently he was good friends with some previous missionaries, but they didn't put him in the area book as a PI for some reason. So we got his number and he said he likes hanging out with missionaries, so hopefully that will turn into a desire to learn the gospel. But for now at least he is open to meeting with us!

On Saturday, we did an all-out blitz inviting everyone we met to church. Literally everyone. One guy we tried to talk to just kept walking and ignored us, so I threw my bike down and caught up to him. He just kept ignoring me but we needed to give him some kind of invite...his hands were full with grocery bags so I just put a pass-along card in his front pocket. Hancock Choro thought it was so funny.

No one could come to church that we invited on the street (even people that were interested couldn't because of the Obon festival) but the Lord rewarded our efforts because H was able to come to church! We haven't seen him since we went to Nebuta together, he has been super busy and hasn't been able to meet. Then kind of out of the blue he was able to come. 

The branch president had me and the other new elder, Murai Choro, give short talks. He let us know like 5 minutes before sacrament meeting started. Except Murai Choro is nihonjin so it wasn't that big of a deal for him, haha I was freaking out a little though. I just gave a short introduction and talked about gaining a testimony and why I came on a mission. I think it went well, but I am now realizing that everyone will tell me "Nihongo Jouzu desu ne!" (Your Japanese is excellent!) either way, just because I am American and trying to speak their language.

Right after church we gave H a lesson and we were hoping to set a baptismal date because he had been taught by previous missionaries for a while, but they didn't teach him nearly as much as we thought. He said he felt like he wasn't ready for baptism yet, but he does want to keep learning more and find out for himself if it's true. We taught mostly about how God is our Heavenly Father and how we can know that through reading the Book of Mormon. And he had a lot of questions about the Seirei, (Holy Ghost) so we talked a lot about that. He thought it was pretty cool that it can dwell in us. And he also thought it was awesome that eventually, after he gets baptized, he would be able to get the authority to baptize other people!

Hai is our main kyudosha right now but we have a lot of good potentials that we met this week. We are going to try and contact most of them today if we can.

We did teach J Kyoudai again, and I understood so much more Japanese than our first lesson with him. He wasn't able to come to church yesterday but he is coming to the Sapporo temple dedication this weekend. He really likes when we visit so hopefully we will be able to keep helping him be more active!

Thanks for all you do!! Keep being a wonderful mother, hope the kids have fun starting school!!

Ai shite imasu,

パスケット長老

Elder Paskett

Beautiful art at Eikaiwa this week!

Zone Training Meeting

Indian curry spiciness scale from 1-10 (...do they have these in Indonesia?)

August 8, 2016--日本 (Nihon) week 1! Adventures in あおもり(Aomori)

Wow. So much has happened this week. I am currently eating トリオ デ ジャネイロ and ポッピング ショワ ice cream from Baskin Robbins which is actually サーティワン アイス クリーム。Basically living the dream! Let me start from the beginning...

[translations: ice cream flavors--"Trio de Janeiro" (3-flavored sherbet: kiwi, lemon and blueberry--colors of Brazilian flag) and "Popping Shower" (has pop rocks in it...); Baskin Robbins = "sa-tee-wan a-ee-su-ku-ree-mu" or "thirty-one ice cream."]

The last week at the MTC went by super fast. I gave the closing prayer at our departure devo and I felt so weird praying in English. We had "in-field orientation" one of our last days and they had us practicing meeting people on the street. The 3 nihonjin shimaitachi were in our group so I practiced with them, it was a lot of fun. It's so easy to make them laugh, I feel so funny when I hang out with them. Saying goodbye to everyone was sad, but it was all swallowed up in how excited I was to finally get to Japan!


We flew to Portland and then to Tokyo and then Sendai. Sister Williamson and I were sitting by each other for all 3 flights, it was pretty fun to get to know her better. We were trying to be #pro missionaries and planted seeds the whole trip...We talked to a guy named Michael about missionaries and missions and he talked to us about his life as a Catholic. I tried to talk to an old Nihonjin guy when we were almost in Tokyo and I couldn't understand anything he said. But he was really excited that I was trying so that was nice haha. On the flight to Sendai we met this awesome girl named りおな、(Riona) she is 10 and we are best friends now. She taught us some Japanese and we taught her some English, it was pretty fun.

Three of the biggest things I noticed right when we got to Japan...first, the humidity is crazy! I could feel it as soon as we got off the plane in Tokyo. And I have been sweaty ever since then. The only time I don't feel sweaty is when I'm in the shower. Second, there is still English everywhere. I was expecting straight Japanese everywhere but there is so much English. And the people try to practice their English on me haha. Mostly just littler kids, but as soon as they see me and realize I'm a がいじん、(gaijin--foreigner) they are like, "ヘロ！ヘロ！ナイス チュ ミーチュ！ セィーユー！" (Hello! Hello! Nice to meet you! See you!) There have been a couple times where I am trying really hard to figure out what someone is saying but I'll be totally lost...and then I'll realize that it's actually English. Or イングリシュ。Third, the bathrooms are incredible. At least the one in the Tokyo airport is. I made sure to use it while I was there, and I have decided that I am getting a bidet (bidette? Biday? You know what I'm trying to say) in my future home. Life-changing. It even had like 5 different water pressure settings. I was really curious so I turned it on after I stood up to see what it looked like. Big mistake. Holy cow. Even on the lowest pressure level, I swear the stream almost hit my face. I got my sleeve and my tie soaking wet, luckily I had my suit so I put it back on and no one had any idea that I made the classic gaijin mistake.

We arrived in Sendai and everyone was so happy to see us! I met my trainer, Elder Hancock, and the trainers for my Doki. Our first night we all slept packed into the little apartment above the mission office. It was actually pretty fun, it was good to get to know the older missionaries. In the morning we had interviews with Pres Smith, he is a really cool guy. His main focus is on exact obedience, and you can just feel how enthusiastic and passionate he is about missionary work. We had an amazing French toast breakfast that Sister Smith made for us, then we had some "training" from the APs and then they shipped us out pretty quickly after that. Nathan Choro and I and our trainers rode up to the Eki (station) together, then we split up. I miss that guy. We are in the same zone though so I should be able to see him soonish. Elder Hancock and I rode about 5-6 hours on a bus up to Aomori!! Aomori is up at the very tippy tippy top, just across the bay from the Sapporo mission. But it's still hot here haha. And our AC was broken when I got here, the apartment was roasting. We just got a new one today though!! That will be so nice!! This whole week we have just been sweaty literally all the time. It makes me excited for winter, although I'm sure I will eat those words when we are freezing to death. I'm just excited to not have to come home drenched in sweat haha.

The bus was good, I slept a little bit and had some good bonding time with Hancock Choro. He is from Sandy, he has been out a little over a year. He wants to be a heart surgeon so we are going to start a joint heart/brain surgery business when we grow up. He is half Nihonjin, his Mom is Nihonjin but grew up in Brazil speaking Portugese. So he looks a little Japanese but obviously didn't learn any growing up. He's a super cool guy, and a great trainer!

We had a long walk from the bus stop to our apartment, then the other 2 elders in our apartment prepared the most authentic Japanese meal they could make. It was some weird looking stew with noodles, it was actually really good. Then of course they had natto and they made me try it...so disgusting. I shoveled a little bit into my mouth with my chopsticks and I wanted to throw up. So I didn't finish that haha but I guess it was a good welcome to Japan. Then they had the strongest mugicha of all time. It was soooo nasty haha. They didn't put enough water in it and it was boiling hot too. But I've actually had it quite a few times this week, and when it's diluted correctly it's not bad at all. I like it better when it's cold too. That night I crashed on my futon so hard. Between the crazy long flights and getting up super early for interviews and the long bus ride and the long walk I was just drained. I slept so good, the jet lag didn't even wake me up a single time.

I thought our apartment was tiny when we first got there but I am realizing more and more that it's actually pretty big for Japan. There is one study room with 2 desks by the front door, then a storage/living room (for everyone's clothes and belongings and all the missionary materials) then a tiny toilet room (it's basically the size of a coat closet, and there's nothing in there but the toilet), then we have the laundry room (which has the sink) connected to the shower. Our kitchen has 2 burners and a sink, then on the other side we actually have a decent-sized fridge with a freezer. There is enough room between the sink and the fridge for the fridge door to open all the way and then we have about 1 cm of extra space. We have kind of a "dining room" that also has 2 desks for study time. Then there is one sleeping room with our 4 futons. It's pretty cozy, the weirdest thing is just how narrow the hallway is and how low the ceiling is. In the shower, I can almost touch the ceiling with my head if I stand on my tiptoes.

Each morning we do workouts from the "7-minute workout app" on our iPads, I was actually super sore the first couple days. It feels so good to really exercise again though. Also, I had real scrambled eggs for the first time in months! So delicious. I have some almost every morning. The MTC scrambled eggs are literally the worst. The yolks here are orange instead of yellow so that was surprising, but they taste the same.

For the 1st 12 weeks we have an extra hour of comp study, so we are still sitting down for most of the morning. But then we go out and dendo in the afternoons which is good! Except we don't have any investigators right now so it's been only finding, and so far only street finding and tracting. I'm loving the biking, there are lots of hills in Aomori so we get a pretty good workout.

Finding is so hard! Holy cow! I now know what the "kekko hand" is. Almost everyone either gives us the hand, or says they're bukkyo, (Buddhist) or sometimes people just stare straight ahead and keep walking like they don't hear us. So it's hard. But it's worth it for the ones that are interested, because every once in while we'll talk to people and you can just see in their eyes that they are genuinely interested. Usually the ones who listen are younger people, they're usually a lot more comfortable talking about God and religion than most adults. We've handed out a lot of Book of Mormons, and gotten a few phone numbers. So we'll have investigators soon, it's just been really hard this week because it's been all finding and almost no teaching.

We did teach one lesson to Jin Kyoudai, who is less active. He looooves bugs and has showed us a book that was basically a picture encyclopedia of millions of types of bugs haha. In his free time he likes to go and catch different types of bugs haha, what an awesome hobby. He hasn't been able to come to church consistently for at least 5 years because he always has work on Sundays. But we had an awesome lesson about keeping the sabbath day holy and we tried really hard to not be chastising him but to just help him see how it will help him. The problem was, like 5 years ago he asked his boss for work off on Sundays and his boss said no. So he's been scared to ask since then. But we challenged him to ask his boss for work off again so he could make it to church and he accepted! We promised that the Lord would help him and bless him as he tried his best to follow Him, even when it was hard. Then yesterday we saw him in sacrament meeting!! So awesome. We will visit him again this week, hopefully he will be able to keep making it consistently.

We got to see the Nebuta festival this week!! It's one of the biggest matsuris in Nihon, right here in Aomori this week! So lucky. One of the members got us tickets so we got to sit in the seats (instead of standing by the street) with one of our potentials, Hai. Hai is vietnamese, in Japan for college. He was taught by missionaries before but had to stop because he got too busy with school, so hopefully we can start teaching him again soon. The matsuri was awesome! The floats were so intricate, and everything was just so cool. Definitely a good intro to Japanese culture. Video and picture attached...

This week was fast Sunday so all the missionaries (the 4 elders in our apartment and the 2 sisters in our district) in the branch bore their testimonies. Pres and Sis Smith came to our branch too, so that was cool. They both bore their testimonies, it was pretty funny because half the people who got up had missionary name tags. I had prepared/translated a testimony that morning but I actually didn't read from it, except for a scripture that I shared. My testimony went so well!!! Such a relief. I said in the beginning that in Idaho we only eat potatoes, so I was really excited when I got to Japan and there was food other than potatoes! I think some of them realized it was a joke. But yeah it went so well, I felt so good. The members were actually super surprised that I just got to Japan on Tuesday, they would all come up to me and say my Nihongo was jouzu, (expert) then they would rattle off some more Japanese and I wouldn't understand any of it. Chotto (a little) ironic haha.

There were a couple of American RMs in the branch, one served in Sendai and one in Fukuoka. It was fun to get to know them, one said he might take the 4 elders out for burgers because he has been craving American food and found some place with really good burgers.

The rest of church was good, I kept falling asleep but when I was awake I could usually at least understand the topic of the discussion. I still don't really understand most of what people say but in church they were using MTC vocab so that was nice.

Anyway, it's been a busy week but I love it here! I'm learning so much every day and every night I am just sooo exhausted. It's a good exhausted though :)




I love you so much and I pray for you and the fam every day! Thanks for all you do!! :)

いつも あいしています、
パスケット長老
Elder Paskett

 

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

July 20, 2016: RE: The home stretch (of the first inning)

私の あいする、うつくし、かんぜん、おそるべし、とんでる、かげき、おどろくべき、おかあさん、

(My dear, beautiful, perfect...then some of the words don't make sense to me...surprising mother)
(??)
Yeah we are shipping out a week from Monday! I honestly feel like the most challenging part of the MTC is sitting in a classroom all day and being here for 9 weeks. I'm actually ok with the busy schedule and how much we study. Nathan Chōrō and I take period breaks to go "music-ing" so that probably helps. But yeah we get our  travel plans on Friday and then just one more p-day after this one before I am gonzo! We hear all of these 3 weekers talking about how long they've been in the MTC and how they can't wait to finally get into the field. They literally have no idea. Our district spent an entire lunch one day sharing all of the funny times we've heard people say they've been here for a long time. Nathan Chōrō and I heard it this week from 2 elders who had been here 4 days. FOUR DAYS!! In some ways it's fun to have been here this long, because we recognize all the other 9 weekers who got here with us. It's like we have a little pack of veterans and we all think we're super-experienced missionaries because we've been here longer than anyone else currently in the MTC.

Last Wednesday we had our first Skype TRC, and it was the best! I seriously loved it so much. It gave me a much-needed boost of fiery motivation. It was with Ikeda Shimai who lives in Tokyo. She said our 日本語 (Japanese) was じょうず (skillful) like 20 times, I think it's kind of a cultural courtesy to say that to がいじん (foreigners) but it was nice haha. But we understood everything she said just fine, I was a little surprised but very grateful! We shared a message about prayer and it went really well. She was friends with one of our teachers so they were talking after and she gave us some really good feedback. Teaching her was really good because it helped me to remember why we're here and why we're learning Japanese. Teaching lessons to our teachers as "investigators" is good practice, but teaching an actual Nihonjin member was different, it was so much more "real" and I really felt genuine love for Ikeda Shimai and wanted to help her feel the spirit. So I'm looking forward to that again tonight!

I've seen so many people that I know here! Melissa Brown and Sarah Bruneel both came in last week, and Jenn's cousin Sister Jacobson came in last week too. So it's been fun to see them around, I also see Sister Mortell and Hermana Hansen all the time too. Also, Dallin Kooyman (who also went to Rocky) is going to Tokyo so he is on the same floor as me. I'll keep my eyes out for Elder McCauley this week!

We taught a really good lesson to しまだ-さん about the ちえ の ことば、(Word of Wisdom) she committed to live by it, and we were going to talk about whether or not she felt a difference the next lesson. Then she totally didn't keep her commitment! Taylor しまい (しまだ-さん) は ちんぴら です。 (Sister Taylor's a hoodlum...thank you google translate) She's not making it easy on us, it's probably good though. We are getting a lot better at asking good questions and helping them to understand everything rather than just spouting off gospel doctrine.

So Haderlie しまい is now the less-active マリッサ-さん、(Marissa-san) and we have taught her 2 lessons. The first one we mostly just got to know her and talked a little bit about prayer. It went really well, but our second lesson was rough. We were teaching the plan of salvation and it was going smoothly, and then we were teaching about resurrection. She asked if her grandparents would be resurrected even though they already died and didn't believe in Christ. We told her yes, everyone will be resurrected. Then she asked if she would be able to talk to her grandparents after the resurrection. So we said yes, and she asked where there bodies would be. We said they would be resurrected, and she asked if the graves would be empty. We said yes, but she just kept asking what would be in their graves! And we kept telling her that they would be empty! Then she started busted up laughing. She finally stopped then looked up at us and started laughing again! For like 5 minutes! Haha とても こんらん しました。 (we were very confused.) After the lesson we realized (because she told us) that she actually had asked if her grandparents had already been resurrected, and if so, if she could talk to them. And we told her yes to both of those. And told her that her grandparents' graves were currently empty. Oops. いげん の たまもの は どこ です か？！(Where is the gift of tongues now?)

Another language blunder this week--we taught Hansen Kyoudai as よしだ-さん、 it was a one-time lesson because he was subbing for one of our regular teachers. All we knew was that he used to live in Singapore and he works making Ramen in Tokyo, so when we were getting to know him I asked him how long he had been making ramen. Or, that's what I tried to ask, but I actually asked him how many bowls of ramen he had made. (I used どの ぐらい when I shouldn't have) So he thought about it really hard and just said, "probably tens of thousands." Haha but we played it off like it was on purpose, so えんてんかつだつ。(adaptability)

Papenfuss Shimai from my BYU Ward is going to the Tokyo South mission so she's on the same floor as me, and she arranges tons of piano music. She asked if I would sing a song with her on the piano that she arranged, it was a medley of Danny Boy and Homeward Bound. We decided that Danny Boy wasn't really spiritual so I changed the lyrics (but we kept the music the same), mostly switching it our for the lyrics of Lead Kindly Light. We auditioned it for a musical number last week, so hopefully we will get to perform it before I leave! It sounds super cool, we'll record a video and sent it to you if we can.

I found out for myself that exact obedience brings miracles--my room has been struggling with getting to bed on time, and I feel like 2 of the elders are just complacent about the bedtime rules. So I decided I would just make sure that I'm going to bed right at 10:30 and not worry about the other Chōrō tachi. On Monday night I went to bed on time but our lights were still on, and they woke me up when they got to bed at like 11:30, so I was kind of annoyed. But the next day for lunch we had, for the first time, penne pasta with chicken and Alfredo sauce! Literally my go-to favorite staple meal of the whole last year. So that was definitely a きせき。(miracle) I had  actually written in my journal the night before that I was officially sick of the food and I felt sick from all 3 meals that day. Moral of the story--when you are exactly obedient then the Lord will give you blessings, sometimes in the form of good meals when you had lost all hope of eating real food again.

On Sunday, you will never guess who showed up!! Elder Bednar!! For the 2nd time since I've been here. We were watching a video of his "character of Christ" devo with the whole MTC (instead of the live devo) and then he and his wife just decided to show and do a Q&A session! It was super cool, I didn't get to ask him a question but I really enjoyed listening to the other questions and his answers. I really felt the love that they both have for all the missionaries. They are both such great examples of Christ-like love. Obviously a testimony can't be based off of this, but it really strengthens my testimony to see how selfless and caring the leaders of our church are.

Yes I will be praying for Taylor's families! I can't believe how close he is to coming home. I hope his last week is the best!

Sounds like camping was awesome, wish I could've tried the えびやき！ Ebi is a popular word among the chōrō tachi. Especially when we're playing volleyball, Ebi is like the substitute swear word we use hahaha. McColm Chōrō (the one who took Nihongo from uncle Matt) always says "えび は じんせい です。"(shrimp is life)

Thanks for sending the debit card, etc. and thanks for being an amazing mother!

いつも あいして います、
 パスケット長老

(Love always,) 
--
Elder Paskett