The Brooklyn Bridge

Happy Thanksgiving lovely people! I hope you have a magical day and a lovely holiday season. I am certainly grateful for the MTC. Our teachers are experienced and loving and dedicated to our success. There are people here to feed us every single day with edible and satisfying food. The huge media team makes sure all the enlightening meetings run smoothly and with really awesome touches. Our Branch Presidencies and their wives make sure we are spiritually cared for and loved, our companions are patient and willing to grow with us. It has been an honor to learn here. I loved my nine weeks and yes... you make it out! Monday morning I board the airplane to Nagoya, Japan! Hooray! This morning Elder David A. Bednar came and gave us a exciting devotionals. At the beginning of his talk, he had all these people pass out a large quantity of cell phones. After we shook our heads a little and answered each other's "Wait, what's a cell phone?" inquiries, Elder Bednar asked us...

What! It's P-Day already? The last two weeks are flying by! We only have ten days to be para para AAAAAAAHHH. Ha ha It's okay. We have been receiving e-mails from our senpai who have been in Nihon for two weeks. It made us realize we actually get to go and it's going to be fantastic! Barbosa Shimai has alas departed from us. She is in fabulous and beautiful Japan being a very well-trained missionary. We took her to the travel office at 3:35 Tuesday morning and waved to her riding away on the bus after a tearful goodbye. I thought I wouldn't see the sky at 3:00 AM again until after my mission but PSA and reminder: IT IS SENSATIONAL. One of my favorite things. Wilkinson Shimai and I love each other sooo much. Demo....it has certainly been harder to get used to being only a companionship. There is too much room to breathe in our room and our drawers our much too organized with only our belongings in them. Not to mention our lessons and study sessions sans her testimony. So...

There's an attemptively artistic photo for you. This week new kohai came in! Our first group of sisters as STLs! Whoo. They seem pretty cool and hopefully they will adjust well and love it here. I hope we can be good STLs. We are stiiiillll waiting for Barabosa Shimai's visa. Oh man. She goes to the Travel Office every day to ask about it. They don't have any answers for us...seems odd. I am honestly going to be really sad when she leaves our companionship. She has brought so much light and learning to my life. But I know Japan needs her and she wants to be there so so much!  Our district iswonderful of course. I admire their courage and testimonies and I am blessed to have them shared with me. Missions are truly incredible! Also necessary, a blessing and a miracle. All the senior missionaries here are so sweet too.  This week we had more wonderful devotionals and a really uplifting district lesson. The Atonement is REAL and an expression of love from Jesus Christ to all Hi...

Greetings Readers! This week was extremely dramatic, so I'd sit down for this one. Extremely dramatic means something slightly out of the ordinary occurred.  Because MTC is Groundhog Day. Awesome day, but Groundhog Day. So Friday was Halloween! My favorite! We didn't do a ton, as missionary work requires all the focus, which is good! But Wilkinson Shimai and I dressed up as each other. So clever, right? The elders in the older district dressed up with decorated swim goggles as masks and came around "trick or treating," which was giving all of us a pack of cereal they had stockpiled from sack lunches.We ate way much candy from everyone's family all day. Fun times! Cavities for life! So that district left for Tokyo and Sendai on Monday, so sad but we are so excited for them to finally get to Japan! However, when they checked in at the travel office at 3:30 a.m.,They did not have Barbosa Shimai's visa yet, so she had to stay. It was so shocking and pretty sad. Sh...