Friday, March 4, 2016

MTC Email #6

<Dad Note: Two pictures this week.  One of some elders in his district doing "companionship study" and the other of his district at the temple.>

Well, this week was interesting. We learned a lot of interesting things this week. I think my personal favorite was "okaasan wa <x> desuyo!" which is how you do a your mom joke in Japanese. Just replace <x> with the item in question. Super fun to use. Another useful phrase is hanasuna, which roughly translates as shut up. Now, would a missionary use either phrase? Probably not, but it was still fun to learn. The your mom joke was reverse engineered from when one of the teachers made one, so it wasn't intentionally taught, and hanasuna is just 'to talk', but in negative command form, so the more accurate translation is 'I command you to not talk'. :P

Matt Blanding, one of my friends from Washington, came to the MTC on Wednesday, as well as Nathaniel Nemeth. I've only found Matt so far, but it was still fun. Sadly, he did not bring a Rubix cube like I thought he would, so he couldn't solve one for me again. He is really good at solving those, with his best time under 20 seconds, hence why I wanted to see him solve it again. It's awesome how fast he is at that. I can't solve those things period.  He was happy, excited, and "High on life" (1997(c)Matt Blanding). He seems to be taking it well. He thinks that the MTC is really fun, and his companion seems like a great guy.

Update on the hidden alarm clock: Still haven't found the hiding spot it's in, but on the bright side, it hasn't gone off in awhile. My assumption is that (Hallelujah) its batteries have died. Can't say I feel particularly bad about that. Hopefully we'll find it before we leave the MTC, since I really want to know where it is hidden.

Turns out, I did tear a little bit of cartilage in my ribs. I'd been pretty sure, but I had it checked out just to make sure I didn't mis-diagnose it. That, and I sure wasn't going to trust the Internet with diagnosing it. Pretty sure WebMD would say "Your ribs hurt? Probably cancer" since that is what it diagnoses everything with. XD "Your nose is running? Must be cancer", "You sneezed? Most likely cancer", "You got a bad grade? It's cancer." There's a reason we haven't abandoned human doctors in favor of the Internet. XD

Next week, we are getting some junior missionaries! It'll be so cool! Any ideas on how to prank them? While I am a big fun of the saran wrap over the doorway trick, it won't work on a large group.

The 'Still Badly Named With No Nice Acronym Spiritual Thought Email Piece', or SBNWNNASEP for short(I was lazy and forgot to come up with a good name for it):

Read from Jacob to Alma 38 this week and came across this gem in Alma 11:

21 And this Zeezrom began to question Amulek, saying: Will ye answer me a few questions which I shall ask you? Now Zeezrom was a man who was expert in the devices of the devil, that he might destroy that which was good; therefore, he said unto Amulek: Will ye answer the questions which I shall put unto you?

22 And Amulek said unto him: Yea, if it be according to the Spirit of the Lord, which is in me; for I shall say nothing which is contrary to the Spirit of the Lord. And Zeezrom said unto him: Behold, here are six onties of silver, and all these will I give thee if thou wilt deny the existence of a Supreme Being.

23 Now Amulek said: O thou child of hell, why tempt ye me? Knowest thou that the righteous yieldeth to no such temptations?

So, to give a little background, Alma and Amulek are out being missionaries, and those they are trying to teach are not exactly liking that these two missionaries are crying repentance. So, one of them, Zeezrom, a lawyer by trade, attempts to twist their words around and prove them false. He fails though, and resorts to trying to bribe Alma and Amulek with six onties. Now, I did some math to figure out how much that was. It has all the different currencies in the verses before for that reason. 1 onti is 6 senums, and 6 senums are 12 shiblons, and 12 shiblons are 24 leahs. A leah is a quarter of a bushel of grain, so 1 onti is a fair amount. And Amulek was offered six of these to just say a couple of sentences! Despite this though, he rebukes Zeezrom, saying "O thou child of hell, why tempt ye me? Knowest thou that the righteous yieldeth to no such temptations?" He is a great example of being true at all times. He even converts Zeezrom later!

Another verse I read and liked was Alma 17:24. It reads:

24 And it came to pass that king Lamoni was much pleased with Ammon, and caused that his bands should be loosed; and he would that Ammon should take one of his daughters to wife.

This is right after he introduces himself by saying "Yea, I desire to dwell among this people for a time; yea, and perhaps until the day I die."

Not only was his first impression good enough to keep the king from killing him, but the king had him freed and offered him marriage to one of his daughters! Shows the power of a good first impression, right? I think my favorite part though is that Ammon turned that offer down. I guess he knew the mission rules, right? Page 33 of the White Bible! XD

So yeah, that's it for now. If anyone wants more details or for me to add something next time, let me know!

<DAD Note: Below are interesting paragraphs from other emails yesterday>

The branch president hangs out with us a lot, so I just get to talk to him a lot.  He often even goes back to the dorms with us and talks while we get ready for bed. He's just super awesome like that. Our zone right now only consists of our district too, so it makes it possible for him to hang our with us a lot.  I really love his counsellors too. Brother Weaver is really nice, although he's tends to be too busy to hang out except for Sunday's, and Brother Turpin is awesome. He speaks Japanese, since he went to Japan on a mission, and hangs out with us a lot too. He has some sweet insights he shares. Like me, he has an engineer's mind, so he combines science and doctrine in some really awesome ways. For instance, you know how the scriptures say that God's path is 'one eternal round'? The wavelength of energy is like a spiral. It's not just a sine wave like you see in 2D representations, it is a 3D spiral. I.E., it's one eternal round, spiraling onward through space. Kinda cool, right?

Oh, and have you read 'The Sanctified Missionary'? It's a talk, but I don't remember who gave it. My district read it, translated the phrase 'Put it on the altar'(It was talking about worldly things) into Japanese, and then has been yelling it all week anytime anyone mentions anything not gospel related or talks to someone of the opposite sex. :P

We are getting to be the senpai missionaries to some new ones arriving this week. Should be interesting. Sadly, that means I'm going to have to speak in Sacrament meeting soon too, since I haven't yet and there's only a few weeks left. Well, It could be worse. XD

The nihonjin(Japanese) missionaries are all awesome. Super fun to talk with. As far as my skills in Japanese go, the only thing I'm really lacking is the senkyoshi no tango, or the missionary's vocabulary. My street Japanese is more than sufficient to buy things, chat with people, and otherwise do various stuffs.

I did do hosting once, although the second time I was sick. That was the second and third week. I was hoping we might get assigned hosting this week, but to no avail. I wanted to see if I could host Matt and Nathaniel. Still, I have chatted with Matt some, which was fun. Still looking for Nathaniel though.
----------------------------------------------------
Elder Harper
"Failure is simply the fuel for success"

<==[= Sent from my iPad that I wish was a Microsoft Surface =]==>

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