Saturday, March 10, 2012

3-10-2012 Email: The Beginning of the End

I only have two days from this moment left in the MTC. 24 hours. Two nights of (pretending to) sleep. Six meals. Two suitcases to pack. Not that I'm counting down or anything.

I'm so excited! These last few days have been great for getting me even more pumped up to go than before.

Our last day of normal classes with our teachers was Thursday, and it was actually pretty sad to see them leave because since we spent so much time together it felt like the teachers were part of our little MTC family (a couple of people may have cried, and since I'm a bad person I may have laughed at them a little inside. But it was totally sad to say goodbye).  It was exciting to hear some of their stories from the mission and look at pictures, especially of the real Iwane San and Saito San, who we have been teaching (see older blog posts). It's fun because since both of our teachers served in Sapporo, it's totally possible that we could meet the people they taught too. It's crazy and awesome to think that we'll be doing the same things in the same place in just a couple of days....

Yesterday we had our big prep day for leaving the MTC, and it was pretty fun. They jam packed all sorts of good, relevant information into like 12 hours of class. They had some fun interactive stuff including playing with iPads a little bit, which is always a win. We learned about things like the importance of setting goals, working with members, having faith and how to find people. Good stuff. We've actually talked a lot in the past couple of days about setting goals, and the power of expectations -- how we shouldn't let what other people say limit us. Brother Mills, who used to be a Mission President in Japan and is now in charge of all of the international MTCs, had an amazing chat with us about this. He talked about the four minute mile, and how it was widely accepted that no one could ever run faster than that. But then once it was broken, the expectations changed and a really short time after that it was broken again. A lot of times you change how you work based on what your goal is, or what you think can happen. On our mission we talked about how instead of focusing on what others have said or what we think, we should try to find out what is expedient in God, because if it's expedient for God he can make whatever needs to happen happen for it to be accomplished if we have faith.

Sorry this email is so short. My brain is a little all over the place. But I think there might be something exciting happening in the next few days that will make my next email a lot more exciting... It's so crazy that we'll be in Japan so soon! I alternate between being super exciting and a little nervous about being somewhere with real people who speak Japanese all of the time, but mostly I'm just super super excited to actually go there and help real people and apply what I've learned. It'll be hard, but I already know it will be the most amazing thing ever.

Nihon ni Ikimasu!
(Going to Japan!)

1 comment:

  1. Hi Natalie Shimai, I am Lexy's mom and I served a mission in Japan so she told me about your blog and said I might want to follow you on your mission. How exciting for you! You will love Japan and the Japanese people. I still have dreams that I am back there and I'm so excited to go around and see everyone and everything I miss. I hope you don't mind if I follow you, and you are going to have such am awesome experience!

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