Because I Have Been Given Much

I heard my first Japanese pun the other day.  We were learning the numbers and how to share a scripture and our teacher was writing numbers on the board to test us on how we are supposed to say it in Japanese.  Then he wrote 55 on the board and spoke English for one of the first times only.  "What is the speed limit in Jerusalem?  Go ju go!".  Because go ju go is Japanese for 55!  I thought it was hilarious and nearly died laughing.  Good old Clark Kyodai (Brother Clark).

Overall, life is going pretty good.  We have gym time every morning at 6:40 to 7:30 and then breakfast and we study in our classroom.  Then we go and teach our investigator which is followed by class instruction right after lunch.  After class we have more personal and companion study and then have personal time in our residence halls and then quiet time at 10:15 before we go to bed at 10:30.  It is different Sunday and Tuesday nights with devotionals (which is probably my favorite part) or P-day.  Personal time is also a highlight of the day in which I hang out with the elders in the zone.  We are pretty resourceful and we putted with a golf ball using a cane into a Pringles can!  Only one other elder got it in but I was second close, hitting the side of it.

I've seen a couple of familiar faces here at the MTC.  I saw my old co-worker from the MTC-West, Elder Tonni who just left for the Eugene Oregon Mission.  I see Sister Hannah Gibson from the stake most meal times and have said hi.  I also saw two people from my YSA ward in Provo.  I saw Brian Longhurst and my old home teacher Sam Christensen who is my Asian buddy going to Cambodia.

As far as the language goes, it is pretty tough.  Other languages have regular alphabets that you can pretty easily read as long as you learn the pronunciation, but Japanese has four different writing symbols.  Romanji which is what most of our textbooks are in is converted from Japanese symbols to the latin alphabet.  Most of the words in the dictionary or scriptures, and even hymns, are in a mixture of hiragana, katagana, and kanji which are all with symbols.  So it sometime feels like I am having to learn twice as much.  Ricks Choro, my companion, took three years of Japanese in high school so he knows a lot more and he helps me whenever I have a question.

Being bad in the language isn't the end of the world though.  The Tuesday devotional this week Elder Schwitzer of the Seventy said that "People don't care if you can conjugate every verb, people care that you care."  That really has encouraged me to not just learn the language of Japanese but also the language of the spirit.  This first week in the MTC I have been able to feel the spirit and to feel so much of God's love for me and those that surround me.  Before the devotional began this week, we sang an opening hymn entitled "Because I Have Been Given Much".  It starts out by saying "Because I have been given much I too must give".  This week we had been talking a lot about our purpose as a missionary and I think this song helped me find it.  I have been lucky enough to have been born in the true church and have lived in a family who has lived it righteously all my life.  I can never repay my debt to God or my family for giving me so many blessings in my life.  What I can do is spread the gospel to the people of Nihon (Japan).

Because I have been given the gospel, I too must spread the gospel.  I want to teach the people of Japan that there is a God in heaven who is our Father and that he loves us and wants us to succeed.  I want them to know that their Father in Heaven loves them so much that he has set a plan for us to come back to him and that our loving brother, Jesus Christ, came down to this Earth and died for us to be able to repent of our sins and become clean again.  The Lord has brought the gospel back to this Earth through the prophet Joseph Smith and in the teachings of the Book of Mormon.  We have a living prophet today that speaks for God and whom will lead us and guide us in these last days.  I can't wait to serve the people of Japan and am trying to do everything I can so that I can be ready to bring this life saving message to them.  I love the MTC and am ever so grateful that I choose to come on a mission.

 Love, 

 Elder Shawn Hall 

 shawn.hall@myldsmail.net