Fourth Week at the MTC

Hello,

 Well, the fourth week was pretty eventful. First of all, I was called to be the District Leader, effective Sunday, as our current District Leader, with his companion, will become our new zone leaders, as the senpai in the zone only have two more weeks.  I think it should be a fun calling and will let me serve the rest of my district and it should be a good learning experience.  Besides my calling, last week I was bestowed a Pokemon by the Pokemon master who just barely left for Nihon.  My Pokemon is Kabuto (which I looked up in the dictionary and in Japanese it means helmet) and apparently it evolves into something pretty cool but I don't know about Pokemon that much so my little brother Austin will have to look it up for me (Austin: I expect a DearElder no later than Saturday on the subject).  I told the Pokemon Master that at BYU I was majoring in Archaeology (NOT ANTHROPOLOGY BEN!!!) and then he flipped through his sticker book of Pokemon to find me the fossil Pokemon I was looking for.  So now that I have a sticker I am officially a Japanese missionary..

Another cool thing that happened this week was the MTC was hosting a new mission president's seminar where all of the soon to be mission presidents came on campus.  To train and teach them, members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles came and at our devotional, we had five of the Apostles!!!  Elder Nelson, Anderson, Ballard, were all there and Elder Bednar and Elder Christofferson spoke to us.  I sang in the choir like usual and we had been practicing Praise to the Man so some of us were hoping that President Monson would speak but the devotional was still really great.

Going into the devotional I had had a question in the back of my mind.  Earlier that day we had practiced giving a fifteen minute version of the first missionary discussion complete with the Baptismal invitation.  We were paired up with other people in our district that weren't our companions and were told to talk in English to practice the teaching side instead of practicing Japanese.  So I thought it would be pretty easy as I was of course, a missionary, and I thought I could handle it pretty well.  For some reason, I stunk it up.  It wasn't that I didn't know the discussion, but that instead I just didn't apply it to the person I was teaching at all and I felt like that if it was real life they might not want to hear another lesson.  So, I came into the devotional that Tuesday night with the question of how can I improve my teaching and be able to connect with people.  Like always, when we have a question and we take it to the Lord, I got my answer.  Elder Christofferson said in his talk that "greatness comes as you lose yourself" and to "ask for charity" from God and he will give it to you.  I think lately I have been focusing too much on me and not focusing enough on others.

Jesus once said that "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it."  It is the great irony that if we focus on making others stronger, we ourselves will be made stronger in Christ.  I know that if we stop caring so much about what we think and how we feel and we turn outward, that Christ will in effect make us better people and we will happier now than we were before.  By having more charity, I can make my teaching strong enough to have the Spirit testify of the truth of our message and that God will bless my Japanese for it too.

 Shawn