The Adventures of Sister Fishburn: ONE MONTH!!

OH GOODNESS.

OH MY.

OH ME OH MY.

One month, fam. I have been in the MTC for exactly 4 weeks. Whaaaaaaat? Crazy. This time next month I'll be preparing to leave for Japan!!!! AHHHHHH.

First off, shout out to Mama and Papa Fish for the rockin' hump week package. I love all of it.

My brain. I think it's going to explode any minute. It always hurts from thinking so hard all the darn time. Literally. And I don't use that word lightly. Trying to translate and think in Nihongo all the time is exhausting. We did an "Eigo Fast" on Thursday which meant that we weren't allowed to use any English and oh boy. We about died. Half way through the day half of the chourou tachi were laying dead on the floor. It was rough. But it seriously helped so much! Macrae, use your Spanish in the MTC as much as you can!!!!

We learned the "soft" baptism commitment in Nihongo and JSL so basically I'm pretty cool now *hair flip*. (Not really, I forget darn particles in it all the time. Particles are the worst thing to ever happen.)

OH. OH MY. BEST THING EVER. Okay, not really but it made me so happy. We were at dinner and it wasn't one of my better days so I was a little bit upset and as I stand up to leave this cute sister from Taiwan was like "Sister! You're beautiful!" and I pretty much had to hold back tears. She was so cute! So then I asked her if she spoke Mandarin or Cantonese (because I like knowing these things) and she said Mandarin and I was like "oh, cool! My best friends family is from Hong Kong and speaks Cantonese so I was just wondering" AND THEN this cute sister next to her got so excited and was like "I'M FROM HONG KONG!!!!" So that's the story of how I made two new friends this week. Shout out to Liza Lin for her cool background helping me get friends *peace sign emoji*.

Fun fact: there were 2,350 missionaries in the MTC (idk how many there are now) and last night at the devotional, the entire gym was filled and then the overflow was filled and now we're getting more missionaries today so basically I picked the busiest time I possible could have to be in the MTC. But oh well. It's great seeing so many of them!

OKAY. Now time for the actually cool story. So. Sunday Devotionals are lowkey the best thing ever. So we all go in and then we're told that instead of having a speaker we were just going to watch the "Character of Christ" video from Elder Bednar. So we watch it and then when it got over we were all just thinking we were allowed to continue on with our Sunday's like we normally do. Oh, no. We were wrong. IN WALKED ELDER BEDNAR HIMSELF. Yes, you read that right. He decided to come surprise us and answer any questions we had about the "Character of Christ" talk he had given because they show it every Sunday night as one of the movies we can watch. HOW COOL!? 'Twas great. Macrae, watch that talk your first Sunday. I promise you won't regret it.

One month has already come and gone. I can't get over that. I only have 17 left!!!! That seriously blows my mind.

I think my Dear Elder is broken. Mom and dad keep telling me they sent me a letter through it but I never get them.. So maybe just stick with email haha. I'm okay being the only one knowing that I got mail.

You know how people always say that there are angels among us to help us and all that jazz? It's true. I have two angels here at the MTC that I can see. The first is Gappmayer Shimai. She is hands down the greatest person. Ever. We do "coaching" with our teachers sometimes where they can talk to us one on one and every time she asks who wants coaching I have to force myself not to raise my hand and to give other people a chance. She's just fantastic. The second angel is Smith Shimai. She's Shawn's neighbor and I'm pretty sure she was sent straight from heaven. I'm pretty sure if it weren't for her I would go insane and constantly live in the fetal position. We're SUPER similar so we're comfortable sharing and opening up with each. We're also not really sure how we're going to survive once she's in Nagoya and I'm in Tokyo. Good thing we'll live so close to each other when we get back!

Scriptures!!! Mosiah 16:9 and Mosiah 14. That's some good stuff.

Sorry, my emails always end up being forever long.. My bad.. But I love you all SO DARN much. Really, truly. I hope you have a lovely day. I hope you can feel my love!!

I love being a missionary!! The church is true, y'all. I promise you.

Ai shite imasu!!!

--Fishburn Shimai