20 July 2010

Week 3

Mission Log

Hello. Things are going pretty well here. My companion is from Utah. He's totally a Utah type of person. I don't think he's ever left Utah for more than like two days. He basically has to live in Utah for his whole life, because I don't think he could handle it anywhere else. He's OK though. There are no other Elders from Washington in my district, but in the other district; going to Japan at the same time, there is one Sister from Washington. Also, one of my teachers was from Spokane.

It's just the same thing here every day. I do the exact same things. I go to the exact same buildings on the small campus that I can't leave. And, I see the exact same people. I literally might go insane from this. There is a very high possibility. I like it here a lot, but doing the exact same thing every day is making me crazy.

We just had a shoe shining party. It was pretty sweet. We actually shine shoes for fun here. My shoes have never been this shiny before. I didn't know it was possible for shoes to be this shiny. It's just bizarre.

It's pretty great here. Everyone around is really nice and awesome and most of them are somewhat fun. We're always doing Japanese stuff or gospel stuff. That's pretty fun. It's nice to not have to worry about school or work or anything like that. You can just focus on being a missionary. Also, we have a devotional every Tuesday and a fireside every Sunday. It's really sweet. The devotional is always a general authority and the fireside is always somebody who's super awesome, but not a general authority. Last Sunday the director of the MTC spoke at the fireside. He's also my teacher's father. He was so good. At today's devotional we think that there's going to be an apostle. They don't tell us who is speaking ahead of time. The last two devotionals were both by Emeritus Seventies, and we hear that they like to have an apostle speak about every three weeks so that even the English speaking missionaries who are only here for three weeks will get to hear from an apostle at least once. I'm pretty excited for it.

If it weren't for pizza day and ice cream day, I would seriously go insane and start breaking stuff. I even wear the same thing every day. Everyone does.

The language is still coming along pretty well. I think I'm about fluent now. I'm ready to get out of here and go to Japan. It's a good thing that I only have nine more weeks here. I don't know if I'm going to survive this. I'm kidding. I'll be fine. It's great here, even though it's driving me insane. If that doesn't make any sense, it means that I've already lost it.

All the days are kind of blurred together now. Every day seems to take a week to get through, but every week feels like it was just a day. It's strange, but it a perfect description of what life is like here. It's also very busy here all the time. Well, if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing it is.

I'm going to go do more language study and gospel study now, just like I do all day every day.

Talk to you next week,

-Elder Swift