We've already started packing, isn't that crazy??! I'm so freaking excited! Last thursday (after an AWESOME TRC with a honto Japanese lady that was really great and there was a really strong spirit there as we taught and it flowed well (for being in Japanese) and everything, then to top the day off we got OUR FLIGHT PLANS!! Everyone was jumping up and down and Wilson chorro was kissing his paper and it was fun. I'll try to send pics from Wells shimai's camera-I didn't have mine with me. Our flight from here to LA is at 8:25 am. We get to LA about 9:25 and don't leave until 11:40 for Tokyo. So I'll have that time to call.
In the picture is the rest of my district: Sisters Wells and Acerson; Elders Olsen, Fullmer, Lofthouse, Bee, Insch, and Tullman.
I didn't get to finish explaining our Easter last week. It was fun. Wells Shimai discovered this trick with the cafeteria's hardboiled eggs where if you peel off just enough for as wide as the egg is from the bottom, then make a small hole on the top, you can blow the whole egg right out! It's pretty fun, and we started saving up eggshells as soon as Larisa had sent me some egg paint. Then on the p-day before Easter we all painted the eggs and then on Sunday the shimai were the easter bunny and came early and decorated the room and hid eggs. Later after district meeting we all hunted for them and threw confetti eggs at each other (since Shimai and Chouro can't really bash an egg on each other's head) but it was way fun.
Now this week :) Well, mainly the biggest thing was flight plans. And meetings that tell us to pack. And the fact that I'm finally getting out of here!! I think the MTC has been a mini-life. It feels like it's never going to end, then finally you get to take off and go to the other side and do missionary work! No, actually we had some really really good insight from our devotional speaker this week who was ELDER HOLLAND!! :D His devotional was AMAZING. The spirit was SO strong and he's so cool how he can speak to you so down to earth, straightforward, and then even lovingly "yell" at you but it's so powerful the whole time. He made it very clear we're not here to be boys and girls anymore but men and women, in Christ. We have an extremely important work to do. He had come from the hospital, blessing a baby who was in intensive care, and had been reminded of the frailty of life and how desperately the world needs our message. He said, the whole world's a hospital and we're not surgeons, but we're first aid, and we go in the name of the greatest surgeon. That's cool, and it made me think about how when I was little I made that "save the world" club and now I finally get to do something like it. :) Then he said something that really stuck to me. He said "don't expect to go home and think to yourself, 'well I'm glad I got that out of the way, now it's time to get back to real life'. No. This is the closest to real life you'll ever get" again almost shouting. :) That was amazing insight, because I guess up till now I'd kinda been treating it like that. It was to do my time, serve my duty, but more than that, he made me realize it's a glimpse of eternity. It's the whole purpose OF life. The 'life' we have now are so distracting with jobs and with problems, we can get thrown off from the fact that this ISN'T all there is, and that we have so much work to do as Saints to indeed save the whole world. There is an explosion of missionary work just waiting to take place.
I didn't get to finish explaining our Easter last week. It was fun. Wells Shimai discovered this trick with the cafeteria's hardboiled eggs where if you peel off just enough for as wide as the egg is from the bottom, then make a small hole on the top, you can blow the whole egg right out! It's pretty fun, and we started saving up eggshells as soon as Larisa had sent me some egg paint. Then on the p-day before Easter we all painted the eggs and then on Sunday the shimai were the easter bunny and came early and decorated the room and hid eggs. Later after district meeting we all hunted for them and threw confetti eggs at each other (since Shimai and Chouro can't really bash an egg on each other's head) but it was way fun.
Now this week :) Well, mainly the biggest thing was flight plans. And meetings that tell us to pack. And the fact that I'm finally getting out of here!! I think the MTC has been a mini-life. It feels like it's never going to end, then finally you get to take off and go to the other side and do missionary work! No, actually we had some really really good insight from our devotional speaker this week who was ELDER HOLLAND!! :D His devotional was AMAZING. The spirit was SO strong and he's so cool how he can speak to you so down to earth, straightforward, and then even lovingly "yell" at you but it's so powerful the whole time. He made it very clear we're not here to be boys and girls anymore but men and women, in Christ. We have an extremely important work to do. He had come from the hospital, blessing a baby who was in intensive care, and had been reminded of the frailty of life and how desperately the world needs our message. He said, the whole world's a hospital and we're not surgeons, but we're first aid, and we go in the name of the greatest surgeon. That's cool, and it made me think about how when I was little I made that "save the world" club and now I finally get to do something like it. :) Then he said something that really stuck to me. He said "don't expect to go home and think to yourself, 'well I'm glad I got that out of the way, now it's time to get back to real life'. No. This is the closest to real life you'll ever get" again almost shouting. :) That was amazing insight, because I guess up till now I'd kinda been treating it like that. It was to do my time, serve my duty, but more than that, he made me realize it's a glimpse of eternity. It's the whole purpose OF life. The 'life' we have now are so distracting with jobs and with problems, we can get thrown off from the fact that this ISN'T all there is, and that we have so much work to do as Saints to indeed save the whole world. There is an explosion of missionary work just waiting to take place.
At another meeting later in the week Brother Mills pointed out the parable of the olive trees in Nephi. It says the last will be first and the first last. The 'last' tree talked about before the gathering was the Nephites and Lamanites. Indeed we see that South America and Africa are on fire and the work is just flying. But what about the first? Could it not be that that's Asia? Japan, and hopefully soon China? Imagine what a world it will be when China opens and missionaries flood into AND OUT of China! Chinese missionaries going forward to the last corners! Wow.. when he was saying that I just felt so strongly that that will be an explosion! The work of the Lord is going forth and there is much still to be done.
I'm so excited as I get ready to leave and finally go to tell all the Japanese people I can get to talk to me about the Savior and his LOVE. If there's one predominant message I've got from this place it's that: love. Christ's perfect love. Is the only unfailing, unstoppable force on this Earth. If we have charity we CANNOT fail. People need that in this day and age where somehow people are forgetting to just love each other. I'm excited and I know the Lord will help everything to work out and that he will protect us and guide us and lead us. He is standing ready to lead all his children. He loves the people in Japan, and he Loves the people in Washington. He loves because he has sacrificed, and as we learn to sacrifice parts of ourselves for others, we'll too find that kind of love for each other.
I love you all so much, and I'm excited to talk to you next Tuesday morning and I pray the Lord will guide and protect you all too.
:) Wish me luck!!!
On to NIHON! NIHON NI IKIMASHOO!
Love,
LeFevre Shimai
I'm so excited as I get ready to leave and finally go to tell all the Japanese people I can get to talk to me about the Savior and his LOVE. If there's one predominant message I've got from this place it's that: love. Christ's perfect love. Is the only unfailing, unstoppable force on this Earth. If we have charity we CANNOT fail. People need that in this day and age where somehow people are forgetting to just love each other. I'm excited and I know the Lord will help everything to work out and that he will protect us and guide us and lead us. He is standing ready to lead all his children. He loves the people in Japan, and he Loves the people in Washington. He loves because he has sacrificed, and as we learn to sacrifice parts of ourselves for others, we'll too find that kind of love for each other.
I love you all so much, and I'm excited to talk to you next Tuesday morning and I pray the Lord will guide and protect you all too.
:) Wish me luck!!!
On to NIHON! NIHON NI IKIMASHOO!
Love,
LeFevre Shimai
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