Last time seeing Elder Jorgensen, he's in the field now!

Pics for week of Nov 5, 2015

Isn't McKenzie shimai the cutest? We loooove temple walk Sundays. This is her first time experiencing fall!

The district got super festive for Halloween (Thank you Sister Jorgensen for the mustaches!)

There are Christmas lights up already and it makes nights so beautiful!

Nov 5, 2015
The time is going by so quickly! We got new Japanese missionaries this
week so we aren't the youngest anymore, which is exciting. Monday was
pretty eventful (well as eventful as the mtc gets) The chorotachi and
my companion and I went on a nature walk (walk around mtc campus) in
the afternoon and Morgan choro decided to do a handstand on this big
upturned u shape air vent. He got upright then kept ongoing, fell off
the pipe, and landed in a crumpled ball on his head in the bushes. We
all collapsed to the floor laughing. It was definitely the highlight
of the week. He's the life of our district and always keeps us
laughing. THEN, a few hours later we were cleaning the classroom and
Morgan choro vacuumed up an iPad charging cord and ripped it to
shreds. It made the most awful noise and I swear it started smoking.
Monday just wasn't his day, but he sure kept us entertained!

On Sunday, Mckenzie Shimai and I were made sister training leaders! We
already love serving the women in our zone and have had many
opportunities to serve them. A lot of the sisters have been sick this
week, so it's our job to bring them meals and check up on them. We are
excited to get to know all the sisters better and help them with
anything they need. The calling really helps us not focus on ourselves
and make others the top priority, which is amazing!

The thing I've learned this week is the importance of living in such a
way that the spirit can constantly be with us. In the mtc we teach
"investigators" every day or every other day. The lessons are
completely in Japanese and we can't just read out of preach my gospel
or a teaching manual we have. Our investigators are actually our
Japanese teachers, and they are acting like real investigators they
taught while they served In Japan. We find out the investigators
backstory and in the lessons they respond as the actual person did
when they taught them.  Written out like that, it sounds pretty weird
that we are teaching our teachers while they are acting like a
different person, but that's how it is. This week Mckenzie shimai and
I had an AMAZING lesson. It was on God's love and prayer. We were able
to communicate with our "investigator" and she completely opened up to
us. The spirit was so strong and it testified of the things we were
teaching. The lesson was not successful because we spoke Japanese
wonderfully and knew all the words we needed to say, rather it was
successful because the spirit was there. We said a sincere prayers
before going into the lesson that the spirit would be there and help
Nozomi understand the principles we taught.

*moral of the story, the spirit is the most important thing in my life
right now and with it, I can transcend the MASSIVE japanese language barrier. I believe
that these lessons we are teaching are not to teach us how to preach
in Japanese, but to learn how to teach by the spirit. The Japanese
people won't be converted by our Japanese abilities, they will be
converted by the spirit. And that is the most comforting truth! The
Lord is on our side, and with Him, we cannot fail.

I love this gospel and Know it is true!

My sweet mom is keeping all my emails and pictures on a mission blog,
so if you would like to see my first few emails, check it out!
sistersundell.blogspot.com

Love, Sundell Shimai