Week One

Kirk with Sister Merrill, an MTC worker in our ward.

Konnichiwa! It turns out that today is my P-day, you probably weren't expecting me to write so soon. The MTC has been pretty good so far. My companion is Elder Greenburg, who I knew from Startalk. I think we've gotten along pretty well so far. Our district has 12 people in it, six chorotatchi (elders) and six shimaitatchi (sisters). All the sisters and three of the elders in our district are going to Tokyo. Class has been pretty intensive; our teacher only speaks Japanese and we're supposed to use as much Japanese as we can possibly use, meaning if we know a Japanese word, we're supposed to use it. I really like our teacher, Gregory-sensei, he's always cheerful and has so far kept from using English.

I still haven't seen Andrew or Carlin yet, even though I've seen people from their districts for sure. I've seen nearly everyone else I expected to see here, though, and I'm hoping I'll see them pretty soon. Our living space isn't nearly as crowded as I was afraid it was going to be. Only the six chorotatchi from my district are in our room. Everyone keeps saying that today is supposed to be the worst day of our lives so far, but it really hasn't been bad at all so far, so I'm pretty happy. Our district gets along really well, which is always a good thing when you're stuck with them for the entire day. When you get to the MTC, you start teaching an investigator on your second day, and our district is currently teaching Tominaga-san. Our appointment with him went pretty well, except for how we kind of walked into his "house" without knocking first and left our scriptures in our classroom. He acted like he understood most of our Japanese and we managed to teach him how to pray, somehow. Tonight, we're going to teach him about the holy ghost. Hopefully it goes better!

By the way, we eat meals really early, in fact dinner is at 4:10, so I'm usually pretty hungry at night time, so unlike Andrew, I'll be very happy to accept food! Also, thanks for the new towel, the one you sent me felt like a shower curtain. My departure date has turned out to be August 5, so you might want to use that if you want to send stuff in the future, though I've gotten everything you've sent so far, I'm pretty sure. I've taken quite a few pictures too, but I'm not sure how to attach them. Hopefully, you'll be getting another email with pictures in a few minutes. I love you all, and tell Eliza thanks for the daily messages.