Week Twenty-seven.

Dear Mom and Dad,

I will first start by telling dad what my study habits are with the language so I dont forget this time! I saved all my books from the MTC and brought them with me. With have this one Yellow book that we call the Pikachu and it has a ton of grammar patterns in there and it explains it pretty well. I will read about a grammar pattern and then try and practice it as much as I can. That has proven to be the most helpful, but sometimes I am not very diligent at really using it. Besides that, my language study time is usually just focused on preparing for lessons we have or messages I have to share or mogis I have coming up. Just practice with teaching the lessons in Japanese pretty much. I can teach simply in Japanese but its setting appointments and understanding peoples needs and learning about peoples backgrounds that I cant get. Understanding other people is just KILLER. Impossible! Like for example, we went to a day service center this last week and spent some time talking with some super old people. Yes their Japanese is hard to understand because they are old, but when they were asking me questions I could not understand one thing! So I kept saying, Im sorry I cant understand Japanese! And they would just keep asking me questions! So then I said Please speak slower! And when they would speak way slow I couldnt understand the words they were using. I felt so bad because I knew they wanted to talk to me but I just had to keep saying sorry sorry sorry I cant UNDERSTAND YOU! I was happy to leave that place. Sometimes Sister Tui and I try having only japanese days. But we fail at it. It is so much easier and first nature to speak english to each other. We are able to express ourselves a lot better and feel the spirit a lot better that way... so thats what we do. I wrote you a letter this morning mom about how the language is coming so youll just have to read that. But I suppose it is coming more than it was coming before... I dont really know. I appreciate that girls email that you sent me with the language learning suggestions. The thing is I am in a rut where if I come home not knowing the language super good, oh well. And if I come home and I do know the language good, cool. All I know is I am American and I eat meat and potatoes and caseroles and having that American pride prevents me from feeling stress and I hate stress!

This last week we did a lot of member visits. Sister Tui and I ended up making like 3 or 4 batches of cookies because we kept messing up... but we delivered the cookies to members with a little thank you card that we made. They were all nice and usually invited us in and then gave us food so that was awesome! That took up most of our time. It snowed again this week a few times so we had to walk a few times and that takes forever. Sister Tui also got sick this week so that kinda put a damper on the work. She kinda has what I had awhile ago... stuffy nose... stuffy ear... just, sick.

On other news, Shoko chan cancelled her appointment so we didnt even end up teaching her. Another week went by and still no investigators. The bad thing is I am so scared of teaching that sometimes I take a deep breath of relief when we dont have to plan for lessons! This next week will probably be a lot of housing. Oh housing... dreaded housing. Its gotta be done I guess.

Um, I dont think there is much else going on over here in Aizu. This whole week is supposed to be a lot of snow. Today it was kinda sunny so the snow is melting a bit, but after it melts it always snows right after. As of right now the snow isnt piling up too bad. I heard that this winter is really weak compared to others. Its been windy lately so it feels just like home.. I miss you Idaho!

I am glad to hear all about how everyone is doing. Everyone seems so happy. I have been worried that while I am gone someone is gonna die or something... please dont die.

Abby wants me to attend UW when I get home. She sent me an email saying that a ton of cute missionaries just got home. I made her promise that she CANNOT get married. I already have missed like 5 cousins weddings, my brothers, and a handful of friends. My little sister CANT get married. If she gets engaged, make her wait mom. Just one more year.

All right, thats it for my news! I miss you all SOOOOOOOOOOO much you have no idea. Keep going to church! Read the Book of Mormon!

Love Miranda