Hola! Ultimo Semana en el MTC

Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2009

How is everyone doing? I hope everyone is having just a marvelous day. And I hope everyone had a great fourth of July. Oh how the time is flying and now I only have 5 more days here in the MTC. I'm so excited. Today while I was getting my shot I ran into a guy from Santiago and he just told me how I'm going to love the people.

So on Thursday I got my flight plans for where I'm going. i'm one of the lucky ones who doesn't have to leave in the morning. My companions and I leave the SLC airport around 3:30, Land in Dallas around 6:30 and then leave Dallas around 9:30PM and land in Santiago around 8:30AM It's going to be a long day but I'm anticipating it.

Most of my 4th of July was pretty much the same. Just normal teaching like always, but at the end we had a little production about America and how God made it possible for us to establish the church here in this land. It was so cheesy. The special effect were not that special and I spent almost half the movie laughing. That's okay. It had a lot of good information though. Afterwards they let us go outside and watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks from the MTC. That was pretty fun.

So this week is called our teaching week where we only have two hours of class and the rest is spent teaching the gospel. Kinda getting us in the mood for how it's really going to be like in the field. I am humble though knowing that I'm going to know diddly squat once I get there...

This past week we've had fun scaring each other. Elder Wilson hid in Elder Ray's closet the other day and scared him. We took one of the poppers Dani gave me for the 4th and we popped it next to Elder Moore who freaked cause he didn't know what was going on. It's just been a fun week. I'm going to miss this district.

Some things I've learned this week as a missionary:

I dislike big people. Now I'm not singling out fat people... wait... I dislike clumsy people that's how I should say it. There are so many tall/fat/clumsy missionaries who just don't know how to walk and don't know how wide their shoulders are. I can't count the number of times I'll just be walking and a guy just runs into me. C'mon.

As far as doctrine goes... I have learned from one of the teachers that you don't have to teach all of the doctrine in order for an investigator to progress in the gospel. I used to get anxious when we didn't start talking about the gospel soon. He helped me realize to just be a pal to them. He said, "Do your investigators need to know what an apostasy is in order to get baptized" obviously no, and he said, "but they do need to be reading, praying, and going to church. So focus on that." Which is true

Well that's it for this week. Until Chile!

Oh yeah my Chile addresses:

For packages send them to the mission office:

Elder Samuel James Yoshida
Chile Rancagua Mission
German Riesco 230 Suite 730
Rancagua
Chile

For pouch (which is single sheeted letters, folded into three-panels, and taped at the top NO ENVELOPES)

Elder Samuel James Yoshida
Chile Rancagua Mission
POB 30150
Salt Lake City, UT 84130-0150
USA

That is how DearElders will work. Write the DearElder and then they'll put it in the pouch and send it to me, which will take forever and cost money. So just e-mail me after July 13th... it will be much easier.

I love you guys
Vive la Chile
Elder Yoshida

An amazing week!

Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009

I got a bunch of things to tell you so look out, here we go.

Last week's P-Day was fun. After I e-mailed you folk I got to go to the Provo temple and clean. It was so fun. I never thought I would say this, but I actually enjoyed the service. I don't know why, because I got stuck cleaning the grease vents in the cafeteria. Oh man, good times. Brought me back to the good ole KFC days when I had to clean those stupid vents above the fryers as well. Zach you know what I'm talking about. But then I got to go clean the baptismal font. That was fun. I didn't know that vinegar is a main cleaning surprise. Let's just say I almost died from inhaling too much vinegar haha.

MICHAEL JACKSON IS DEAD? wow! What's up with that? I guess you can say that's the first major event that has happened while I've been gone. Interesting... I heard he was just barely becoming big in Europe. I almost feel for the guy. But what do I know. He's dead now.

So my mission president went to Japan on his mission and he comes storming in to the chapel before priesthood meeting and starts writing some symbols on the sign and looks straight at me. I'm say, "what is that?" and he says, "It's you. This is the Kanji for Yoshida" I was like whoa! that's intense. I ask, "What does it mean?" He gets a huge smile and says, "This symbol means the mouth of the samurai. And this symbol means a field. So you are going to the field to teach the mouth of the Samurai" How cool is that? It's like the perfect missionary last name and I didn't even know it. Maybe I'll have to draw it in my next letters so you can see what it looks like.

Friday's devotional was amazing. We were all anticipating to hear from the first presidency, but none of them showed up, but that's okay. Elders Perry, Oaks, Holland, Bednar, Cook, Christofferson, and Anderson were all there. It was so sweet. Elder Holland spoke to us and we all know how his talks are. Especially on missionary work.

On Sunday we had sacrament meeting with a big group. After sacrament meeting we were making our way back to a classroom to have our district meeting. We spotted a few missionaries congregating around something so we walk over there and sure enough President Monson and President Eyring were just standing out there in the front just chilling. I was literally only 10 ft away from them as they spoke about their Spanish stories. It was so awesome. I was sad we couldn't shake their hands, but just seeing them was amazing. It turns out that Every member of the first presidency and quorum of the 12 except Packer were in a sacrament meeting. A guy in our zone actually got to pass it to Monson. Lucky kid!

So this shows you how immature I am as a missionary. Elder Wilson and I have found these cool looking bugs and everytime we see them we flip them over on their back and make fun of them. Well we were getting ready to take a picture with our camera when all the sudden it started flying at us. Me and Elder Wilson freaked and were screaming, "OH MAN WE'RE TOAST!" haha Everyone around us was looking at us like we were queers but that's okay. You gotta have some fun here.

Yesterday's devotional was fun. Gerald N Lund talked to us. If you don't know who he is he's the dude who wrote the Works and the Glory books. He was so awesome. He taught me an awesome lesson that may help the other missionaries out there. He said, "when an appointment falls through, immediately find someone to teach, because that might be the Lord putting someone else in your path at that exact time." He then talked about many miracles that happened of conversions that took place when other appointments fell through.

That's it for this week. People... 12 days left. So if you ever thought, "maybe I'll send Elder Yoshida something :)" you might want to get on it. Haven't heard anything from any of my friends in a week. Grr. That's okay though. The work is great and I'm sure you're all busy. I'm not sure how Dear Elders work. I think they print them out in Salt Lake and then they have to send them to Chile so It will still probably take just as long now. Anywho's I love you all. Sorry it's so long. Take care.