October 9, 2014
WEEK 5

Another week in the MTC down it was a lot of fun conference weekend was great! I would have rather spent it with the family but the MTC is a definite close second. Also on our Sunday night Devotional we had Vai Sickahema come and speak to us he is a really good speaker and he had a lot of really cool missionary stories to share with us. Its really hard to write about the week in the MTC because nothing really changes the weekly basis, although during TRC which is basically like home teaching you get a volunteer and you teach them a doctrine in Japanese. This week for TRC we had the opportunity to teach a father and a son from Texas, they acted like they were Buddhist and we taught them just the basics and we actually got to talk about Joesph Smith so i was able to share the first vision so that was pretty cool.

We got new kids so we have been teaching them the ropes and stuff. They are all pretty good so far. Our district is doing pretty good aside from the one kid who won't try very hard we are all learning and progressing really good, there are kids who are ahead but for the most part everyone is pretty close to everyone. I have learned a lot of vocab and basically know all the vocab that has to do with the church I really need to stress the grammar structure so that I express myself better, and when i say that i have a lot of the church vocab it means the the words and vocab that is used to teach the first 5 lessons in PMG and commitments, it is really amazing how much i feel that I have learned in such a short time. I am confident that I have learned a lot and will learn a lot more but i'm still so nervous for actually getting to Japan because I know that it is not only a culture shock but also I'll feel like i learned like no Japanese at all once I get to Japan, but I know that with time and the Lord on my side I will be able to become fluent and be able to preach in Japanese, Matt. 1:37 "For with god nothing shall be impossible." simple and my favorite scripture.

Thanks everyone for all your support and prayers on my behalf.

Elder Stevens

P.S. if anyone would like to i would love to hear a favorite quote or scripture and a brief explanation as to why it is your favorite.