McKenna in Japan!: I got my travel plans! My last week at the Missionary Training Center!

Ok best week ever! Buckle your seat belts because between the Forth of July, getting our travel plans and GETTING OUR TRAVEL PLANS, it has been a wonderful missionary week.

Sister Hawkins with her travel plans!

First things first... As a missionary you are always exhausted. Constantly! Every morning when I wake up I remind myself that in about a week I will have the ultimate nap on the plane!

That is one LONG nap!

Did I mention I GOT MY TRAVEL PLANS! I am pretty excited about them :) But even though I am so exhausted physically and mentally (it is hard work!) I wouldn't trade this experience for the world. There is nothing better than being a missionary! I live, breathe and eat this stuff! I love the opportunity I have to study the scriptures everyday! I am learning so much. Sharing the gospel is so incredible. No one is perfect and no one lives a life without hardship, worries and death. The gospel is for everyone. And when you have such a great blessing in your life how could you not share it! I love it!

We finally had a great TRC! TRC... is when a Japanese-speaking member of the church volunteers and we teach them a lesson as we would a real, recent convert. It's always a lot harder for us than teaching an investigator lesson, because it's not the usual stuff we do. But it is super important! Typically this is our least favorite part of the week. It's on Saturday usually right after p-day (preparation day where we shop for our food and do our wash and write/read emails to/from home once we get to Japan) and I don't know why, but we always struggle with that teaching. Well not this week! We spoke, our wonderful volunteer understood, and it was actually really fun! We taught a lesson and he had some great comments. I loved it!

Guess what?! We had someone from the Skype department come to our classroom and tell us that we would have the opportunity to Skype members from Japan! So on Wednesday we made the trek over to building 18 M and put on these massive headsets and Skyped a native Japanese church member! It was so COOL! Way challenging, but I LOVED it. He was so sweet and we had a great discussion. It was a little challenging to hear but we went with it. Lewis Shimai's (Sister Lewis's) headset's mic wasn't working so it was pretty comical to watch us switch headsets every time a new person wanted to say something. It was a little annoying, but we took it in stride. I think it gained us some sympathy and every time it happened our sweet volunteer laughed pretty hard. That is one thing I am VERY grateful for, laughter! Laughter crosses all language barriers. And if there is one thing I can do well, it's laughing. Anyway, the highlight of that lesson (besides having the opportunity to teach him) was at the end he asked if he could take our picture. Of course we said yes! He pulls out his i-phone and snaps a picture. Then he asked if he could put it on "Facebooku" (no mom, that's not a typo, it's really how they say it), so funny! Wait for it... it gets more interesting. So Sheehan Sensei (Teacher Sheehan) comes back the next day and asks us how Skyping members in Japan went. Then he confessed that he saw that picture of Lewis Shimai and I on "Facebooku". We died laughing. I forget that real life exists outside of these walls and that people continue to go on Facebook.

Sheri Dew spoke to us in Relief Society Sunday. She is the CEO of Deseret Book. It was really interesting to listen to her. Sundays really are the best here, because we get to have so many devotionals by wonderful people. The MTC also records the talks so every Sunday night we get to take a pick of a recorded talk that we want to watch. We watched one by Elder Holland, one of the 12 apostles, when he came to the MTC a couple months ago. It was so interesting to hear him speaking directly to the missionaries! It's like a personal conference rather than a General Conference where the entire, world-wide church gets to listen and watch via satellite TV or BYUtv on Dish or DirectTV or the internet. That will be one of the saddest parts about leaving the MTC is not being able to watch those anymore because we won't have time.

We met the Nihongin who are flying with us to Fukuoka! Exciting! I will be in Japan very soon. Which means I will only be speaking Japanese. Only! So in preparation we have been having "Japanese only days". And for an entire 24 hours, I only spoke Japanese (some of it was mangled, but I got my point across!). So crazy! I thought it was going to be relatively quiet in our classroom, but it wasn't! It gave me a little confidence that I can at least say the really important things. I'm starting to dream about Japan. I have made sure I have the really really important words down like: doctor, directions, etc. :)

The Forth of July was interesting in the MTC. We watched the fireworks from campus. They had tons of fireworks from the "Stadium of Fire" that we could see so it was fun. Everyone in our district dressed up in red, white and blue.... even Nigh Shimai (Sister Nigh, she's from Canada!) and Poole Choro (Elder Poole, he is from Austrailia)! :) We got out of class early and got to watch the movie 17 Miracles. I hadn't seen it before and it was really good. Then they gave us an ice cream bar and shipped us outside to watch the fireworks. We stayed up past 10:30 (our curfew) which was pretty exciting. It was fun to remember a year ago, I was watching fireworks with Fabi and then raced home to watch fireworks with the family at the Slope Orchard. Crazy how things change in just a year. I learned the word for firework. It's "hanabi" which translates into flower and fire. So it's like flowers that are on fire in the sky! Japanese is so cool.

Fun cultural fact for the week. The Japanese people are super polite. I tried to give one of them a book and they said "It's ok if you don't give me the gift" (in Japanese). I was completely offended. Take it and then throw it away for goodness sakes. But I came to find out that Japanese people when they're given a gift turn it down a couple of times and then when they finally take the gift they say something along the lines of "I'm so sorry, thank you very much" a million times. No wonder some Japanese people think our culture is so rude. Oh and they are all about their personal space. That will be fun to remember. I'm going to hug them regardless. :) I'll pretend like I don't know what's going on. That won't be hard to do. :)