May 4th 2013 letter

On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 6:12 AM, Cameron Law < cameron.law@myldsmail.net> wrote:

The Southern Training center 0500 hours. Week two

So i would have e-mailed you guys on Tuesday but they changed our schedule on Monday and we didn't get a p-day till Saturday... not that any of us murmured or anything about that ;-) I am going to make a disclaimer for now and the rest of my letters that i am neither go to spell everything right or proof read this bad boy because 1. i cant spell, and 2. with so little time for each e-mail quantity seems more important than quality.

Team Members:

my companion is a skinny guy, red hair, 6 foot 2 inches, from Utah (everyone but one other elder from Vegas and a sister from California are from Utah in my district) he is sooo funny. He makes a sarcastic doomsday type comment about everything and it just is funny.. he is 19, worked at McDonalds full time for the past year, enjoys "drawing and fixing stuff" as his hobbies and loved to play the trumpet in marching band in high school.  He knew he was going to japan because he loves rice, loves anime, and his uncle and aunt were a mission president there before. He is a great guy helping to set a new example to the rest of siblings. He also has a twin sister that will be getting a mission call soon. We get along super great and agree ( he mostly just doesn't care that i control what we study which works, NOt that i wouldn't let him chose if he wanted to!) on everything except he always wants to wear his suit and a long sleeve shirt ( i have no idea why, and i always want to wear short sleeve. so one day we sweat our guts out and cant move and the next we "look like baggy primary kids" but honestly it just works for us!

My district is soooo great! they are pretty much around you as much as your companion! 6 elders and 5 shimi (sisters) we are all going to sendai except one frozen chosen and i am so excited to see them around for two years!

Supplies:

food is plentiful to say the least. The operation to feed all the missionaries as much as they want to eat three times a day seems daunting.. the food is cafeteria food but for cafeteria food i am impressed. Some people love it and a lot of people hate it but i am quietly content. (how can i complain when i don't have to make it or do the dishes. The best part is i can drink as much milk as i want with any meal and nobody even complains! ;-) I think i now have most of the other stuff i need... the book store has a lot of random things that are helpful and i try to utilize that as much as possible.. I am sure i am forgetting something right now but i got 8 weeks to figure it out.

Barracks:

Tight. haha with so many new people wanting to serve the lord they are packing them in. The room we are in has four little closets, four little writing desks, four little dressers, and six beds with six elders. but honestly I am already used to eat and you are so busy that you pretty much just get dressed and sleep in the residence.

Training Language:

Challenging. Japanese is complex to say the least. but instead of getting disheartened we try and have a resigned, "i have no idea how to speak Japanese" and then every time we do something that resembles the language we go "Yata" which i think translates to like "hurray"... but honestly the older elders could just be making us yell "fecal matter" for all i know. But while some days are really frustrating with the language most of the time its actually kind of fun! 

Battle (against Santen) training:

(side note that scriptures in Japanese is saiten. "Today from my saiten i learned... makes us all laugh every time.) Pretty much all Japanese lessons and study somehow relates back to the gospel but we also do have some ego training too. It goes really well and i have already written more cross-references in my scriptures in a week then i normally would do in a month at home! i love the scriptures and the peace and vision they bring. there are some amazing speakers here too! plus with sooo many missionaries there are always awesome musical numbers that i have found tend to be my favorite part. (sorry dad i actually tried to push choir but my doriyo (companion) wasn't having any of it..)

physical training:

I am still not quite used to the limited gym time.. but when i work out hard it is sooo much easier to be happy and have energy. i like to play volleyball! some games are better than others because of the big diversity in the people playing but we have fun.

 Mental state:

I used to be funny. I know you are suppose to be humble but back in the day (two weeks ago.. i think) i had moments of glory in the humor department. Now i am straight up weird.. your sense of time in here is crazy! ever moment feels like eternity and yet a day goes by in a second! we will be studying class and someone will ask "wait... Is it dinner or lunch next?" and nobody knows the answer until we look it up and it turns out that it is 9:00 at night.. but I am happy! getting better all the time and my companion is too and that gives me a point of reference and comfort to know that i am not wasting any of my time here.

Funny story section (if anyone has a good military type title for this tell me):

I laughed soo hard yesterday. We have these little translators that have all these different settings and one of them is to type in what you want to say in English alphabet and then it puts them into hiragana and then the resulting word is given its definition in Japanese. (super useful tool but i can talk about that later) so my companion Thanye Choro has a first name, crazy i know... and that name is timothy. (he always refers to himself in the third person and always says timothy and i have to kindly remind him his first name is elder once again another story for another time) anyway so he gets all excited to see what his name means in Japanese. The classroom is silent and me and him are whispering together in the corner as he precedes to type in his old first name. Pubic Hair. hahahahahahahahahahahahahah his name means that!!! I died. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time... he was so distraught too! and then we got saying what if that was someone last name and they had to introduce themselves at doors like that and it just got spiraling out of control.. ahh.. you had to be there. anyway i have so many stories like that of this kid.. the things he says! anyway. I will try and give you something like that every week about him.

Love you all and can honestly feel the prayers!

-Elder Cameron Phillip Law

p.s. if anyone want to hear more or less about a specific area just tell me. I just kind of rambled about life now so if you are desiring something specific the letters are for you guys not me and you should tell me what you want