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The adventures and misadventures of Elder Shaw as he teaches among the Japanese, and is no doubt taught in return.

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6.29.2010 / 11:11 AM

Ohayo!

Good morning! Isn't everything great!? I mean, really great! I'm just amazed at everything we have and all our blessings. I can't even begin to describe it... The sky, the trees, food (in all it's different styles), mountains, sidewalks, ant hills, basketballs, letters, pens and paper, the sun, the moon, the stars, lamenation machines, laundy machines, friends, family, music, microphones, sound systems, video camers and projectors, etc... Isn't everything just a miracle?! I feel so blessed to be alive! I've had the most amazing week at the MTC so far. And I'm sorry, I really doubt that I will be able to do it justice in my short e-mail (which is already down to 22 minutes... Nande ane? [What the?]) and I'll probably miss a whole lot of things that happened... But we'll see if I can get everything down.

So this past week all of the new Mission Presidents that were going all over in the world came to the MTC for a week-long training seminar. And since Mission Presidents are super important, it only follows that a lot of high ranking Church officials would come to teach them. (Also, this computer's keyboard keeps doing funny things, so on a side note, sorry if there's like randomly 5 "e"s or something). So on Friday of this last week, we had a special fireside where Dallin H. Oaks spoke. But even cooler than that, there were 8 of the 12 apostles at the fireside! Bednar, Anderson, Christofferson, Oaks, Nelson, Scott, Holland and Cook! It was so cool to see them all in such close proximity to one another, and my seat afforded me a near perfect view of everyone. It was oddly very fun and interesting to watch the apostles as they did pretty much regular things... Like wipe there foreheads with a cloth, and adjust their tie and what not. Very entertaining. At any rate, Elder Oaks talk was also very good! Also, my "enter," key just stopped working. So... Sorry, but you're going to have to deal with a huge wall of text :/ After our Friday fireside special, we had a very interesting Sunday as well. Priesthood was combined with all the Missionaries from the MTC, and we had an amazing talk on the importance of finding people, and sort of how we go about doing that from a Mission President. It was very inspiring. Just remember, no matter where you are, the Lord is preparing people around you to receive the Gospel! At any rate, Sunday sacrament meeting was also good. There were 5 seperate sacrament meetings: 1 for the Mission Presidents, then four for the Missionaries at the MTC. I actually got to pass in my Sacrament meeting. It was lots of fun. Something really cool though, in the Mission Presidents Sacrament meeting, the entire first presidency was there and 9 of the 12 apostles. I obviously didn't get to see anything, but a few missionaries I know saw President Monsen and got to go shake his hand and what not. It's crazy to think I was so close to the prophet this entire week! At any rate, after that we finally had one more fireside at night. It was given by Stephen B. Allen who is the Missionary Media head hancho, and he previewed us the new and updated version of Mormon.org. On July 7th the new site will launch and will turn mormon.org into like a Mormon version of Facebook! It's available for every member to sign up for and you can create a profile and write down your conversion story. Then the church has an entire campaign (commercials, outdoors ads, bus ads, etc...) planned to generate interest in mormon.org. And people who come to the site can look at various people's profiles to get to know and understand the church, and to really get to know "people," instead of a computer screen. It will be really cool and a great way for people to learn about the church. I'm confident it will have a good impact on the world. There will also be opportunities for people who are browsing the website to chat with live missionaries in the MTC (no, not me). It's really cool. There are also going to be these short video clips called "portraits," which highlight a specific families/persons story in coming to know the Gospel is true... We saw a few of them and they are SO cool. On July 7th, you will all have to go check them out! Some of them are sad, some inspirational, some hilarious and some just... Well, you can find out :) At any rate, I am super excited for it, especially since it's something that I eventually want to be a part of doing. Also cool, is that they are going to let all missionaries create their own profile for mormon.org if they want. You can look me up if you want when the new site launches on July 7th (or some date close to that). Anyways, I'm pretty much out of time. Like 2 minutes left. I just want to let everyone know that I love them and appreciate them, and sorry I don't have an inspiritaional story or lesson for you this week... There was just too much cool news to share! However, when life's getting you down, just start to think of everything good and I'm sure you'll be cheered up. For instance, think about a blue chair (no, certainly not a red one), and think about how a blue chair can relate to your life. That's sure to cheer anyone up. Then write me a dearelder.com telling me what you thought about! That'ssss a smashing idea. Ugh, I hate not being able to use my "enter," key. Okay, well I'm out of time. Until next week! ELDER SHAW KBYE!