It's Almost Christmas~!

It's business as usual at the MTC this next week except for on Christmas Day itself.  For my district, though, it's our last week at the MTC, so it feels rather different.  We got our travel plans yesterday.  In class, they've taught us all of the doctrine, teaching skills, etc. already, so it's just been more and more practice.  We have our "in-field orientation" on Friday, our last MTC P-day on Saturday, and our departure devotional on Sunday, and then we report to the travel office4:30 Monday morning.... 

Several weeks ago I gave up on trying to figure out how fast time was going.  I think I've also given up on figuring out whether or not I feel ready for this.

This past week we taught one of our investigators the Word of Wisdom, and subsequently discovered that up until then he'd been drinking five cups of coffee every day and didn't know how he was going to stop.  This is our investigator who's 60 years old and in poor health.  I'd forgotten up until then that coffee was addictive.  o_0  He's got enough faith, though, that he's gradually cutting back on his coffee intake in the hope that he'll be able to stop altogether in the near future.  He was constantly depressed when we first met him, but now that he has the gospel he's brightened up a lot.  :3

Some weeks ago they had each of us missionaries come up with an investigator character to roleplay.  My investigator's name is Akira.  He's a college student in Tokyo who moved there from Sapporo, and Elder Soto's investigator was his randomly assigned roommate.  Akira wasn't expecting to see the missionaries; his roommate invited them over, and Akira sat at the edge of the room and listened because he's interested in the things people believe.  You learn a lot from seeing the missionary lessons from an investigator's point of view.  It's clear that the missionaries who've been teaching us don't understand Akira's perspective at all, and so they haven't taught him very well.  I can't really blame them; Akira's roommate is the one who asks all the questions, and it's kind of hard to take the scenario seriously anyway because we made up these investigators.  But even though Akira doesn't understand the Spirit, and even though his interest in the Church is just academic, the Spirit is working on him.  It's amazing to watch and feel.

Have an excellent Christmas!

~Elder Taylor (テイラー長老)