Mission preparation T-7 days

We are coming down the HOME stretch. Literally. We will be entering the MTC (Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah) in 7 days. That is 168 hours, people! When we received our call, we were at T-92 days and now we are down to 7 days. So crazy!

Needless to say, it has been a very busy 3 months! We have spent time finishing projects around the house and yard. We finished building and installing the remaining five garden boxes in our garden. We built and installed a greenhouse in the garden area. We finished out the rest of the yard with grass and a small asphalt driveway for our trailer. We painted the shed and the front door. We have done some deep cleaning of the house.

With the mission call, we were given access to a missionary portal online where we received instructions regarding things to do prior to arriving at the MTC. This included things like receiving immunizations, getting our travel visa, getting an international driver's license, completing some Family History work, setting up a Mormon.org profile, and completing multiple missionary training modules.

Even though our call is considered "English speaking" because we will mostly be working with English speaking missionaries, we wanted to learn as much Japanese as possible to help us communicate with other people we meet there. We were offered (and accepted) the opportunity to have a Japanese tutor to help each of us learn Japanese beginning at our own level (Dave is starting from a much higher level), as well as a language coach to guide us in setting goals and applying techniques for learning a language.

Learning any new language is a challenge, and Japanese is no exception. We have had the BEST tutor (Mary), and the BEST coach (Ryan). They are both college students at BYU who work for the MTC and are assigned to work with future missionaries. They have helped us so much, and I'm excited to actually get to Japan and try to speak with people just a little bit. I can now say things like..."It's nice to meet you", "How are you?", "How was your weekend?".  I can discuss the weather and tell people where I'm from and a little about my family. Dave is working on conjugating verbs, reading hiragana, and fancy stuff like that!

Along the way we have also tried to do as much spiritual preparation as possible, which is a very important piece, and which has kept us feeling calm and grounded in this decision. We are so grateful for the opportunity to serve the Lord in Japan, and know it is where we should be at this time in our lives. We are going to miss our family and friends SO SO MUCH, but we know life will carry on just fine here at home while we are away.

So bring it on, T-7, well actually 6 now because today is almost done. Yikes.