Week 5: May 27

Dear Family,

How is everyone doing? I was happy to hear about all the things that are going on at home!!! It seems like we are all busy in different ways. I am grateful for all your support and love. Please tell the Maughan family hello from me on Monday. I am so grateful that I have such a good family. Dad told me that his guy (Scotty) won American Idol. I am sure the whole family was excited about this Ha Ha!!

Kelsie - good job on being a crazy good dancer!!!! I’m pretty sure you could make anything that you wanted. Also, it sounds like Mom is having fun in Park City!!! You need to make sure to go on the Alpine slide for me!!! I hope all is well and keep telling me how everything is going. I hope you had an awesome birthday with a lot fun.

This week has been hard exactly how I expected it would be. Tomorrow, I am teaching a lesson in Japanese for the first time. I feel pretty good about it. This week has been really busy with a lot of work. I am pretty sure some on some of the days that I was so tired because of all things our teachers crammed into my head. The good news is that I can only improve from here. On Tuesday, we had Elder Russell Nelson speak to us in our fireside. He is the third apostle that I have had the opportunity to listen to in the MTC. I have six more weeks so I am hoping for a few more as the inspire me.

Skylar Schone entered the MTC this week. It was good to see him and how excited he is to serve. The new elders for our zone are coming in on Wednesday. I am hoping for cool roommates. The thing that I am most excited about is they will be speaking English. I feel like I have improved in my listening skills with my companion. It has helped as with the language. I love being a Japanese Elder!!! Whenever someone asks me where I am going I say Japan. The responses I receive back are always priceless. For example, “I am so glad I do not have to learn Japanese”, or “Wow! Good luck” and many more. I still can't believe that I am learning Japanese. It is the hardest thing that I have ever done, but, I am glad that I am doing it.

I am feeling bloated with all of this food - ha! ha! They feed us really well but after a while it is too much. One of the highlights of the week is playing soccer on the field. I enjoy this because I get to out of the dorm. One of my hardest challenges is sitting in a desk for over 10 hours. I am excited to start learning more about the language. I feel like I have learned so much in these 6 weeks. I also have 6 more weeks to go to learn as much as I can. I try to read the Book of Mormon I Japanese. It is really difficult!!! I can say most of the characters, but it is hard to find which character goes to which word. A Book of Mormon written in Japanese is read right to left and top to down. It is really confusing in the beginning.

I am grateful for all the prayers and support. I feel that it did help me this past week. Keep doing it and I will be able to get through it. I am grateful to be a missionary and get to serve the Lord. I am also grateful for my family and everything that you do for me. You guys help me be motivated in the work.

Love you all

Elder Maughan