Nathan's Pictures

Hey everyone,
We had a few pictures from before Nathan left for his mission that we wanted to share with everyone.  Enjoy!

MTC - Week 3

Konnichiwa everyone,

Things are going good here. Slowly getting the language. The food here is alright just made for fuel not so much for taste or quality.  The weather has been alright, it snowed and rained a bit the last few days  but not too bad. We are inside most of the time. 

Anyways, I have tried speaking with the natives but still scared to try on them, still have 2 weeks left to do it though.  

I'm not sure how many members there are in Japan.  The missionaries leaving in a few weeks will find out this week if Tokyo will re-open for them but all the Sendai missionaries are going to Sapporo which is way up north island of Japan. We hope we can go to Tokyo still. The older missionaries have like 74 in their group going to Japan, biggest ever, and we will have about 55 including the native Japanese missionaries (aka Nihonjin). We should still leave on the 23 of May hopefully.  Me and my companion are doing alright.

The Utley's are crazy, tell Hannah to send me a letter!! Also tell Kayla Berg, Alex MacDonald, and Jon Sugata to send me letters. Just want to hear from them and practice Japanese with them. 

I don't think the computers here let us upload pictures, I will have to print and send them I think.

To respond to "How are you?" is just GENKI (good) or Subarashi (wonderful).  Anything else you want to say?

I pretty much stay with my district people all the time and can't do anything else, all we do its study.

I heard there is another earthquake in Japan like 6.5. Tell me more about it.

Thanks for the package I didnt need the toilet paper its not that bad here. :)  The Nihonjin loved the seaweed even though they only are away for a week.

I hope all is well. Miss you and Love YOU ALL!!

Love

Elder McKinney

MTC: Week 2

Konnichiwa,

O Genki desu ka? That means how are you doing in Japanese.

Everything here is going good in MTC.  We have class A LOT!! Like 6 hours a day plus time where we stay in class and study with our companions. We do have gym everyday where I usually play volleyball. The only days we dont have gym or class is on Sundays because of church and Tuesday because of  personal day.

My district, or people I am in class with all the time, is pretty funny. We are all starting to open up and talk to each other a lot.  Most of us are going to Tokyo but 3 out of the 12 are going to Sapporo mission which is way up north in Japan. They still haven't decided on what is going to happen to the older elders leaving in three weeks. We got onto LDS.org and it said that all the missionaries in Sendai and Tokyo areas have been moved to other missions due to the radiation of the power plant. But there are a lot of rumors going around so we don't know which is true. We are all hoping that they can clean it up and we can get into Tokyo but I still have like 9 weeks or so left here so you just never know what will happen.

About 15 natives arrived from Japan today and about 10 more are supposedly arriving tomorrow but I haven't seen or talked to any of them yet. They are getting trained here because it is cheaper to fly them out and train them here than it is to have a MTC building in Japan. That tells you how expensive it is in Japan. It will be good for us to have them here so we can practice our Japanese and make sure our grammar is good when teachers aren't around. I'm hoping they know some English so we can ask them questions since I still dont know a whole lot yet. The grammar pattern stuff is just so weird and complicated.  I need to get better at memorizing them.

I hope everything is going well at home and everyone is doing fine.  Thanks everyone for the letters and packages. They were all really good stuff. 

Also please use the dearelder.com website cause the letters get to me faster and I also get a hard copy of them.  I only have 30 minutes to write so that should help me get back to as many people as possible in that time. Just wanted to let you all know.

I LOVE YOU ALL!!  And everything is going great here. Keep sending me letters please, it is really comforting. And keep me updated on Japan and the news you hear. Also keep the people of Japan in you prayers because they really need to be comforted now.

Hope to hear back from everyone and hear about the things that are going on.

Elder Nathan McKinney

Missionary Training Center: Week 1

Konnichiwa!! :)

How's is every one doing?  I hope everyone is doing well there.

Everything is going good here. My roommate is interesting and he remembers alot of church scriptures.  He wants to triple major in Physics, Statistics, and Calculus. He studied japanese for three years in high school but only remembers parts of it.

I don't know if you heard about the huge earthquake in Sendai which is the biggest one to hit japan ever and moved the whole island like 8 feet from what I have heard. It wiped out almost all of Sendai but did not too much damage to Tokyo. What is the death tole there so far?

The first few days of getting used the schedule was hard but know I am used to. We had testimony meeting the second night we were here. The spirit was so strong there and it was the strongest I have ever felt it which I hope to feel more here. My ear was doing better the first few days but one night it was so bad I couldn't sleep, which was Saturday night.  I prayed to the Lord to help me over come the pain and it took a while for it to stop.  I finally got to sleep but woke up and my ear was plugged and I could not hear out of it. The doctors office is closed on Sundays so I had to wait until Monday. So on Monday I went to the doctors and my ear infection got worse so I have to take some pills now, hopefully they work.

Well my time is running out now so I hope to hear from you soon.

Elder McKinney

Hey just an update on my address for MTC.

Elder Nathan Phillip Mc Kinney
MTC Mailbox # 224
JPN-TOK 0524
2005 N 900 E
Provo, UT 84604-1793