MTC Cookie Business

Aloha goziamasu minasan! 

I wanna start off this post with a little story regarding the MTC and my immense talent in Rubik's cubing:

Cubing has become a passion of mine and I think I will be postponing my mission so that I can attend the World Speed Cubing Associations tournaments...and as Elder Flores would say...no cap. Okay but for real, at like week two, Elder Scow and Elder Nield and myself decided we wanted to do some sort of zoom magic trick to our district using Rubik's cubes. This trick required as to be able to solve a 3x3 cube. Elder Nield was already pro at solving it, but Elder Scow and myself were still just young padawans in the cubing world. For the next 3 days or so, we trained and worked harder than ever to be able to solve said cube. Eventually we all solved our cube and the time came to execute our zoom magic trick. I will not go into details regarding this trick due to copyright issues and magicians never reveal their secrets. Following this trick, I became sorta addicted to trying to solve the cube without instructions and I wanted to get faster. I decided to upgrade from my traditional Rubik's to a $9 speed cube set from amazon. This greatly improved my skills and confidence in my new found talent. And for all those that are wondering, I can now solve a 3x3 Rubik's cube in under 60 seconds, and a 2x2 cube in under 20 seconds. BOOM. I have learned stuff in the MTC.

Favorite pasttime!!

Okay so when learning a language, you obviously learn a lot about new vocabulary words, phrases, grammar principles, etc. And obviously learning a language is hard because everything is new. New sentence order, new ways to say things, new words, etc. But one thing that is the same in all languages (as far as I know. Please don't crush my dreams) is that they all have verbs, adjectives, nouns, adverbs (what every those are), punctuation, etc. You would think that this would provide me with a level of comfort and joy. BUT if you know me, then you know that I am not even very good at speaking English, and I am 99% sure that I was never taught about that thing called grammar. I am pretty sure I have never taken an Advanced English class, and was never taught what all those things are or which words are classified as which. SO often during classes (especially grammar lessons) our teachers will say something like "Alright minasan. I need a noun to go in this empty spot in the sentence. What is a noun that I could put there?" Seems like a pretty easy question, right? Wrong. I have no idea what a noun is, so how am I supposed to pick out a noun that I know in Japanese and could fill in the blank with it. With that being said, I am getting a lot better at being able to distinguish which words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. Maybe one day I will be able to speak English and Japanese with proper grammar. Please keep my grammar in your prayers. Or if you have any great suggestions on how to remember which is which, that I would love to hear.

My basement MTC set-up!

My district having fun!

This past week me and my companion (Elder Lowe) taught a Japanese TRC*. Wow that was an experience. And let me tell you...teaching someone in a language that you have only been studying for 5-ish weeks is very hard. But I felt the spirit throughout the whole lesson and we were able to get to know Eri-san better and we are excited to teach her again this week! It's an amazing feeling to be able to understand someone who is speaking in another language than your native language. Even tho I definitely didn't understand every word...I was able to understand at least the basic idea of what she was saying. So excited to continue to learn more!

If you know me, you know I love to bake cookies! Something that Kyle (Elder Murdock) and myself have been doing for the past few years is baking and delivering cookies to people in our ward, or just random people throughout Yakima. This has become something that I always look forward to doing each Sunday. 

Sad news: Kyle left for Pocatello, ID this past week. SO no more delivering cookies with him😢

Nathan and I went to the airport super early in the morning this past week to say goodbye to Kyle as he leaves for Pocatello.

Kade, Elder Murdock, and myself saying our goodbyes.

Good news: Sometimes we get lucky and have the pleasure of Kade join us in the delivering of the cookies. 

So this last Sunday I made some killer peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and Kade and I were able to bring those to a few peoples houses. PS- let me know if you are in Yakima and are dying to have some famous Elder Ditto cookies. I will try to add you to the list!

WOW, if you have made it this far in the email, then I feel honored. I really don't know how these emails always end up so long. Love you all!!!

Chopstick tips of the week:

- you can't eat a hot dog with chopsticks

- you can't eat pizza with chopsticks

Song of the week: 

Rescue (Lauren Daigle) Cover by Operation Underground Railroad Ambassadors

This song goes way hard. Especially from like 1:30-2:30. The original of this song is also way good, but I really like this version cuz of the variety of talent and types of voices that are a part of it. This music video also is supporting a really good cause.

Fit of the week:

Featuring one un-done button, a fatty short tie, shorts, tag on the tie. (I promise I normally wear pants and actually get ready. But this was an extra busy day...probably)

Uncle Seth and myself 

TRC*= Teach Resource Center. As missionaries, we have the awesome opportunity to sign up for TRC's and teach people more about The Gospel of Jesus Christ via zoom calls. We get to sign up for English and Japanese, which is so cool! 

For P-day this week, my family and my aunt and uncle's family went to Clear Lake for some fishing and lake fun.  I caught this crawdad.

Nathan enjoyed fishing IN the water.  It was such a smokey day that we had to cut our fishing short.  I caught one fish.

Feel free to contact me if you have some time to talk! Hangouts, FB messenger, and email are all awesome! Or even my phone number while I'm here at the home MTC and still have my phone. Thank you to everyone who has sent me nice letters and emails!  My mission email is tyler.ditto@missionary.org

Love,

Elder Ditto