Two years worth of ranch packets??

Today's letter cracked me up:

Happy P-day everyone!

Hey everyone! It was good to here from you! 
Vannie thanks for the letter! It made me laugh!! I'm glad you did so well at the fair! I wish I could've been there to see you do so awesome!! I miss ya!
And hey Gid.... looks like you got yourself a whole new wardrobe huh!?!? That sounds like quite the chicken coop you're making.. You'll have to send me some pictures of it!! And you're the big bad brute on the line this year huh?? Center and D-end!? Just like your big bro! Work hard!!!

I can't believe A is walking!! We tried so hard to get her to walk when I was there!!! Dangit! haha. Sounds like everything else is going well too!! I miss ya'll! So mom I don't want another package till right before I leave but I'm going to tell ya some stuff I'm gonna need as I think of them if that's okay! So all of my sensei's say to bring a 2 year supply of the following: deodorant, toothpaste and ranch dressing packets!!! So the deo and tp are really bad in Japan.. So probably 15 or so sticks of Degree for men Extreme blast would be awesome and probably 10 or so tubes of whatever good toothpaste would be great too!  And ranch packets because they don't have any ranch and it's great when you make some bland food in you're apartment and need to give it some flavor! That would be great!!!
Everything is going well here at the MTC.. Same stuff as usual!! I emailed Kels some stuff too if you wanna read that too... But That's about it!! I'll be on again at 10 if you wanna chat!! I love you all!! I miss you a ton!!

Love, Elder Snyder

And a little later in the day we were able to chat back and forth a little:

Oh not too much.. we did laundry and emailed a little bit this morning.. my companion just got a haircut and now we're back on to finish emails! Next we have gym and lunch. At 2:30 we go to the Temple and to a session! Then when we come back and go to dinner. For the last 3 hours we have personal study, companionship study, and then language study!

And I say: That sounds like a nice full day. I'm headed over to pick tomatoes and to figure out what to cook for dinner. 

And he says:  Man oh man do I miss mommas cookin. The MTC food it okay but it gets old quick!!! Sounds like fun though.. I wouldn't mind pickin tomatoes right now!!!

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No more chocolate milk!

Hey fam!! 

The MTC is good.. hard but good. The language is starting to come.. I love being able to make sentences and hold a bit of a conversation now! My testimony really has grown, so that's good. And, yeah, I've gained some tonnage.. bout 15 lbs!! HA. The food is better that what I thought at first.. I was getting 2 or 3 plates and 2 or 3 cups of chocolate milk for every meal..... Until I weighed myself! haha. So I'm cutting back big time on the food.. and no more chocolate milk! So that's about it. So that's about all I can think of right now.. I'll be back a little later to send some pics so if there are any questions you can think of you can ask me and I'll reply later today!! I miss you all! Good luck with school kids and be good! Ai shitte imasu!

Love, Elder Snyder

 I got to be really good friends with Elder Wilkes.  He just left for Japan:

                                   

My favorite Japanese kid ever Elder Suzuki.. He's a big time bballer and I played with him every morning before he left.. I miss him a lot: 

My good buddies, Elder Richards and Elder Suzuki:

Me with 2 of the other Nihongine that left: 

Me and my cardboard ukelele:

 

Two weeks in..

This is the second week of emails we received from Jake:

Okay so that's pretty crazy the weather stinks there! It's 90's here almost every day! The days in the MTC feel like weeks but the weeks feel like days... this past week went really fast! I can't believe. I'm 1/4 of the way done with my MTC stay. When I think of being home it seems like it's been forever but when I think about when I arrived here it seems like I just got here! It's pretty awesome. Yes we get to do a Temple walk every Sunday where we just walk over to the Temple and talk and take pics. On P-days we get to go and do a session and that is so awesome! It's such a nice break from everything else.

Thank you so so so much for the package! It was awesome! My district is pretty cool! We have 6 sisters and 5 elders. My best friend's name is Elder Richards. He's super cool and we get along really well. He's into sports and a lot of the same stuff I am!Sso that's really nic.  I hang out with him a lot! I am picking up on the language pretty quick compared to everyone else.. There is another elder in my district that already knew a lot of japanese and there's a sister or two that is picking up on it quick too. Other than that everyone else is struggling..(Including my companion) It's super cool cause I'm finally starting to make sentences! In our zone there were just 5 Nihongene (Japanese) elders that came in for 2 weeks. There is one named elder Suzuki and he is super cool. He loves basketball and I get him to play with us and he is so good! He speaks very little eigo (english) but that's good cause I teach him english and he teaches me Nihingo!! So that's super cool! And yes I get to play bball EVERY DAY!!!!! YAYYY! it's a big time stress reliever for me. We go to the gym and my comp does his own thing while I play bball! So that's sweet! 

But that's about it.. I love and miss you guys!!! Ai shitte imasu!! (I love you!!!) I'll send some pics later today!!

Love Elder Snyder

My Zone:

Me and my companion, Elder Canfield:

Elder Richards and me:

Elder Hansen, Elder Suzuki and me:

P-Day!

So, usually P-Day is on Mondays.  P-Day stands for Preparation Day, and it's the one day out of the week that the missionaries can relax a little, dress down, do laundry, get on the computer and email, and basically just catch up on little things.  So, we were looking forward to hearing from Jake on Monday the 4th, but instead we got a letter that said his P-Day would be on Thursday so we would hear from him then.  This is the first email we received from Jake in the MTC:

 Hey Fam!! What's up!? It's nice to hear from you guys!! The MTC is good! I'd say awesome but sometimes it's really not... ha! But it's so hard. Japanese is such a difficult language. But I'm getting ahold of it! You guys can read Kelsey's email cause I put a lot of stuff in there and don't really have time to type it all again. But I'll write you more letters with more stuff that's going on! It's actually super nice to just relax at night and write in my journal and write letters! And send me letters!! It would be super nice to here from you guys throughout the week! My companion gets like 3 or 4 letters a day.. haha. And its pretty funny, everyone gets so excited when someone gets a package!  We love snacks.. (so you can give everyone my address and tell them to send me packages) haha. But the MTC experience so far has been pretty crazy. We were soooooooo excited for our first P-day! but I don't have much time so I'll tell ya more in letters! Bye everyone! I love and miss you!
Love, Elder Snyder

Kels,
I can't wait to hear about everything thats going on there! The MTC is crazy. I'm not sure what it's like to learn Spanish....but learning Japanese in the MTC is by far the hardest thing I've done in my life so far. STUDY AS MUCH AS YOU CAN BEFORE YOU GO. You're going to walk into your classroom for the first time and your teacher will not talk ANY english to you at all. I was so overwhelmed the first few days and sometimes I just wanted to cry. I'm understanding a lot more though now and it's getting easier. Oh and on Friday, you have to teach a whole lesson in your language.....which is so frustrating and depressing. But the lessons get better too. But the MTC is awesome, you're gonna love it. That's about all I have time to say so i'll talk to ya later! PLEASE SEND ME LETTERS AND PACKAGES. I get lonely and I'm the only one in my district that hasn't gotten anything... lol. But I love and miss ya! 

Love, Elder Snyder

Obviously, we quickly got on the ball and wrote Jake some letters and sent some packages.  Poor kid!  But, he lived through it, snacks or no.  He seems to have an upbeat attitude, though.  Love that kid!