Michael's Good Experience: Another week down and now just transfer emails left!

Dear Family,

This week has been pretty good. It's hard to remember what happened this week to be honest! It too was kind of filled with random stuff which is nice because of some problems with my companion, I talked a lot with Elder Simons about how everything has been going. He's a good friend to me, so it's really nice, he has been in Takao the same amount of time as I have been. I had always thought that the closest friends would come from companions but so far it has been the other district members. It's pretty nice. Anyways the week started with temple pday and Shibuya and what not so that was way good. Then the next day we got our new iPads obviously, and they are pretty much the same just black and have more memory. The screen cover from the old one got scratched in a spot pretty good so I just went with the cover they gave us and it works pretty well, it's a pretty nice one so that's good. The new cases don't have screen covers so I'm being a lot more careful because a protector can only do so much. So that literally took all of Wednesday because of travel time which was about an hour and a half each way on trains. Then we had Ekaiwa which was pretty good. Thursday we finished our setup and stuff on the iPads and did some dendo around the church.

Other big things that happened this week was a district blitz at some huge apartments near the park around here. There are about 65 ish buildings and each has 10+ floors with around 8 apartments on each floor I think. So quite a few people live there. We really didn't have any success with any of the doors but at the end I said hello to a guy walking into the apartment and asked him how he was. Then he said that he was good and asked us if we are Jehovah's Witness to which we told him who we were and he invited us to come to his apartment. Then after talking for quite a while we taught him about prayer and he said he knew how so he pulled out a written prayer and we taught him how to pray and he just started praying. It was a way good humble prayer and he even did it right without much instruction. So that was quite the miracle. He may be a little crazy, he talked about some kind of mental sickness so we will have to be watchful to see how sane he is. Most of the people we have been finding that seem like they have interest lately all just like lose their interest or change their mind on meeting so it's getting a little discouraging but I still try and work as hard as I can.

We got the opportunity to help a member move this week which was way nice to get some service other than the bike taxi. But it did take us forever to get there. The way back was nice though we just got to fly down a way long steep hill so it was way good. There's nothing quite like the feeling of flying down a hill on a bike. Yesterday while housing after church my problems with my companion came to a head. He said the district needs to get better at explaining simple gospel principles easily and well understood. The only reason he thinks that is because he thinks his definition is the only one out there. So while housing he was saying "tell me what faith is" so I did and he didn't like it so he just starts saying "explain it like I'm a child" and in my opinion I did the first time but he just got way angry and kept calling me a horrible teacher and that I'll never be a good missionary if I don't forget myself and care about the Japanese people like he does. So it has been a hard week, but next week are transfers so hopefully things will change.

Today we just played sports and climbed Takao San with Elder Simons and Parks investigator James, he's half Phillipino and he speaks English. He's 15 and way cool. I'm excited to see how they do with him. Other than that I'm just waiting for next Monday and hoping for a transfer. I hope you all had good weeks and remember that I love you all!

The music all worked so feel free to send away! I really appreciate it! And it sounds way fun at that Sounders game. Now you know what it's like! Haha one day maybe Morgan will go. ;) I won't get to see conference until the weekend after you guys so tell me how it is! Oh also I finished the Book of Mormon for the first time (while on my mission) so that was way good! I really love that book. I have every one of the 531 pages marked in at least one place (which was one of my MTC goals) so I'm way glad about that. Now I'm aiming to read it again pretty quick so I can really get the connections. So a little spiritual message, if you read the Book of Mormon I would challenge everyone to take Moroni's challenge again because it truly is a testimony builder. Love you guys!

Love,

Elder Gailey

Japanese Cherry Blossoms!