Michael's Good Experience: 太陽の輝きにも... (Brightness of the sun)‏

Dear Family,

Well this week has been a very interesting week! It was incredibly hot, some might say hotter than an oven, but I'll let you take that as you will. It was good, we found some people, no new investigators yet, but those will come. Elder Brummett is getting out there a little more. And we've been seeing miracles out the ying yang! So that's been really good.

Monday night and Tuesday were spent on district leader splits. It was an interesting time, my district leader Elder Kerr, is an interesting person, but we were able to get some good conversations with people on the street and while housing and while kubari-ing. So it was pretty good. While doing kubari (the handing out English class flyer things) I met this guy, a construction worker for somewhere nearby that had just gotten off work and before going home wanted to stop by the store. So he walked past me and I talked with him for about the next 40 minutes, not quite the short trip he was expecting but it was really good. I taught him basically the whole restoration right there and he really liked it, only bummer was I forgot some of the words in the first vision story at the time, maybe for a reason? Not sure. But he really liked it and said sometime when he has more time he will call, which probably means never but still it was way good!

Other than that this week we tried to build part of our map but found out we need another map book... Now it's a $70 map... Anyways we did that a little and visited a nearby (half an hour away) lake a couple times, and man is that lake full of miracles. It was way cool every time we went there. The rain stopped on Friday morning so we were able to get back to the regular dendo. So Friday at the lake park, we got a few contacts and on the way back to our bikes, we talked with a guy named Matsumoto, who about a minute after meeting asked if we would like to sit on a bench and talk for a little while. He had a lot of questions about resurrection. Which was pretty interesting in a Buddhist country, and it's pretty hard to have them understand, but we taught him the whole plan of salvation to help him understand and he really liked it. Especially because he has something wrong with his thyroid or neck or something because right below his Adam's apple was a large tumorous looking spot so that was interesting. It was a little hard to focus during the lessons because there were a few high school students being loud and obnoxious but it was ok. Hopefully he can meet this week! We'll see. Oh! And a person we met last week, his name is Azuma, but we call him doctor Azuma to differentiate him from our investigator Azuma. He came to eikaiwa on Sunday morning and he stayed for sacrament meeting! And he said he plans on coming every week from now on, so now we just have to help him take the lessons and I think it will be great! But overall this week was way good between finding people so close to truth they can almost touch it. We found a lot of Christians too. There were a lot of conversations and street lessons but unfortunately the people just aren't wanting to meet again quite yet. Which is a bummer but it will come.

There were lots of fun things this week! I got some new brown shoes to replace the old ones you told me to switch out, so I'll send a picture when I take one! And at the park by the lake yesterday we met this group of people playing some traditional music and doing traditional dance and I got a way cool video and they all might come to sports night to perform this Friday! I'll send a video of them, it's way weird, but way cool for sure! And Elder Brummett and I have been really enjoying the days this week even if they are long and hard but we laughed all day which has been really good. And we got to teach a member named Pepe who is from Peru some Japanese, even though he only speaks Spanish. It was way funny, and hard, but good.

It looks like everything back home is fun, I'm still praying for everyone, especially grandma and grandpa and I hope all the prayers help at least a little bit. But thank you everyone for keeping me updated and sending me emails and pictures and what not! It's way nice! I'm glad everyone's having fun, and it's crazy to think next month I reach hump day... That's going to be freaky! But at least by that day I can say I have forgotten a ton of English... Talking is getting so hard! I think more in Japanese some days than in English! But I hope everyone has a great week! Meagan, I'll probably beat you in the tan contest next year when I get home from being outside all day every day! And my watch line will be great so look forward to that! Love you guys!

Love,
Elder Gailey

Pancake Night