Michael's Good Experience: Hot as the sun but better dendo!‏

Dear Family,

Well this week was a pretty good week! It was really weirdly structured for sure. We taught some lessons, we had a lot of meetings, and we dendo'd when we could. It was way dang hot this week though! I have never sweat so much in my whole life. At the beginning of summer I couldn't figure out why Japanese people carried around towels and rags everywhere, but now I see. It is incredibly hot and incredibly humid all at the same time, but it is alright, I guess it could be all year round right?

Well to start off Yuuki has gotten pretty busy from work until next month, but we have an appointment set with him for the week after Sunday so that's not a big worry yet. We have been in contact with him this week and he's already read the first 10 pages of the Book of Mormon and prayed a couple of times on his own! He's progressing pretty well I think. So we gave him Mosiah 18 as some homework for the time between then. But he's doing good! And Azuma San is finally back from vacation!! So we met with him on Saturday for a lesson and it was way good. He apologized a ton for only reading the Book of Mormon 2 times on his vacation, he was real upset that he didn't do it every day but he said he prayed at least 2 times every day on vacation though. So we finished teaching him the restoration and he really liked it. He talked about his vacation and how because he prayed and asked for safety he didn't have any problems on vacation. So now he is going to pray about Joseph Smith, so I hope that goes well!

We also met with Yamamoto and taught him the plan of salvation. We're working on his desire to join a church through the use of members. So this last lesson brother Iishi came to help us with that and since he is a school teacher he was able to teach really well and kind of just went hard in the paint and taught Yamamoto for 30 minutes and they became great friends so hopefully that helps. We'll use him again when he can. We also met with a man in the phone who I called and invited and played ping pong and created a relationship and are going to start teaching him after ping pong every week, so that's way cool! His name is Tanaka San. And last but not least for the teaching of the week we rode out for 45 minutes on the hottest day of the week to where google maps took us and it was wrong, so we looked it up on the phone and luckily that worked! So we rode another 20 minutes after making a few wrong turns and we found it so we rang the doorbell... Nothing. Called... Nothing so after 5 or 10 minutes in the sun we started back for our bikes and he pops his head out the window (the member) and invited us in and we came into a way 80s room where we talked with him and a less active friend of his. It was really cool because we just answered a lot of questions the less active brother (Brother Oshima) had and then shared a nice message on the little things and perseverance, that we made up on the spot, directed by the spirit, and then afterwards invited him to pray to end the meeting. I was pretty much expecting him to say no, but he said he would and he started, and after 40 years of inactivity said his first prayer, and started to cry. He offered an incredibly humble prayer and then we took a picture and decided we would meet again around the beginning of next transfer, hopefully he will come back soon!

In some fun random things we found a Lotus dealership in our area! And the person we found a few weeks ago, the lady from housing (Motoko San) is now a progressing investigator for the sisters! She read the pamphlet me and Elder Brummett gave her and already believes that Joseph smith was a prophet and everything! Also today we went to the zone leaders area for a day of sports! So that was fun. And last but not least last week on pday we were walking around Seiyu (Japanese Walmart) for some stuff and we kept passing the same guy all over, so we said hi. Then the next time we saw him he stopped us to read our name tags and ask us who we were, then we said hi as we passed him again, then the last time we saw him we talked to him and found out that he is the vice mayor of Tokorozawa city! So he got our names and our number and told is he would call us pretty soon to have us over for dinner and talk about the church! So that would be way sick! But anyways it was a great week! Saw all kinds of cool stuff and random stuff. So I'll send pictures.

I hope everyone's week was great, I heard from most of you, but I hope this week is good too, just remember when things aren't going the way you maybe want them too sometimes God has another, better plan for you! That's what I have been learning lately! So it's been good. I love all you guys! Keep having fun and enjoying the sun! Just be glad you aren't sweating like monsters!

Love,

Elder Gailey

Basketball on Pday