Michael's Good Experience: Volcanos and Onsen!

Dear Family,

Well it's been another week!! I'm doing my best not to get trunky now but do you count this week then we'll I only have 27 more emails like this til I'm home.... It's pretty darn soon! Anyways it's been a good week we've gotten a lot of time to dendo, the crazy thing though is I have almost forgotten how to street... It was a rough time trying to get back into the swing of it. But this week as well as last week we have had some good ups and some rough downs. Overall though a pretty good week. This email will probably be coming in a little late as well since right now we're on a bus to a place called Hakone with some recent converts and an eikaiwa student that wanted to come. Hakone is a huge resort place on Odawara and outside the Odawara castle it's the biggest reason people come here. It's pretty famous for its onsen (public bath houses) but we can't go to those so as a missionary hakone is just mainly fun to look at. Elder Okada wanted to go since he is from southern japan and probably won't come back to Odawara for a long time. There should be some way tight pictures coming from today though!

Real quick before I continue on about my week, bath houses have a lot of different "bathtubs" really they are big pool like things, but I've been told there are some way strange ones up in Hakone. What I mean by that is they have a bunch or random pools for example, a beer pool, a coffee pool, tea pools, strange liquid pools, and all kinds of other strange word of wisdom breaking things. So there is you weird fact about japan for the week! Anyways so first here's Hiro sans update. He is no longer being baptized on the 19th. He's learning/progressing to slowly to be able to make that regardless of how much faith we have, he's actually currently moving backwards in his progression, which has been really really sad to watch. So that's where a lot of our time and focus has been this week. We gave him a really big challenge on Thursday, that being to stop drinking and to follow everything we have been telling him for at least 1 day and ask God if what we are saying is true. The whole time he has been telling us that he isn't drinking, but admitted to us that he has every single day without fail. So we were really disappointed but it explained a lot of different things. Anyways that's when we gave him the challenge. And then we had a big questions of the soul event (where president Wada shows a movie and teaches from it, this time repentance) and hero had basically moved himself back to square one. He stopped looking at the gospel as a good thing for him and now is looking at it from a more reporter type view. So yeah it's a bit frustrating but we're going to try and really make sure he keeps going with the Kyoto missionaries by giving him a new baptismal date. It should be good.

I feel like I have written nothing about the week but well most of the rest of the time we had we spent walking around and ringing people's doorbells. It went pretty well, no new investigators yet but we're working really hard. I told you about the one we found last week, the Filipino lady. She wasn't home when the sisters went, but they think she'll be there soon, so we're not too worried there yet. I also got a chance to dendo with a Brazilian Elder this week too. His name is Elder Siquera, he's way cool, speaks a little English, barely any though, and less Japanese. So it was a fun time trying to get things ironed out and what not for plans and stuff but hey, if there's one thing I learned from him it's that it doesn't matter if you can speak anyone's language, you can still show how much you love people. He would walk around shouting hello to everyone and giving them a huge smile and laughing everywhere. It was great, a good example of optimism.

Sorry this is so short this week, it feels like I just emailed you all yesterday! Haha anyways Hakone was loads of fun, I wish we could go to the onsen but it was still good anyways! I'll send lots of pictures! Everyone seems like they're getting feeling better, so I'm happy to hear that. I pray for you guys all the time so it's nice to know that it's helping! Oh hey, also while we were in hakone we found out we were literally right next to a currently very active volcano, almost were able to ride in a cable car above it too! It's active enough to the point where there is lava on the surface right now. Crazy stuff, too bad we couldn't see it though. Dad asked if it still feels like family here or not, well it is definitely different without Poff, but for the most part everyone just has a whole lot more on their plate this transfer, so everyone's more stressed out than before. But it's still going well. Also Meagan didn't tell me about the dog thing, so I'll be waiting for that story! Anyways, I gotta go now so I love you guys! Have a great week! Keep me updated too!

Love,

Elder Gailey

P.S. Guess who's translating again tomorrow! I guess they like my translating lately in this zone, wish me luck! Haha

Elder Gailey in Hakone