Michael's Good Experience: SPEAK LOUDER I CANT HEAR!

Dear Family,

Well I started out this email with a strange subject indeed... really quick to explain the subject line; Elder Hall and Elder Shepard (the other elders in our apartment) met a woman on the way home from a training that they had at the mission home while they were riding the train. She was very strange and tried to touch them a lot, like their cheeks and chest. And very lucky for my companion she said multiple times that she likes American men with blonde hair and blue eyes. lol So everyone knew she was a little weird but we figured that we would all hand her off to the sisters and then she would improve as she learned about the church... We were so wrong. In order to hand her off they invited her to church... we were also wrong there in thinking that she would be just fine at church. So we have a very timid member that was giving a talk in sacrament meeting today. She was the first speaker and when she got up the first thing that she said was "I am very nervous... but I’ll do my best on this talk" and then about 2 minutes into her talk that woman freaked out. She started yelling SPEAK LOUDER I CANT HEAR!!! THIS IS JAPAN SPEAK JAPANESE!!!! (the speaker had said assignment in a Japanese accent because that’s something everyone does in the church) Then one of the bishopric came down and told her to leave and as she was leaving she lost it, she yelled horrible things as she was leaving and the sisters and a stake guy made her leave but not before she said the most foul things they had ever heard. So this week on Sunday was intense!!

It was kind of lucky that our investigator Sato San wasn’t there until the end of Sacrament meeting because if he was he would not have tolerated that much disrespect inside of a church and it could have been bad. Yeah so it was crazy!

Alright now for another round of crazy stories Sato San is a crazy story from this week. So we had a lesson set with him on Tuesday but he didn’t come which is very unlike him. If he makes a time to meet he will meet at that time, he keeps his promises very well. But he didn’t come. So on Wednesday he came into our English class and something wasn’t right. so we just went along with it and then eventually I was cleaning the back of the white board and he walks up and says "geiri I have something to tell you... I can’t go to church any more..." and I was thinking it was because he was struggling with the word of wisdom but he said that his boss got transferred and they were asking him to be the boss and they said that the potential of him getting Sundays off was slim to none. So he was really distraught and we talked to him for a while. I shared scriptures and experiences with him and did my best but it just wasn’t helping so we were standing out in the hallway after everyone had already left the church continuing our talk when the bishopric came down from their meeting. As soon as they came down Sato immediately started telling bishop the problem and apologizing to him for it all. Then because it was really close to our curfew... to be honest it was past our curfew already but we pulled the higher law card there, bishop said that we should go home and that he would go have a talk with Sato in his office. On Sunday we finally got some more details on how that talk went and it went from 9:30 pm to 12:30 am. Our bishop is literally one of the most dedicated bishops I have ever seen. You can tell he really knows how to magnify his calling and it has helped us out so many times. For 3 hours he unfolded the scriptures to our investigator after the previous week helping us commit him to follow the word of wisdom. So to make long story short Sato then came to our ping pong night (I brought my paddle this time) where at the end he asked me when I go home and then said "well, I’ll have a surprise for you before you leave. I'll receive it on the 30th!" It took me a second to realize what he was saying but he told me that he will get baptized! (we had to change it to the 6th for the sake of adequate preparation but still!) Then he looked at me and said, when you leave you won’t be saying bye to Mr. Sato, you will say goodbye to Brother Sato! How cool is that!? So now we are working hard with him to overcome a tobacco addiction and get him ready for baptism but he is going to be able to make it and he will be baptized on the 6th of August!!! So yeah! I’m really excited!! In Kamiooka in the next 3 Saturdays we will be having 4 baptisms. That is unheard of! And the sister's investigator decided to get baptized the same day as Sato so we will have the first double baptism I have ever heard of on my mission! Exciting things are happening here!

Other than that we have obviously had lots of meetings and done lots of other things to find new investigators but that's the main parts right there! Mom asked why we were wearing watermelon helmets... well we had a watermelon... that’s the best way I can describe it! Hey now that Morgan has Asthma too we can puff our inhalers together! ...too druggie sounding? oops! I've been doing some testing while running and exercising to see if my struggling to breathe is actually asthma, and my deduction is that for the longest time I have just thought that I was out of shape, but what it really is, is asthma. If I take a puff of inhaler I can run with no problems until partway through the run when I have to puff it again but it helps so much it’s ridiculous! So that is a thing. Also Pokemon Go came out in Japan this last Friday. Now finding got a lot easier, but also a lot harder. I want to play it really bad but everyone here just looks like zombies walking forward blindly staring at their phones... it’s good though I think, I've seen a ton of nerds out of their houses so I approve. Also thanks for getting me a ROC pass mom!! I was hoping I could get one! Everything else sounds great! I'll be headed to Kamakura today to go souvenir shopping so wish me luck and I'll talk to you all next week! I love you! The lord certainly has his own ways that are much different than I could have ever imagined but he always does what needs done we just need to be in a position where He can move us around. Let’s be tools in the lords hand! Love you!

Elder Gailey

At the Nissan Museum