Michael's Good Experience: Bullet Train!! 新幹線

Dear Family,

Well I'm starting to run out of things to write in the emails! I'll be seeing you so soon that I almost want to wait to tell you everything until then, however, I will ganbaru and throw it all down on the email! This week has been good, especially the end of it. The middle was a good bit stressful but the end was solid, also stressful but had more results. Long story that I’ll add later is that Sato San is still intending on receiving baptism on Saturday, I'm still working as hard as I can, and from here out I'll be busy out of my brains!

Alright so here is the report on Sato. So this week for a large portion of the week we thought that he was just being a butt. However, we learned later on that he wasn’t. The reason we thought so was because he skipped out on 4 lessons this week. He always comes and when he doesn't its usually bad. We were trying to get him ready for a baptismal interview on Saturday but absolutely could not do that, especially since he didn’t come to our 2 lesson appointments on that Saturday. So here are the reasons he skipped out. Tuesday and Wednesday he was starting his new job, got sick and had to train 3 new people at work so he was busy and stressed out of his mind. We found that out and gave him a priesthood blessing on Wednesday night after English Class. Then after he came to our ping pong night on Thursday he got a call from his mother saying that his father had just died. So on Friday morning he peaced out on the bullet train to get down to Kyoto for his father’s funeral. Then he got back on Sunday morning and came to church right after sacrament meeting ended. So now we are praying that this week for him to receive Baptism that nothing crazy happens and he can still get all of it done. It was awesome though, he isn’t a rich man, but when i taught him about the law of tithing this week which i thought was going to be his hardest commandment, he willingly accepted it saying what is 10% compared to what the lord gives me? Of course i will do it. So that was a wonderfully testimony to me about faith and what happens when we have it. Sato has so much faith it’s incredible.

As far as my busy schedule goes... oh if you only could see my calendar in my ipad. There isn’t a day without something that will take lots of time, for example tomorrow night we have a big stake meeting, then Thursday we have a meeting at the mission home all day then Sato and his baptism and all the while next week i have to start packing and getting everything ready to hand off to elder Dunn because soon he will be a solo zone leader for a week since we are leaving a week early to make it back for school. It’s going to be a super super busy end to my mission but what better way to peace out then that??

In other news from the area this last week Sister Bybee and Sister Kawamitsu had a baptism. Their Russian investigator Daria got baptized. She doesn’t speak any Japanese and very little English so it was a miracle that she was able to learn the gospel first through google translate and then through Russian speaking members on Skype. It was awesome, Elder Dunn baptized her in Russian and we sang a song in Russian. Russian is hard! Her husband even came to the confirmation and is now almost one of our investigators. Also unfortunately the double baptism isn’t going to be happening, it will just be Sato this week however she will still be getting baptized.

I think that is most of the update for the week, Elder Dunn and I will be taking the bullet train (shinkansen) back to Odawara to meet up with my recent converts before i leave in a few weeks so it’s going to be an expensive way fun pday today. I'll make sure I send lots of pictures your way this next pday, and then the next one will be my last! Oh actually next pday is temple pday so it will be probably a slightly lame email.

In response to Dads Japanese food experience, if you thought that was good sukiyaki just wait until you eat it in Japan! It’s so good! I am going to miss Japanese food really badly. I will probably be able to make it for us quite often though. It’s not hard for the most part and I’ve gotten really good at it. Yeah I like my new president, there hasn't really been much to say because there generally hasn’t been a ton of interaction at this point. We have MLC with him but I haven’t really had any one on one time.

All of the apartment check in and stuff sounds just fine to me! I'm not sure what I want to do in Utah and stuff, I would definitely like to see Nathan while there, I talked to him today and it seems like we can do that. Other than that I would love to have brother Crabtree and Swanson at the homecoming talk if thats possible. I'll invite the ozone and other than that I’m probably fine. Thank you so much though!

I love all of you guys, and I hope you all have a great week! Get out there and see miracles!!

Elder Gailey

Kamakura