week #15-16 pictures

This was their Thanksgiving dinner......ick!  Raw squid!

....and sushi....

11 plates of it!

plus apple pie at McDonald's for dessert

This is the picture they leave on doors when people are not home that Mike mentioned in his letter

Japan week #16

Everyone!!

 First off, I love you all. You all light my world. ;) I'm having a ton of fun here, and the work is going forward! This week was a BLAST. But, first off, Elder Lee.

    He's a stud. Crazy fun, crazy athletic, and has a CRAZY AWESOME desire to work hard. Love it! He's from Idaho, but his fmaily has lived all over the world: Japan, Italy, Singapore, and right before his mission he was going to school at BYU Hawaii. He's legit. Loves sports, loves being a missionary, and is such a goof. I can't believe how fast this transfer is going by. We're already over half done. O.O THAT BLOWS MY MIND. We just have way too much fun everyday. And our ideas are amazing, it's really been an amazing couple weeks. 

  This week was crazy fun. Monday was way rainy, and for Sister Evan's birthday we asked a nihonjin on the street to take a video of us jumping in a HUGE puddle for here! HAHA! Way too much fun. :) We also made a flyer of us hanging upside down on some monkey bars to give to inavtice members / active members when we try to visit them and they're not home. We also gave one to one of our investigators who wasn't home, and because she got it she called us and set up an appointment for next week! WONDERFUL idea! :) 

   Wednesday we found a secret community hidden in the mountains. WAY cool. We were dendoing way up in the boonies, and it was great. At one point, there was a crazy annoying dog, and he'd been barking at us for like, an hour. So I walked up to him, and while he was barking at us, I yelled at him, and charged at him, and FREAKED HIM OUT! He RAN away as fast as he could just whining the whole way! Japanese dogs have NO back bone, and NO bite. It's way funny! All my missionary dog stories are going to be me harrassing the dogs. ;) 

   That same day though, riding out in the secret neighborhood, I broke my bike!! Well, just one of the cranks. The screw for it had stripped way bad, and so I had to ride down some mountains with only one foot, (I know that one foot thing pretty well ;)) And got it replaced. Had to buy a new crank for 15 bucks, and our bike shop guy got me new pedals for free, so I got it pretty good there!! 

  The next day we were out in the boonies again, and we had a great idea. Crow Hunting, with slingshots. Crows here are CRAZY PESTS, and everyone hates them, including us. So, for p day today, we're going to go hunt crows with epic slingshots we made. Gonna have to tell you all about it next week. ;) Don't be too freaked out that I'm hunting crows, it'll be great!

   So you know the story of us melting our bikes with coffee? Well we took a train down there this time, and it saved us like, 30 minutes. Needless to say, we're NEVER biking down there again. The train was like, 2 bucks! So, public transpo from now on! 

   So, sad news. I CANNOT Skpye home. It's a rule from president evans, only phone calls. And for only about an hour max or so. :( Sorry, I was way bummed, but, there's a reason why, and we're blessed for obedience, so we'll survive. 

   So, we're dang fools, and celebrated thanksgiving a week early, BUT! It was great nonetheless. We went out to sushi, and it was DELICIOUS. Thanksgiving isn't a thing here, so we had to celebrate alone. ;) 

  That was daitai our week, ALL of our appointments fell through, so we didn't get to teach many lessons, but we still had tons of work do it. Thanks for everything you do everyone! I love you all dearly!

   OH! We need epic christmas music. Could I perhaps ask specifically for Josh Groban's Christmas Album? That would light Elder Lee and mines world aflame. And whatever else you might like to include. Thank you all so much! Tell the Laurels that I really appreciate them sending me a package, and who knows, maybe I'll get it after they incinerate the beef jerky. ;) Haha!!! LOVE YOU ALL!

   Love,

       Elder Dialogue

Japan week #15

Family!!

  So I have to make this a bit faster, running out of time! Elder lee makes me very distracted!!

     So RIGHT after I emailed last week, the snows came, and they came hard. It didn't stop snowing in fact, until Wednesday morning. We got a LOT of snow. That Monday we went up into the mountains, did some housing, and got the COPS called on us!! Apparently someone had called the cops, told them two white guys showed up on the doorstep, told them to die, and left. The cops didn't believe it at all, but they had to go out and investigate. They were WAY nice when they found us. So what could have been a LAME situation, wasn't so bad. :) And we biked all day. ;) 

  Tuesday was the craziest day this week! We biked to a place about ten miles away, and it was all in the snow. They ride down wasn't so bad, but the ride back was CRAZY! We were biking through like 6 inches of snow, and it was a blizzard the whole ride home, and it was a CRAZY blizzard! When we got to our bikes after housing, we found them as BLOCKS OF ICE. I'm not even joking. We had to head to the nearest store, and we bought lighters. But that did not work at all. So we instead...bought hot coffee. And poured it over our bikes to melt the chains and the gears. :P HAHAHAHAHA! We can't believe we had to do that. We greased em up as soon as we could, figuring the coffee wasn't good for it. My bike smelled disgusting. :P We were SO DEAD after that bike ride. 

  Thursday we went on splits to Tomakomai, about an hour and a half east of Muroran. We had a blast, and I went on splits with Elder Galeria, who only has 2 transfers left, and he just got finished being ap, so I learned a ton!  We taught some lessons, had a great time, and he was WAY impressed with my japanese. Which makes me feel good!

 The language is coming pretty well. Elder Lee as well is way impressed that my japanese is where it's at. He's afraid his next comp won't have as good of Japanese as me, makes me feel good about myself. ;) Haha! Still not fluent though! Gotta keep working!! 

   Friday was EPIC! We had an AWESOME lesson with a Sasaya San. He is way prepared, and he was accepting everything we taught him. We taught lesson one, about the restoration. We committed him to pray, read the Book of Mormon, and come to church. Church was like, way soon though, so he didn't think he could do it, which is understandable. But we also invited him to be baptized, and we were prarying so hard that he'd say yes and make a date, and he really though about it a lot, but ended up saying he wants to study more! :( Next lesson he'll say yes. ;) Haha! Pray for him please! 

  And nothing really special happened on Saturday or Sunday. I'm having a  BLAST with Elder Lee, we really have just SO MUCH FUN. Almost too much I feel like sometime! He's making this transfer go by way fast! We're already almost half done with it! O.O It's just too much fun being obedient, diligent, and BUSY! It's the greatest. I love you all family!! Thank you for all you do!

   Love you!! 

     Mike

week #14 pictures and video

Ward Talent show:  Mike and his companion's act

Dad sent Mike the head to his 20 lb gummy bear

Japan week #14

Heeeeellloo!

      I trust everyone is doing well and dandy. :) I've had an AMAZING week. We had SO MUCH FUN. It was also probably my hardest week yet in the mission field too. I'll tell you all about it. OH! But first, MEGAN! I love you! JOSH! Elder Lee is super excited to get a beanie from you! He said he'll wear it everyday of his mission, even in the summer! He said he'd write you a letter too when he gets it. BY THE WAY! The scarf you made for me, I LOVE IT! It's SO WARM, and I wear it everyday. :) DAD and MOM! So you may notice that I spent sixty bucks out of my debit card, that was for an electronic dictionary I found on a SCREAMING good deal, and so to make my language study better, particularly my study of the writing system, I grabbed it, sorry. :P 

  SO! This week was a hoot! Last p day I took Elder Lee around to some places close to our apartment to check the area out a bit. We ended up biking up this massive mountain, and then hiked all over it in the down-pouring rain. :P And what sucks, is that RIGHT after that, we got on the bikes to go back home, and the rain stopped. >.> Darn weather! That night though we dendoed in an area that I love, and we found a man named Toshihiro. And we had a great time talking to him about the gospel. He rejected us hardcore right from the start, but we started talking to him about his paintings that he makes, and he kept talking to us. And then little by little we kept adding in bits of the gospel and he was cool with it. He told us that it was way rare that he was talking to us about stuff like this. It was WAY cool, we set up an appointment with him for tonight, and we're going back. He gave us a bunch of apples too, which is HUGE. Fruit here is CRAZY expensive. Like, an apple is almost 2 bucks. ONE apple. We were stoked. :) 

   Tuesday was rocking awesome as well. We had a lesson with Yano San, our newest investigator, and we taught the restoration and the book of Mormon and that stuff. And it went really well, and the spirit was strong. And at the end of the lesson I invited her to be baptized once she new our message was true. That was my first time ever inviting someone to be baptized, it's kinda rare out here sometimes, and so I was a tad nervous, but I was just like, this is what you need, this is what will bless you and your two daughters. It was epic, but she said she didn't want to at the moment. Didn't want to make a date, but that's ok. We'll be seeing her again, she has a lot of interest in the gospel. :) 

   Wednesday was where our week starts getting really hard. We went to visit an inactive member. But we found his son at home who is in his 40's or so. And he was A JERK! He's goes to the Sokugakai Buddhist sect. Basically Buddhism's Jehovah's Witnesses. And he told us he doesn't want us talking to his dad, even though we ALREADY have, and he wouldn't let us talk to him then, made us a little frustrated since he was being WAY rude to us. In Japanese there's a polite form of speech, an informal form of speech, and a rude form. He was only using the rude form. We weren't happy, had to go calm down after that. Imagine being talked to like a dog, that's Japanese rude form. So after that we do some finding, no luck there, everyone is just way mean to us. And so we head to our appointment that night with an investigator, Takaishi San. It was his birthday, so we made him an apple pie, and had a great time with him. We had a great gospel discussion, and we invited him to be baptized, but he said he doesn't want to make a date yet, so we're going to have to work on him a little longer. But that's ok. :) 

  Thursday, was a HARD day. We had no appointments, so we were just out tracting all day, in the DOWN-POURING rain. And EVERYONE was rejecting us hard core, they'd hear us say we're missionaries, and they'd immediately reject us, and be way rude about it too. It was just a draining day. We were cold, getting yelled at, and didn't have any good work come from it. But to make up for it, we made a mini apple pie with some left over apple stuff, and we practiced for our talent show act. So there was a ward talent show on Saturday. And we didn't know about it, till Monday. And we had NO IDEA what we were going to do. We ended up deciding to sing, You're playing with the big boys now, from the Prince of Egypt. And so we choreographed the whole song, and during am instrumental part in the middle, we choreographed a GLOW STICK IN THE DARK DANCE. And it was rocking awesome. I'll talk about that more later though, and so we had a fun night, and it made it all better. :) 

  Friday was just another hard day, nothing special, but Saturday was EPIC. 

  So Saturday was the talent show day. We had nothing special happen during dendo, but man the talent show was awesome. So people were doing regular stuff, instruments, dancing, singing, stuff like that. And it was awesome, but what made ours awesome, was the surprise factor. We had Sister Soderquist, sister missionary, man our lights for us. And so when the part came we disappeared into blackness. And we made sure that it was pitch black. We had our glow sticks hiding in our pockets, and when the lights went out we started our epic dance. People were yelling and laughing and just in a state of BLOWN MINDS, over the whole thing. No one has seen the missionaries be so like, in their faces, and that song was just a fun way to pretend that we were like that. It was way fun. And our dance went awesome! We basically did it flawlessly, and the Sister Soderquist was PERFECT on getting the lights back on, it just went PERFECT. SO MUCH fun. We kinda one upped everyone, pretty badly. :P But it was great. Gotta love imagination. :) 

  Sunday was a pretty normal day as well. Got a TON of apples from the ward, so we're going to make apple pie again, but just for us!! YOSHI! ;)

   So that was my week, it was both EPIC, and way hard. But we had fun regardless. :) Elder Lee and I get along SO WELL. We're just laughing all day everyday, supporting each other, and just have a great time all the time. :) It's great! I LOVE HIM to death. 

 So, a couple things. I can't have you send beef jerky at the moment. Japan put an import ban on meat products from the USA and Canada due to some bovine disease outbreak or something, so hold off on that for awhile. :( I've also been compiling a list of things for Christmas, so I'll talk about that next week. OH! And I would love a bunch of pictures. Japanese people LOVE family stuff, and they love pictures. So could you guys maybe assemble a book of pictures from our lives. Just pics of us, doing what we do. Not just standard family picks, but like stuff from trips, dirt biking, tons of stuff like that too please! :) LOVE YOU ALL! Have a great week! Have fun!!

  Elder Mike Dialogue

    P.S. It's getting WAY cold, and yes, it has been snowing. Elder Lee is not excited. ;) 

week #13 pictures

Mike's new companion, Elder Lee