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. ;)
