The rest of this week

This week on Monday a Filipino man came up to us and asked me if we were the missionaries for the Mormon Church.  I told him yes and he said he's been a less active for 15 years because he couldn't find the church when he moved here.  We told him where it was and invited him to come.  He should be coming next week when we may or may not be talking.  We were supposed to give talks a couple of weeks ago but didn't because it somehow got double booked.  Anyway, he owns a restaurant nearby and we sometimes visit him.

     Now you all know about my bike accident but don't be fooled, it had no effect on the rest of my week.  The next day I rode a bike over to a close (in spirit not distance) friend's house named Eiji and did yard work for his family.  At the end of the day, just as we were going home actually, a neighbor came over with a Japanese weed whacker.  Now if you've never seen one of those before I'll just give a brief explanation.  Imagine a regular weed whacker had a baby with a circular saw.  That's the Japanese version.  He let Elder Purba borrow it and he finished the yard in about 20 minutes when it would've taken weeks by hand.  While he was hacking weeds I talked to Eiji's mom a little.  I gave her a pamphlet, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and asked her to read it.  Her emphatic response,..........."No way!"

     "What?!  Really?"

     "Naaaaah, I'm just kidding."

     "So you'll read it, right?"

     "No way!  Hahaha!"

     "I'm dying inside right now! :("

     "I'm just kidding, I'll read it."

     She's such a punk.  :)  But we love her anyway.  She messed with us and pulled our heartstrings quite a bit but she really will read it and talk to us about it next time.  So yay!  She's a new investigator and her family loves us!  Her son Daiki and her daughter Moe were pretty concerned about my crash.  Moe (not pronounced like the 3 Stooges, mow the lawn + eh? I can't hear you) had crashed on her bike just a few days earlier pretty seriously and could empathize pretty well.  Daiki made sure I knew that he wanted me to be more careful.  He's 9.  We should be seeing them all on Wednesday, assuming the weather's good.

     Which brings me to another thing: there are 3 typhoons on their way.  One of them is actually here right now and it's pretty serious.  We're trapped in the church unless we want to get soaked and then blown away.

 We met a kid named Haruto a while back and gave him a Book of Mormon and taught him a lot but hadn't been able to meet with him for a while.  We decided to just take a day and find his house, even if it meant knocking on doors all day.  It didn't come to that because as we got off the train to go to his house he stepped out of the next car!  We walked home with him and the reason he hasn't been meeting with us is because he has a ton of homework.  More than during the school year actually.  He stays up until 2am studying and working because his teachers gave him a huge workload to do during summer break.  What kind of break is that?  Crazy as it sounds, he'll probably have more time during the school year to meet with us.  Luckily for him summer is almost over.

     I don't know how many of my American friends out there know about the Sapporo, Japan Temple Dedication but I got to watch it and it was awesome.  It's a beautiful building and the people are so grateful to have it.  I'm glad the people of Hokkaido (that's the island where the temple is) get to have the temple near now and can receive all the blessings of the temple.  It was really good to see.

Well Th-th-th-That's all folks!

Elder Rogers