Thank you for all of the great emails this week. I am way excited that we have bees that will live! I expect to be eating honey when I get home.
It has been a not-so-good week, but there is a bright spot: we were able to set a baptismal date for our 18-year-old investigator on July 4th. I am still scared that he will back out, or he won't be fully prepared, but I know that the Lord will help him out. His name is Murakami Shinsuke and he is a freshman in college. He wants to go to America next summer for study abroad, so I am trying to talk him into BYU. If he ends up becoming a member, that would certainly help me convince him, but we'll just have to wait and see.
Last week for p-day we went with some members to a small town called Biei that is about 30 minutes away. It has a lot of rolling hills and beautiful scenery. The other elders thought it was boring, the sisters enjoyed it, and I thought is was slightly drawn-out, but still a very good p-day. It was nice to see any part of Japan other than Asahikawa. I have been here 4 months now, and I really haven't seen anything other than our area. Biei is well-known for their flower fields and lavenders, and I ate lavender ice cream. It was weird, but pretty good.
On Thursday we went to a Japanese rest home with a potential investigator and just had fun with the old people. They were probably the happiest people I have met in Japan (besides the members of the church).
On Saturday we had a music night where I played "Olive Tree" on the piano and accompianied Elder Jankowski as he sang "My Soul Hungered". It was fun to play the piano again, but a little rough since I only got to practice each piece about 5 times. But it was a great time.
On Sunday I got to give a 5 minute talk in Sacrament Meeting (I got the call on Saturday afternoon). It was hard to give a talk because I only had about 1 hour to prepare it (we were busy doing missionary work the rest of the time). But it went alright, and my Japanese is slowly improving. I can carry on normal conversations, but I get lost when people try to talk to me. It is still way hard to understand people, especially when they use a ton of words I don't know.
Well, that is about it. Thank you for your love and support. I love you all.
PS - I thought about Brooke's list of 100 things to do before dying, and thought it would be good to start my own. If anyone has suggestions, I am open to hearing them.
