Elder Tolen's Adventures in the Japan, Tokyo South Mission: Week 22 [31]: Branch BBQ and Biking to Hakone

It has been a great week this week! The weather has been amazing! It has been so sunny, but it has also been super humid. I'm really not used to this level of humidity, so it is kind of muggy sometimes. But it is all fun! I can already tell that it will get really hot soon. That will be interesting. All the missionaries say that I just need to get used to sweating. That wasn't very encouraging, but oh well! It is all part of serving! It should be fun!

So first, some bigger news. Tomorrow, we are getting a new missionary in Odawara. But. We know absolutely nothing about him. We know that he is from Japan, and he is supposed to serve in Australia, but he has to wait for his Visa, so he is coming here tomorrow. That's all we know. We don't know whose companion he is going to become or anything like that. So that is kind of exciting.

More interesting news! Remember that 16-year-old I sent pictures home of last time? He now has a baptismal date! I'm way excited! The only problem is right now, he only wants to be baptized because missionaries are cool. So the next step is getting him to want it for himself. If we can't get that to change then we'll have to push back his baptismal date, but right now his date is for the 13th of June! So that is way exciting.

This last Saturday, we had a ward BBQ! It was so much fun! We got a few of the students from our English class to come, and our 16-year-old friend came (I don't use their names because, you know, privacy stuffs). It was a lot of fun! I was able to play some baseball, and some soccer, and it was a ball! Get it? Ball? Moving on. One of the funniest parts was some of the little girls from the ward made us some flower stuff. So I will be sending pictures of that home.

Later that day, we hopped on our bikes and rode up a mountain to a place called "Hakone"! It was beautiful! But, like I said, it was up a mountain. That was hard. It was like 7 miles of just winding hills. It was great. I got some great pictures from that. While we were there, we were trying to visit these less actives, but all of them had moved! So we were taking a break, so I went to grab a drink from a vending machine, and these two buff dudes just started talking to me! It was great! They had biked there all the way from the Yokohama area! My first area! It was like 60km [37 miles] away! We had a great chat with them. One of them actually lived in America for a while, so his English was really good. But we just spoke in Japanese because his friend didn't speak any. One of them was a break dancer. He showed us some moves. It was crazy. They seemed really interested in the church, so we were able to show them how to find the church in their area! I really hope they go to church. It really is crazy how the Lord will put prepared people in your path. You just need to trust that He will. But you also need to be willing to look for them, too!

I love you guys!

Elder Tolen