Sometimes, you just can't give life a title...

Well this week went by really fast, last Monday we went to a place called Aokigahara with some members and to couple of little lakes up there and to a group of waterfalls. it was pretty fun, the only downer for that was that you couldn't see the mountain while we were up there, it was too cloudy. But we still got some pretty good pictures. That night we did a bunch of visits, but only one person was home. It was really good though because we finally found an opportunity for service! He wants us to come over and either trim his trees, or cut them down. Not really sure which. But something about trees and the word cut.

Then on Tuesday, we tried to visit a couple more people because it was their birthday recently and so that was fun. But it turned out that for one of the people, we were misinformed. Her birthday was not on the first of this month, it was the first of last month. So it was a little awkward and we gave her a little gift anyway. It was really good though, because I don't think that she gets visited very much.
Then, we had sports night that night. I have almost gotten spinning a basketball on my finger down! It is really hard, but after a lot of practice, I can get it for about three seconds now. Also, I am getting
better at badminton. So that's good. And we all had a really fun time, and so that's what is the important thing.

Then on Wednesday, we visited another member for his birthday! It was fun, he was a little sick, so that was too bad, but he was happy that we came. Then we were biking around and Elder Day was like, didn't Mirai (who was an old investigator) live over here? So we3 decided to go to his house and see if he was a home and...Bang! Miracle! He was home and his mom was just coming home from work but had to leave and she asked us to teach him a lesson right then because he wasn't busy.
We talked and found out that he has his basketball club everyday except Wednesdays. So that was cool and we were able to pick him up again. We were talking and found out when his birthday is and we made plans to go eat with him and it is on a Sunday, so we got to explain Keep the Sabbath Day Holy! And we were talking a little bit about Moses and prophets with that too. Seeing as he is like thirteen, after we reached a little break in the lesson he asked, "can you teach me some math?" So we were just like, "sure, why not?" Haha! Awesome. And so we helped him understand more about prophets, the Book of Mormon, church, and fractions. Then we had the Uematsu family Mogi that night and that was awesome as ever.

On Thursday, we had to go to Numazu's Eikiawa because they have three classes and Elder Bauer is training a Japanese companion, so he doesn't speak English and they don't have enough teachers. So we went over to help them out and the sisters taught Fuji's eikaiwa class. It was fun and we got to hang out with the Numazu elders...It was good!

On Friday, we had a great DTM and we also got to celebrate Elder Otsu's birthday! (He's Elder Bauer's Bean-chan). It was way fun and we had a Skype thing going on with the rest of the zone to go over goals and it was pretty cool! And President Ishii was in Fukuroi! Lucky Ducks! Then, since it was a less active member's son's birthday on Friday, we biked about 30 kilometers there and it took about four hours. Then we gave him some candy, talked for a minute and had to bike back. That was a little less distance than the way there, because we found a road that leads pretty much straight home. And it only took an hour and a half. #Hills

Then on Saturday, we were sore. Hahahaha! But seriously, we were. And we went to a matsuri that Mirai said he and his buddies were going to. Unfortunately, we didn't see him there, but we still talked to a ton of people and passed out a lot of eikaiwa chirashi. Then we had a lesson with the ward mission leader and his family and that was a lot of fun! They are super cool, and their kids are nuts! Hahaha! Then we had a lesson with a guy that we met housing last Sunday and we talked about the Plan! And we also got a lot of good information about Buddhism. He is sharing with us just to help himself try to understand and so we might be able to help him better. It is great, actually learning about Buddhism without being told that you are wrong just straight up. And he is good, because he doesn't know everything, but is willing to learn and find out for us if we have a question.

The on Sunday, we had a great sacrament meeting and the speakers were great! There was this white guy that talked and his named started with...I think it was an...Elder something. Elder...R something.
Hahaha! But then we had a great lesson from the teachings of Howard W Hunter about becoming great. "Giving consistent effort in the little things in day-to-day life leads to true greatness." It was really awesome! And then last night we had a FHE at the Mochizuki house with a lot of ward members. It was really fun and we learned a lot. We played the "Who am I?" game. And it was pretty easy for the most part, but there were some questions that were pretty hard. And under favorite word, mine was GLUM not GWAR. They cannot read my English handwriting. Hahaha! I couldn't think of what my favorite word was in Japanese.

Anyway, I hope you all had a great week and that you go the distance....hahaha!

Lots of love and other stuff!

Elder Richardson