Happy 海の日(July 18. 2010)

Hello

Wow it has been another great week. I hope everyone is enjoying their summer vacation. Today is a very special day in Japan. It is the first holiday I have experienced while i have been in Japan. Obviously it is sea day. I don't know what it exactly is or means but the kids get a day off from school. They seemed way excited. O ya they get a day off from school because they haven't had summer break. Their summer break is only for 5 weeks. They get out pretty soon but still they go to school way longer than american kids. So far it has been a great holiday I haven't really noticed anything different.

This last week it has been something that we like to call tsuyu. It is kind of fun. It just starts raining out of nowhere. We got downpoured on twice. Thursday it rained all day, kind of. It started at 2 when we were in minokamo. And we were riding and the raindrops were so big that they hurt when they hit you and we couldn't see because it hurt. We took shelter under a nearby bridge. That was fun until a river started flowing through it. Not a creek or a stream, a river. There were also huge spiders in there and they were on my companion. It was kind of like Indiana Jones. We decided we needed to get out from under the bridge. There was a recycle shop near by. We rode for that but before getting there we got drenched. At that moment I was more wet then when I go swimming. It was insane. We chilled in the recycle shop until the rain had let up. it took like 45 minutes. It was still raining but we went out anyway of course our investgators got stuck in the rain so what can you do. We were not able to see them but it was still intense. That night alot of places were flooded. The street next to the other elders in our district was flooded hard core. they went out and liked try to help people who needed help. Inuyama i don't think was hit as hard. The next day the same thing happened but we hid in a mall the power went out. The worse thing was that we couldn't use the escalators. We were able to talk to people in the mall so it wasn't bad at all.

It was an insane week. After church yesterday there was shokujikai. that was fun. It is like a party after church. It was cool.　I learned how to hold my chopsticks the Japanese way and I also got to eat ice cream. It was fun and we got to talk with members and things. it was way good.

it is getting way hot it was like 34 yesterday. remember that there is humidity. It is hot but it is nice to have the sun out every once in a while. There are also a lot of bugs here. Probably because it rains all the time and we are on an isldand i don't know. It's funny. There are spiders every where. There is this train station that we call shilobs layer because there are literally 1000 spiders. Trust me I counted. There is way too many but they are cool. They eat the moths so what can you do.

We just opened up english class again. We are hoping to find more investigators that way. We will see how it goes. Everyone loves english here, espeacially the kids. We say hello to them and then they say `hero hobayu` translated hello how are you. Then they laugh and talk about how cool it was to say that.

Everything is going well. I am so thankful for your prayers. They help. Have a great week.


Love
Elder Nelson