富士山 (Mt. Fuji) September 20, 2010

Good Evening everybody,

How is life going, probably pretty good. Japan is still great.

Fuji is awesome. First of all I am 10 minutes away from the beach by bike. It is pretty nice. You can do so much at the beach like, bbq, watch people swim, watch people surf and fun stuff like that lol, but seriously the beach is awesome. I have only been once and I just looked at it and kept riding my bike. Fuji is way nice though. It is much cooler than Inuyama. Inuyama was incredibly hot but Fuji is much nicer. It is also September so it has started cooling down anyway, but still. Mount Fuji is huge. I have never seen anything like it. The problem is I can't see it most of the time. It is always covered by clouds. It is kind of wierd. It is this massive thing and I can't see it most of the time. I think the clouds are attracted to it. I have seen the whole thing once and it is truly massive. I think we are going to go hike it one pday. That will be fun.

The apartment is way nice. It is a yonnin which means it can fit 4 missionaries. At the moment there are only 2 missionaries: my companion, Elder Wilson, and me. So it is huge. Inuyama's was pretty small but this apartment is huge. That is also another bonus about Fuji. So pretty much I love Fuji, not just because of the mountains, the beach, and the apartment, but there are also great people here too.

My new Companion is Elder Wilson. He is from Oregon. He is 20 years old and he is on his 13th transfer. This is his 4th transfer in Fuji. When he returns from his mission he wants to be a navy seal so that's pretty cool. He has slowly started to train for it. We have gone running a few times in the morning. I am not the biggest fan but it is good for me and I could use a little exercise.

So today is Tuesday which is not pday so this makes it a little awkward. lol. Ya yesterday Elder Wilson and I had to travel to Shizuoka to meet the other elders. They were actually having a ward activity there and they played softball. Yesterday was a holiday called honor the old people. Im not sure the real name but that is what they do. Softball was fun. So there are 10 missionaries there and we played against the ward. So we are young, fit, in our 20s, playing softball against these members who are in there 30s and 40s and have kids and everything. I pitch the first inning and I am throwing nice underhand pitches. I thought that's what we were supposed to do. They get like 4 runs but whatever. Then it is our turn to bat and they made us submit a line up. Which is weird but thats how serious this was. Then this member gets up and is throwing like the world softball champion. I am pretty sure his pitches were going 60 miles per hour. We had trouble hitting him. He didn't go easy on the elders who had never played baseball before (or softball). Some of us were pretty good but we couldn't get enough runs to beat them. I started pitching harder but I can't throw that hard under hand. It was like the most seroius game of softball I have ever played. We had umps and everything. It was rough. They were so happy to beat us.The final score was 7 to 6, but man was it tough.

So there are 12 missionaries in our zone and none of them are sisters. It is the second smallest zone next to the Nagano Zone. My last zone was the biggest but now it's smaller. They are both cool. One of my zone leaders is Elder Larson. He went to Cimarron high school and graduated in 08. He is pretty cool.

Ya back to my story. After playing hardcore softball, Elder Wilson had to go to Nagoya. There is a week long training there for all the leaders. He is a district leader therefore he has to go. So I dropped him off there and then I returned to a new area. It is Numazu. I will be here until Friday and Saturday with Elder Carr and Elder Otahara. They have been out 6 and 5 transfers respectivly. It tool a while to get back because it is further away then Fuji. Numazu is way close to Tokyo. Numazu is cool but we don't have three bikes so we are going to do South America missionary work (lol) and walk everywhere. It shouold work out well.

So last Tuesday I came to Fuji. It took quite a while. It was about an hour ride to Nagoya from Inuyama where I met Elder Wilson. We got on a train and four hours later and 50 dollars later we were in Fuji. It was a long day. Everything went well.Both Fuji and Numazu are closer to Tokyo than Nagoya. I think it is about 20 dollars and an hour and a half train ride to Tokyo.

We have one really good investigator here. She is so nice. I have only met here once though. She was supposed to come to church but cancelled because her son got sick. Hopefully she will be able to come this next week even though we won't have too much time to visit her.

Well everything is going well. Have a great week back in the USA.


Love
Elder Nelson