Unbelievable!!!

so, this was most likely my wierdest week yet on my mission. both really good, and really bad. so first, we taught a lesson to kondo, our awesome investigator who has a baptismal date for this sunday!!! That was on wednesday, and it was about the spirit. I asked him if he'd ever felt the spirit, and we get into a really good conversation about that, then he gets quiet, leans back in his chair which means he's thinking deeply, then he comes back and says how he quit smoking 2 weeks ago, and he's not really sure why, he just stopped, and it was really easy, no withdrawls, no nothin! i almost jumped out of my chair and just screamed at him "THATS THE SPIRIT!!!" but, i managed to restrain myself. and we haven't even committed him to keep the word of wisdom yet! (That lesson happened on sunday, and I taught it by myself with a joint, one of the most spiritual lessons ever!)
Then on friday we were biking home from a members house, and this scooter man pulled me over, asking me if i was a missionary for the mormon church. he said that he had lots of interest and that he wanted to meet with us again! way cool! we set up an appointment for tonight with him, but he called and canceled because he had school come up suddenly, but we'll be meeting him on friday! but of course, because it's a miracle that means that he's not japanese, he's from malasia. and his name is Anlsem or something, not sure how to pronunce his name though, so we call him Amslam.
Now, saturday was the bad part. all new beans go on splits with the zone leaders their first transfer, so elder fukushima my bean went with elder guy my last companion, and i went with elder mckarns, the elder who replaced me as zl down here. it was about 2 in the afternoon when i get a call from elder guy. He said that elder fukushima had gotten in a bike accident, and was coughing up blood. that was all the information I got. I called president and let him know what little I knew, then we went to cover an appointment that the other 2 elders had but couldn't go to due to the accident. The rest of the day was me trying to get as much information as possible. Here's the story. Elder guy was infront on the bikes, and they were going down a hill, a really big one actually, so elder fukushima was going really fast. he was on the street, but tried to get up onto the sidewalk, but hit the curb at a bad angle or something, and he was thrown over his handlebars. Still not exactly sure what happened, but we know that there was a metal barrier somewhere along the way that he clipped, then he ran head first into a cement wall which was right next to the sidewalk. He fractured his skull, and broke his Jaw in a few places from the sound of it. cut his lip, and had to get stiches, and just tore his face to peices. Elder guy heard the crash and came running, some other people called and ambulance, and a member just happened to drive by and see them and came to help. There was blood all over the place, I still haven't seen my companion since saturday morning, (It's now tuesday night) but I have seen some of his things, and elder guy's stuff was all covered in blood too. His mom came down yesterday, and she's working out what's going to happen with him with prez right now. He'll most likely go home for a month or two to recover. He was in the ICU for a day, but he's ok now, going into surgery on his jaw thursday. it's pretty intense. And I haven't seen him yet! it's driving me crazy! we should have some time to go see him tomorrow though, we're making time. I'm in a 3 way with the ZL's now, so we're covering both areas right now, just mass insanity. That's why I taught the lesson on sunday alone with kondo, because my companion is in the hospital, and the other two missionaries had to be at church, so I split with a member to teach it. Other than my companion, things are going awesome. so, I have two things for you to pray for this week,

1 my companion will be ok, and be able to continue his mission,

2 That kondo will be able to be baptized this week!

Things are crazy right now, but the lord is still pouring out his blessings on us. just not in the form of safety for the time being! but I love you all, don't worry mom, I'll be carefull on the bikes, and have a great week. Make sure you tell me the baby info, and I'll tell you the comp situation next week! even though I'll be getting a new comp next monday, this is the last week of the transfer...

love you all!

Elder Olsen

Servius Snipe on Campus?????

OK, this week was an eventfull one! first off, thanks for the package! thebag's way nice, and the Doctor pepper barbeque sauce was amazing! I'll senda picture of the dinner we made with it, so delicious! So My companion, isafraid of new things, so he actually won't eat any of the candy you gave me,I put a bunch on his desk, and told him that I wasn't going to take it back,so he actually threw some of it away! yeah, he's not normal, but we'regetting along. And I took the beef jerky to a ward lunch on sunday, andeverybody loved it! They don't really have beef jerky here for some sadreason, just dried nasty fish...

So for about the past month, our water heater has been going crazy, it just turns off whenever it feels like it, which is really bad when you are in the shower. Recently though, it's been getting alot worse, in one shower it'll turn off like 3-5 times, so you have to get out, and go push this button toturn it back on, the hard part though, is to get all the soap on you, thenyou feel it go colder, so you have to hurry and get all the soap off beforeit turns freezing cold, so you can get out of the shower to push the button, such a pain! we're gonna call the mission office to get it fixed now...that will not work in the winter.

Then on friday, i was on companion splits, me and Willmore Choro, a newerkid from idaho. Since he's american, I decided to go check out the nearby college to see if we could talk to some kids there. There's a trick about colleges though, we're not allowed to proselyte, we can only talk to people, and even then, some people know who the missionaries are, so they don't like us there. But colleges are an awesome and really effective way to meet coolkids. So the two of us go onto the campus, and just say hello in english to everyone we see, we get a few people to stop and talk for a second, but then finally I said hello to this one kid, and he said "Hi" back. and no japanese person says hi, so i asked if he speaks english, then we got the conversation going. He actually lived in illinois with a baptist minister as an exchange student for 10 months, so he had really good english. He recognized us as missionaries, so the entire convo was him asking us questions about church and what we do and stuff, which was kinda scary, because we are not supposed to do that at all on campuses, but he was asking the questions, so Ilet it roll. he was actually a way cool kid, and towards the end, I asked if we could change phone numbers, so as we start to exchange numbers, I see out of the corner of my eye, a teacher (who actuallylooked alot like Severus Snape from Harry Potter) walking directly at us.I've been kicked off of colleges before, so I knew what was coming, he was going to make us leave. Before we could fully change numbers, the man came up.

Him; "What are you doing here"me: "we're just walking around looking at the campus" him "Why are you talking to this student?" me: "he speaks english, so we were just talking to eachother."*He looks at our badges* Him: "You're not allowed to be here"Me: "Yes I am"Student: "Yes they are, they're my friends, we wern't doing anything,there's no problem, you can go away."Him: "Can You come to my office with me, I want to ask you what they weretalking to you about."Student "No, I've got a class to go to"Him "May I see your ID?"Student No, you don't need that. you can go away now.at this point, I was loving this kid. The teacher kept telling us that wecouldn't talk to students, so we politely said thank you, and gave him the que to leave. He simply stood there, folded his arms, and waited. then the student said in english to us "Man I hate some japanese people, lets go" I laughed as the three of us walked off the campus, with this creepy manwalking 10 feet behind us the entire time. When he started following us, I turned to him and said "What are you doing?" he answered "Escorting you off the campus" then in the most sarcastic voice I could get i said "Oh thank you! you're so kind!" so the pictures I attached, are what my companion took, as we walked off the campus, that creepy dude was followingus for about 10 minutes. the last picture we took when we were in the trainstation, about 100 yards away from the school campus, and across a highway!he was still staring at the three of us! well, eventually, we got Kiichiro's information, and he's way interested! and he stood up for us atthe college! way cool! the entire way off the campus he was just apologizing to us, "sorry guys, some japanese people are just crazy," way fun day.

Then this last weekend we had general conference, and our really good investigator, Kondo, came to all 4 sessions of conference! he's progressing really well towards his baptismal date on the 24th of october!anyway, have a great week, hope you enjoyed the email this week, and peaceout!-Elder Olsen

Oct. 4, 2010 Yummy Yakiniku

so, you probably don't know, but Yakiniku is this japanese food. There's these resturants where there's a grill in the middle of your table, and they just bring you all this raw meat and stuff, and you get to grill it and eat it right there, way fun, one of my most favorite foods here, but this last friday, this RM from Japan came here, and he took me and my comp, my last comp and his new comp, then the sisters in our same area out to this yakiniku. he's a pilot, and wow, he's gotta be loaded. We thought he was just going to take us to some ramen shop or something, but he took us to the nicest resturant I've ever been to in my life! The waiters and waitresses were all in traditional clothes, (Kimonos) and we had our own room which we ate in, they bring you plates with like 5-6 pieces of meat on it at a time (which you order) but each plate was anywhere from 20-30 bucks. and he ordered pretty much all the food because we wern't going to make him spend that much money. In the end, we spent most likely somewhere around 800 bucks between the 8 of us who ate. the funny thing was though, is that right next to where we ate there was another really expensive place, but it was a bar. So the entire time we got to watch all the stone cold drunk buisness men getting helped out by their friends, falling all over the place.

anyway, yeah, this week was pretty good. we found a pakastan guy the week before, so we met him this week, he only speaks english unfortunately so my comp can't help out at all, but i gave him a book of mormon, and ran through a lesson one with him. He took it really well, he's not sure what god is, he used to be Muslim, but now he says that he found out that that was wack, so he's trying to find the truth. We've got general conference this weekend, and they have the sessions in english too, so maybe we can get him to come up there with us! oh yeah, and to answer some of your questions, i get to watch all of general conference, it's just a week later. and not in the comfortable basement on a beanbag unfortunatley...

That about sums it all up. I'm still trying to get my bean to speak up, he's slowly doing better on the street and in lessons which is nice. We're working hard, and starting to see all the miracles that god held back from me in my last area!

see yall next week.

-ps, Boozer went to the bulls?? what the heck?
-and BYU lost to USU? that's pitiful! pretty sure someone on the team needs to repent of something they did or somethin.

-Brady

Friend Newsletter Entry - Oct. 4, 2010

Hey guys,
Man I can't believe some of you are already home! I'm still cruizin along out here, haven't even gotten my 6 month death letter yet! (but that's only next transfer!) I'm in Yokohama right now, but I acutally just transfered. I'm livin in a four man, my last area was also Yokohama, I was ZL there, but I had been there for a while, so prez transfered me to the same apartment, but different ward, (who still goes to the same church building) so it wasn't much of a transfer except for the new companion. I'm now training a little Japanese kid named Fukushima. He's the quietest person I've ever met! Its really funny streeting people because The me, the foreigner does all the talking, and the actuall japanese person won't say more that his name, so there's alot of people that ask him if he's even japanese. but we're working it. Cool experience the other day though, I found a guy from pakistan who has tons of interest! we've taught him twice, and he said that he used to be Muslim, till he decided that it was wack, (actual wording) then he decided to find the truth! We gave him a book of mormon, and he was like, wow, this is kinda hard to understand, could we study this together a few times a week? I had to keep myself from falling off my chair, but I said yes, and boom, a new way awesome investigator! It's funny, but in japan, if we ever see a foreigner, we usually go talk to those people, because chances are, they are interested in Jesus Christ. dang Japanese. anyway, Keep on keepin on everybody!