First P-day in Japan

Well it's my first week here in Japan. I'm a day ahead of all of you so it is a glorious Monday (p-day) morning that began with seminary (thought I graduated but there I was!). So we got up at 5:30 to go to seminary and I didn't understand the whole thing but it seemed good! My companions name is Elder Crain (Elder Crain-Zamora) and he is on his last transfer. He will be home partially into December. The flight was crazy long! I slept an hour only but for that hour I was so out they couldn't wake me up even by hitting me, so that was weird. We had plenty of time in Portland and the flight to Japan was about 13 hours. We rode a bus and the APs are cool. President Wada and his wife are awesome people, they are doing a lot of good in this mission. The first meal was delicious. Sister Wada made us chicken noodle soup for one meal, French toast for another, and burritos and lots more. It was all delicious and very nice to have in a strange foreign land. Training was long because we were all tired but we got it all done, then got our iPads and went to a park on morning to do some finding (tracting or any activity where we might find new potential investigators). We did a very stereotypical looking thing called radio taiso which is essentially at 6:30 when the everyone gets up and does this stretch thing to music in parks mostly. My comp I already mentioned but he is from Chino where Grandma used to live! His first name is Michael too.

My first area is called Takao. I am the Takao Elders C. Yes, I had that Best Two Years experience, but it was more like I just couldn't/can't follow their sentences and hard words and speed. I got a nice 34000 yen bike and it has served me well so far, it is a hybrid between a mountain and road bike so it makes life easier and covers all my needs and has fenders so I don't get dirty! I also put on a permanent bike lock so when I need to lock my bike I just slide a pin and it locks it. Here all you do is slide the lock in the back tire and call it good.   Everyone is so good about not taking things, it's insane. Got my luggage the day after I got to Takao, which is about 1 hour from the mission home.

Life there seems pretty good, BYU football is rough. But your Halloween stuff looks like a lot of fun! For this Saturday HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!! I LOVE YOU!! Tell Morgan to keep up the good work on driving and have a great birthday dad. Mom, keep working but get some rest that sounds crazy busy!! I'm doing my best to be as good as possible here and I am learning so much. I love walking down the street and stopping to talk to people and invite them to church. Yesterday 5 ish said they would come!

On my first night in the area we went out to eat at some restaurant and we started talking to a guy sitting next to us. His name is Kai and he really likes cars so I talked to him about it and he has a brand new 2014 Subaru Imprenza that is crazy nice. He was intrigued by our prayer over our food so we talked to him about that and I bore my testimony about it to him. We are meeting him this Saturday to teach him more and some English! It was crazy and it helped me a ton! I love the work even though it's crazy hard and my legs burn from riding! 

I miss all of you! I hope you are having a fun time back home and that Halloween is great! I love you, have a great week and look for the Lord’s hand in your lives!

Love,

Elder Gailey

PS I am more in the country than most of the mission. Even that giant area on the left (Kofu, where my MTC comp is) has less inaka (countryside) than my area has. My iPad takes really good pictures so I will probably use it the most for pictures :) at least until I can get an adaptor or have you send one. Sometime in the coming months I will need a package of like soap and shampoo and toothpaste and stuff like that cuz all that is really bad here but I will let you know when it is closer to needing it. Takao is near Kichijoji and the C means that we are the 3rd group of elders in this area.  I ate all kinds of sushi and I had some octopus sushi on the 2nd day here, the suckers were crunchy but it wasn't too bad!  We are eating lots of bread (lots of Japanese people eat lots of bread) and Japanese food my comp makes! It's good! Delicious!

No dryer, but a washer - the only dryer in Japan is probably the Wada's and the emperors... Hahaha . We hang everything on clips.

Picture off my balcony.

There are 3 companionships in my area, mine and another live in the same apartment the other is across the building from us. I don't know how many wards. I think just 1 ward in my area.

The black bike with fenders in front of the car is mine!