5 Months Already

Dear Family,

It's been a pretty good week this week. We haven't gotten to do as much Dendo as we usually would have liked to do because Saturday night until today Elder Bunker has been sick. We were able to go to sacrament and part of DCS meeting though so that was good because we were able to get a less active that we found a week or 2 ago to come to church with us. He's a little crazy mentally and he always tells us about it, but he has been baptized and he wants to start coming back to church and quit smoking. We had a lesson with him in Saturday where we read the Book of Mormon with him and got a feel for what he does and doesn't know about the gospel. He actually took us out to a soba place afterwards and we had some good curry and katsu chicken.

We've been trying to do a lot of streeting this week as we both feel like we have gotten kind of bad at it. So pretty much all our finding time was spent just walking around trying to talk to people. We found quite a few cool people and maybe through some perseverance we can have a man named Kojima take lessons eventually, he lives right up near us so it shouldn't be too hard to visit him every now and then. The big trick will be actually finding specifically which house is his. In between walking around all day we had a couple lessons. We stopped by another less active members house (Brother Mongen) and talked to him and followed up on if they made a family Book of Mormon reading goal, which they did. And we had a lesson with Tamura San who seems a little less fushigi (mysterious and crazy) so we will keep teaching him unless in the coming weeks he becomes too fushigi to keep teaching. Brother Nakajima is finally accepting, ready, and willing to proceed with his baptism on the 31st and while we weren't there for ward council our ward mission leader (brother Kato) talked about it and it is a go for the 31st at 10:00 am and he will be baptized by the first or second counselor in the bishopric. We are very excited for him to get baptized. He will get to pass the sacrament very soon after he gets baptized too so he is almost more excited for that. Some of our other investigators and potential investigators are nearly impossible to meet with or contact so that's a bit frustrating but we are working as hard as we can.

On Sunday when Elder Bunker was asleep and I was putting a bunch of things into our area book, doing some tedious things that had built up a little bit over the week and past few weeks, I started thinking about the past few weeks in Takao, there were a lot of good things but I started focusing a bit too much on some of the not so good things and then we got a phone call from our ward mission leader saying he was bringing us some food because Elder Bunker was sick. So he walked to our apartment and dropped off some still hot pancakes and miso soup that him and his wife had made at the time of the call. So Elder Bunker got some perfect sick food and I got to eat some too. Then Elder Bunker went back to sleep and I started thinking again and I realized that we have seen so many miracles and things in the past weeks. From brother Kato bringing us some delicious pancakes to brother Nakajima suddenly being incredibly excited for his baptism, there were tons of miracles.

I was able to join you guys in your fast although it was not at the exact same time I don't think but I did the best I could there, hopefully Trevor makes it through everything with no issues. Dad, it is quite the work that we get to do out here isn't it? It's been way cool to see how the gospel touches so many people's lives in so many different ways, and as a missionary I have a special part in helping that come about. I have really begun to love being a missionary. And of course along with that comes not enough time. Today is my 5 month as a missionary mark and next month I am 1/4 of the way done, it seems crazy and I feel like it's just going to slide right away pretty quick. I am incredibly glad that I made the decision to come here and while its a hard language and sometimes I get frustrated with the people because most of them just ignore us but I love it.

It sounds like Morgan's aches and pains have gotten fushigi (haha). Hopefully everything gets figured out there pretty soon though. Sounds like she had quite the crappy experience that night though! Haha! Glad Meagan is doing alright as well! And the Seahawks won by 1 touch down... Holy smokes that is close! If I missed anything in this email just let me know, but last and most definitely not least, on my 5 month day, Happy Birthday Mom!!! You're the best mom out there! I love you!

I love everyone else in the family too, have a great week and do some exciting things!

Love,

Elder Gailey

Pounding Rice to make "mochi" (ground rice cakes)

The girl is a ward member who turned 20 so they have a special
traditional kimono that they wear so one of our
investigators forced me to take a picture with her.

Other fun pictures

These are Elder Bunker's Tabi boots
(shoes that mostly construction workers wear)