Another week, another unique time in Japan

Dear Family,

Well this week was a little slower for lessons and stuff but we still had quite a few! And some fun stuff mixed in there as usual, I feel like there are a lot of missionaries over here who don't know how to enjoy the work while they are doing it so I try and enjoy it and work as hard as I can in the mean time. Certainly makes the days easier. So last week right after emailing we went to the FHE at the mission home! We took Yamamoto because he'll be on vacation until October so we wanted to get a bunch in before he left. And it was great, normally he hates games and stuff and he's way serious, but he just loosened up and started joking all over the place and he really enjoyed learning more about prayer. It was way cool! He is trying to master sarcasm and said that since I give him homework that he hates me haha then he would say he was joking. I think he said it 5 times that day and every time would just die laughing which was funny. But he invited us over to his house when he comes back so that's cool!

We've been dendoing out in Hanno city a lot and it's been good, that guy who came last week came from there, but we went there twice more this week and found some more cool people. No new investigators there but it was good! Soon we'll have some more. We thought we would be teaching Yoshitaka there on Tuesday but he had to move it to next week. And Yokoyama (the one with the baptismal date) has gotten sick from being overworked, so he hasn't met with us this last week which is getting a little bit intense on his baptismal date. So that's a potential worry. On Thursday we had a cool miracle. So we went to an area called Shintokorozawa, which is one or 2 stations away from the main Tokorozawa station and we started to Kubari there. I have started to figure out how to get some good conversations out of Kubari and I met this guy there, a guy named Takano San. He's in his 50s I think and still works so we caught him on his way home. I started talking to him about English and his daughter actually speaks fluent English apparently. But then he said he really didn't care to learn any himself so I introduced the church to him and it turns out he's been looking to study some churches, not necessarily enter, but to learn at first, so I gave him an intro to the,first lesson and invited him to hear it that Friday aaaaaannnndd he accepted! So then Friday rolls around and we're on splits and me and Elder Kaesler went to the church to teach him, and despite the rain (which usually will make any Japanese person run for their life) he came! So we went over part of the first lesson, about God and prophets and prayer, and he tried to pray after the lesson! It took forever to get that far because he has a strange fascination with talking about random things like how Europe bought a bullet train from Japan and stuff like that. So it was long but a good lesson, he said he would try and read the pamphlet and pray before Tuesday when we meet him again. He got way caught up in the picture of the members that was in the pamphlet and said he wants to meet them, wants to be like them, and surround himself with people like them. So we told him if he comes to church he can and he lit up with excitement and made a plan to go on the 20th! Woo!

Other than that as far as lessons went we taught Azuma about the word of wisdom again! This time he told us he has been keeping everything but drinking tea, so we talked about it and he decided to try and stop drinking tea again! Hopefully he can do it! And when he moves he'll still be in our area! I'm way excited about that! Also at church on Sunday we surprised everyone in mission correlation meeting when we talked about the amount of people we are working with, less actives, investigators and what not. Everyone was surprised and didn't realize how much we were doing for some reason and then in sacrament my companion and I bore our testimonies, especially about dendo in Hanno and everyone was way grateful and it was awesome! It was a good week! And it even rained a bunch!

It's been a great week! Today we'll be off to Hanno to go bowling and such, which will be great. But everyone is doing well from what I can see from back home so I'm happy about that! Kaiden was riding his bike like a boss! Hopefully the house painting goes well! And I'm way stoked to hear how BYU did! I wanna see that play way bad so if anyone can send me a video of it I would be way grateful! It will be way weird coming home next year to my dentist as my bishop... Hopefully my teeth are good and I don't have to get an extra interview! Lol oh also we played softball again on Saturday! I actually hit it a bunch this time and was doing good at the random positions that I played so I'm improving! I think the more I play sports though the more I miss getting to watch them all day every day! That will be nice! But for now I guess I'll be fine. Anyways, love you guys! Have another great week! Remember that you can do anything if you have the faith! 信仰があれば何でも出来ますよ！

Love,

Elder Gailey
ゲイリー長老

Spiders eating a butterfly

Family Home Evening

All you can eat pizza!

Zone Conference

Too close? Oops... power lines literally touching the railing

Typhoon with Elder Kaesler!

Part of lesson with Azumas

Email from Sister Wada on 9/10/15

Dear Parents,

You might have heard the news of heavy rain caused by a typhoon in Japan this week. We would like to let you know that all missionaries are safe and no damage was reported in our mission. We had an evacuation announcement from Odawara City warning a possible river overflow. The Odawara missionaries were promptly informed and evacuated to a nearby school and church building. The river did not overflow and everyone is safe. Each missionary has his/her 72 hour kit. We have a nice clear day today.

Thank you very much for your support. Please be assured to know that President Wada and I will always do our best to keep your missionaries informed and safe.

Sincerely,

Naomi Wada