Post Christmas call, and BAPTISM!

Dear Family,

Well how's everyone doing this week? It's been so long! Haha well bad joke aside, it's been a good week over here in Japan, and it sounds like it's been a good one over there too! I feel like there is so little to report this week since you already know but I guess I'll start with the biggest news, Takeuchi San is now Takeuchi Kyoudai!! He's made it to brother status by entering into the waters of baptism and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost! It was awesome! We met him a little early and helped resolve some concerns. Basically he was still wondering if he's deserves such a great blessing, so we pulled out D&C 20:37 and read the requirements for baptism and showed him that he's ready and definitely deserves it. Then he was given peace of mind and got a ride with a member all the way to the Shonan church where we had the baptism, it's about an hour away, maybe 45 minutes. But we don't have a font so we headed over there. And it was great!

As expected we prepped as much as possible had everything ready, but pretty close to the start he told us that his second white shirt was too small, so we had the Shonan missionaries race home grab one and let him borrow it. So it was all good, I was the pianist for the congregation songs, and musical numbers and everything, so I was decently busy the whole time, but it was fun! There were some talks then I witnessed for his baptism. His knee was super close to coming out but stayed down just barely, and he came up with a massive smile on his face, man, he just beams now. It's incredible! Then while he was changing they do a thing in Japan where you will shout out a hymn number and then everyone sings the first verse of that song, so basically as pianist you have to be able to play all of them. I was super nervous but only had to say no one time, and the rest went well and then he came out and bore his testimony. It was really short but heartfelt, and the ward really welcomed him at the end, they showered him with gifts, Books of Mormon, book marks, pictures, everything. It was awesome, he felt so loved. Then he got confirmed by a recent convert from a little under 2 years ago named Hiro (pronounced hero) who is one of the missionaries best friends in the ward, he's 22 I think right now. It was amazing, next step is to get him the priesthood and to the temple for baptisms for the dead, pretty cool right????  So that's Takeuchi Kyoudai!

Other than that we shipped off Elder Leftwich yesterday on the Shinkansen (bullet train: she-n-kān-sen) and he made a 2 hour trip take just over 30 minutes. And Christmas was great! It was loads of fun eating crepes as a Odawara family, and then having district meeting getting my package, and eating しゃぶしゃぶ (shabu shabu, the thing with the split pot). Teaching bible class was way good to. Just overall was a great week!

Thanks for everything in the Christmas package!! I hope everyone had a good Christmas, and that everyone was able to do the Christmas challenge! We're there any cool results from any of it? :) let me know!!  Hopefully soon I'll be able to tell you who the next baptism will be, but for now, I'll stick to teaching and finding my heart out. I love all of you and I'm so grateful for the opportunity I had to talk to you all! You're all growing up so fast! Lol have a great week this week, see who you can share the gospel with! New Years is a great chance too, everyone loves to make resolutions right? Why not church? Woo! Love you!

Love,
Elder Gailey

Baptism

 

Christmas Day

Christmas Dinner

Elder Gailey got his package on Christmas Day!

(A Christmas Miracle - it was only 3 weeks late!)

Christmas Snowmen!  Olaf!

 

Elder Gailey's picture of talking with the family

More pictures from the temple

Elder Leftwich talked Elder Gailey

into letting him shave his legs!

He says - Never Again LOL!

 

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Dear Family,

Well this week was a good one! I'm now in my new area, Odawara, which is pretty much separated from the whole mission so it's kind of a weird feeling. It's a good area though and I like it a lot! Also the companionship is great so I can't really complain! Leaving Yamate wasn't too fun, but the branch here welcomed me really nice so don't worry too much!

This week back in Yamate we had a lot of things going on, Monday night the Sorensen's had us over for dinner and they fed us Navajo tacos! It's been since the MTC that I've had those. There were even enough scones that we could have some with just honey, and it sure made me miss just pounding scones back home, mmmm. Also I think on Tuesday, we went with a young man in the ward and went out to dendo with him. He was pretty quiet but he said that his image of dendo has changed (in a good way) from what it used to be, at least a little bit. So pretty successful I would say. Other than that we just had eikaiwa and some lessons, one with Nakamura, and one with Ken Kimura, the guy from a couple of weeks back. They are both doing really good, Ken still wants to get Baptized, and Nakamura is getting there.

Thursday was the day I was to transfer, so I hopped on a train kind of expecting a rough ride all the way there because of my bike and katanas, but it was actually really smooth and easy. My car lined up perfectly with elevators and other train line entrances so every time I had to transfer it was super easy, and for the long train I even made it into the handicap car where there is tons of room for my bike. So it was nice. The whole district and some members met me at the station and that's where the craziness began. This Saturday was the Christmas party so we had to do a lot of set up for that, and there was also game night and bible study on Friday. So we've been pretty busy. During weekly planning on Thursday one of our investigators who had apparently disappeared for a few weeks called and wanted to meet the new missionary so he showed up and we taught him a lesson about the Sabbath day and Elder Okada, gave him a baptismal date and set up an interview for the next day, so there will be a baptism on the 26^th this week! Cool right? We've taught him all the lessons now and he's ready. We're really excited for it, especially because me and Elder Poffenberger are going to be the witnesses for the baptism.

At the Christmas party I didn't realize it at the time, but here were more people there than there are in the branch, Sunday was a bit surprising to say the least. It's a small branch, about 30 in total, so not to big, and I've met almost every member between visits, the party, and church. So it looks like it's going to be a good time, you'd also be way proud of me mom, I've had to play the piano so much on my mission I don't really mind playing for things anymore, and the church members here found out and I've already been tasked with playing for a primary performance, and I played for almost every song in the Christmas party. So looks like I'll be playing a lot here.

Other than that we've been finding and caroling a lot. I think we've caroled the past 3 days in a row, it's pretty intense. Oh also the apartment is great, we all get along just fine, and the fun stuff has been going down in the apartment, jokes and random weird things but it's been good. It feels like Christmas but a little different at the same time, kind of intense! How has everyone been doing on that Christmas challenge? Mom told me about her and Morgan a little bit, but how's everyone else doing? Emilee told me she's going to put the video on Facebook, did she do it? I hope it's going well and you're enjoying this Christmas season. I'll be calling home in the morning my time on the 26th so that is sometime in the evening on the 25th where you are. Just tell me what time you want me to call you at and I'll make the call! Basically anything from 3 pm your time on I can do, so anytime is good, just let me know, the nicest might be 5:00 ish your time.

Anyways, I'm so grateful for all of you, and I hope everyone has had and is having a wonderful Christmas. Send me lots of pictures, I want to hear all about it. I love you all and Merry Christmas!!!!

Love,
Elder Gailey

P.s. The Christmas letter looks great! Thanks mom!

Temple day with my district in my new area!

Our duo's up to three!

Dear Family,

Well this week was a good week, not as much to report as the last one but it was a good week. So right now one of the biggest things to tell you all is that: I'm transferring. Seems like I'm going on a lot of 3 month stints. But on the flip side, I'll be companions with Elder Poffenberger!! And Elder Okada (Japanese elder) and Elder Leftwich (leaves next week) so it will be a party with 3 companions for a bit!!! Crazy right? I'll be going to a place called Odawara. It's way down south, the farthest south in the mission, and it's a pretty small branch but it should be lots of fun. So that's the big news of the weekend.

Other than that we had a good and busy week. So first I went to Kamiooka this week for splits. Also a quick side note. Right now we are outside Landmark Tower right now standing in a huge group of people waiting for potentially the Barcelona soccer team to come out of the building, and we've been just casually saying things in Japanese to a couple in front of us, and the boyfriend went and got his girlfriend some candy and gave some to us even though we've barely said much more than hi to him so far. It was way random but funny. Anyways so Kamiooka was lots of fun, I got to be companions with Elder Hilton, one of the potential roommates for college, and the one who wants me to go out for ultimate frisbee at BYU with him. It was lots of fun because we're both about the same level of Japanese and were able to have a real good time teaching and talking and stuff. So it was good. While I was there though, Nakamura San was able to go to a dinner with Elder Spackman and the Barton family and it went super well. He's a little bit poor so he ate tons of food and the Barton's spoke English with him and he loved every second of it. He really was able to see what kind of people church members are and he really wants to be like them. So that went really well.

Other than that, this week we practiced again for the Christmas party at eikaiwa and taught Nakamura his first real lesson, and played basketball again on Saturday. This time I was slaying the 3's! And basically that means I made 2. So that was cool. Also Saturday was the Christmas party, so Nakamura came and he loves to sing hymns so he went hard, and I mean hard, when the eikaiwa students sang silent night together for the ward. It made everyone laugh and they loved him. I also got to translate for the Sorensen's and Sister Sorensen did super well in fellowshipping Nakamura even though his English isn't perfect. I can't even express the joy that comes when the ward is doing everything they can to welcome an investigator. It was amazing.  The American members are great in this ward at it. Oh, and then Sunday we had an appointment as a district to go eat dinner with an investigator family, the Suzuki family. So all 6 of us went to their house and they held a little party with a lot of their family members too. It was really, really good, I think I told you about them before but an MTC teacher stayed with them at one point for a homestay and that's how they know about the church. But after all of the eating and talking and stuff the missionaries all gave a spiritual message, we shared one of the Christmas videos, the one about if we didn't have a savior, and shared our testimonies, told them of the blessings they can receive, and asked them to meet with us again, and learn more. So it went really well, we don't have a next appointment but it will be coming soon. We really don't want to let them slip through the cracks. So that was last night pretty much!

It sounds like the weather has been pretty insane back home, the rain and what not, I miss the Seattle weather and stuff a lot, it's not so much different from here but it feels a lot different. I'm glad everyone is going to be having a nice Christmas together! Gonna be kind of a bummer next year when everyone is on the off year with the in-laws but I guess I'll see you anyways. So I can call any time on the 24-26 in Japan. I don't know when my new companions want to but if you would like I could definitely call in the morning on any day, I was thinking I would call on the 26th here at a time that works well for everyone there, that way you get the call on Christmas. Sound good? If not just let me know and I'll call you at the best time for there, the church is 30 seconds from my new apartment. I hope everyone has been having missionary experiences lately! Christmas time is a great time to turn in to the family but also a better time to turn out to all those who don't know. So as part of a little Christmas challenge I thought of something to have everyone do. So this week try and think of someone who you can have watch that new Christmas video "why we need a savior" whether you share it with them on Facebook or send a link in a text, or even just tell them where to find it. But ask them to watch it and sometime after (before the end of the week) share your testimony about it with them! I know it's not super natural all the time, but we can for sure touch the lives of at least 8 people as a family! (That's one each) so let's go for it this Christmas ok? Whenever you do it, send me an email about it, and then see if you can do another!

I love you guys! I can't wait to talk to you, I'm doing the best I can everyday to be a better person, to come closer to my savior, and bring Japan to him. Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Gailey

 P.s. Mom and dad, I finally cashed in my Christmas present from last year (the katana) unfortunately I forgot to take a picture before it got all wrapped up, but I'll be sending it home the next chance I get! I was actually able to get 2 as well, one long and one short so hopefully you can all see it soon! Love ya!

Brother Isarai with Elder Gailey

Elder Gailey and Suzuki

 

 

Elder Gailey and Yuki Sato

 

 

Elder Gailey loved this wording - Happy Merry Christmas

Maki's mom and Maki

The Suzuki Family

 

Elder Gailey and Tim

 

The Toring family with Elder Gailey

Yamate Ward Christmas Party

Video of Typhoon weather in Japan

 

First week of cold December!

Dear Family,

This week was pretty good! We had all kinds of things happen. Lots of miracles came this week, so I'm happy about that. We did a lot of good work, and it was kind of crazy. So first thing to tell you about is the miraculous night we had after going to the temple on Tuesday. So it's been really effective to house big apartments here in Yamate recently. So Tuesday night we headed out to go find a new one, and we found a massive apartment. It's got 5 floors with like 35 - 50 ish rooms on each floor. So there's a lot of people in one place. So we started on the top floor, left side and over that side we spoke to 6 people total. 4 of them became potential investigators, and 2 became new investigators. So I would say that we were pretty guided to find those great people. One of them even had a way tight beard!

 So one of those people we met was Nakamura San and the next day he came to eikaiwa and then met us again on Friday, and is going to be meeting us every Tuesday and Friday from now on learning some English for 30 minutes and gospel lesson for 30 minutes. It's going really well though. Our plan is to invite him to be baptized this next Friday or the transfer week Tuesday. Because yes this Saturday is transfer call day so, we'll see if I'm still here for Christmas or if I go somewhere else! It will be cool. So this email is probably going to be super unorganized but I talked about eikaiwa earlier so it's not super random. At eikaiwa I got to play the piano for our song practice. We had all 25 eikaiwa students sing silent night, and they will be performing at our Christmas party. So me and my little band of 25 English speakers will waltz on into the Christmas party and put on quite the show! Woo!

Then later this week we went back to that same apartment and housed again and bam, more miracles. We were housing and suddenly ran into a less active. We were going through our regular intro style things and she stopped us and said that she was a member a long time ago. So we've stopped by a couple times now. She told us she doesn't do things because she's lazy, and she really doesn't have any desire to do more so it's kind of tough, but we'll have the sisters come back and see where they can get with her. It seems like in the past they had some success with her so, we'll see!

Other than that this week we had a dinner with a member named Jenny Shimai. What we thought was just dinner ended up being a big party though with like 40 people total including us, mostly non-members too. So it was pretty intense. We didn't get much chance to dendo there because the people weren't really wanting to listen to it when we tried but we were able to build some good relationships and it was fun! Oh I also got to teach an AB lesson (after baptism) on splits with Elder Terry to Kambayashi Kyoudai. So it was lot of fun!

So yeah sorry this email was really all over the place, but it was a crazy good week. I hope everyone at home has had a good week! Dad, it sounds like your gun is way cool! Also there's a lot of good off-roading in green water I've heard. So let's go off-roading and shooting sometime! Also no worries on the lights mom, I'll be back there to help next year! I really miss Christmas lights, so I want to help! I'm glad everyone has been doing well, Ollie included! Sorry he's growing like a weed but I can't wait to see him! Anyways be safe, do something crazy, and make some new memories this week and Christmas season! And don't forget, this is an amazing opportunity to share the joy we receive from the gospel with others. If you get a chance share some of the new Christmas videos with your friends, I'm sure they will like them. Good luck everyone! I love you!

Love,

Elder Gailey

P.S. I bought a new warmer coat today mom, so no worries on me being cold! It wasn't even expensive, but it's super warm and with my sweaters I should be good in any weather!

Elder Gailey had to decipher ridiculous bad Japanese handwriting.  :-)

Elder Gailey and Elder Busted

A normal Japanese bathroom

Elder Spackman, the cool old man, and Elder Gailey

The missionaries with one member after eating Tonkatsu

Tonkatsu

Elder Gailey talking about Japanese superstitions

Post Thanksgiving Pday

Dear Family,

Well everyone had a good thanksgiving it sounds like!! I wish I could have eaten with you guys! But next year I will so it will be ok. Mom will have to make extra stuffing! This year I've tried a bunch of new American things, for example pie, I love pie. Cherry pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie, peach pie. It's all delicious. I'm going to have to wreck Aunt Sandy's pie nights... Also stuffing is right up there next to turkey and pie. I ate as much as I could at both of our Thanksgivings without eating it all. It's all so good! So I'm really excited for all of that good stuff when I'm back. Oh and we didn't eat Thanksgiving with the Larsen's but with the Sorensen's, and a base family.

Anyways, the first thing all week was the Sorensen's Thanksgiving dinner. My goodness was it good. She bought a 26 or 27 pound turkey. So we ate til we felt like exploding, then we pounded in some pie and some frosted brownies, Nacadoshious bars? That's probably not the right spelling so if you sound it out, it might make sense.  (Shortcake brownies) We played some fun games there too. We also had zone meeting the next day down in a place called Yokosuka. That is the only place I've ever been inside of an office building and able to say I was also in a church. They have the 3rd and 6th - 7th floors for their church building, pretty intense! But when we got home, it was raining pretty well, so we kept going with our plans but as it rained this week it was also freezing cold, so we were moving pretty slow. We also met a guy this week before eikaiwa for a lesson. His name is Ken Kimura. And the lesson was way interesting. So first he came an hour early and we didn't notice him because we were upstairs at the church eating some delicious American pizza from a place that we found near the station. But when we went downstairs after he was standing right there, so we talked to him a bit, and got him put into a thing called the family English program. Basically it's where we teach people a 2 on 1 lesson of English for 30 minutes and then give them an introduction to the church and its teachings for the last 30 minutes. So because we had him all set up and we still had an hour, we just jumped right into the first one. So we taught him about past present and future tense, (he's already pretty good) then started setting up some expectations. During which we were able to invite him to be baptized if he came to know it is true, and he said yes because he wants all the blessings that will come. So then we did eikaiwa, and now we're waiting for him to respond to us for this week/next week's family English lessons. So that was way cool!

On Thursday we were able to go down to the base for Thanksgiving but we got there a little early so we went streeting for a bit. I have no idea how the elders in America stop people... I didn't realize how much I have forgotten English and American ways of doing things. I almost felt more Japanese than American outside the base. And it only got worse on the inside. Anyways the Williams family had us for Thanksgiving. And he came and picked us up and almost immediately told us that he is an NCIS AGENT!!!! How tight is that!! Never thought I would meet a real one. So that was awesome. But then we got to the party room where everyone was going to eat, and we felt like total outsiders, we weren't members of any of the 3 families there and we didn't even know what to do around so many Americans in such an American style place. It was insane. That's when we realized that we're no longer fluent in English, not fluent in Japanese, and are a part of neither culture entirely anymore. So we felt like awkward middle men. But it was good. I'm going to be so hard core shell shocked coming back... Anyways after we got home we started the wonderful task of putting everything, literally everything in the apartment in bags in preparation for our bug bomb on Friday. We found out this last week that the bugs in our apartment are indeed "bed bugs" so sister Wada called the exterminators and they sprayed bug killer everywhere in our apartment. Still one more treatment for the apartment to come but the bugs are already dying.

Now for a really fun thing this week. We got invited to play ultimate frisbee with a member on Saturday for some morning prep time before cleaning the church which we also helped out with. Who would have thought two games of ultimate frisbee within a week would make your legs more sore than anything else! Man they are sore, but it was lots of fun. There is an Elder, one of my zone leaders, named Winston Hilton who really wants to play for the BYU team when he gets back (one transfer before me) and he's trying to get me to go for it too, sounds pretty fun though! So maybe I'll do it! Cleaning Japanese style is kind of funny, we did weeding and they were all super specific and stuff about where things went and how they were done, dad would have enjoyed it - lol. Other than that though we had dinner with Sister Takahashi's family on Sunday, we helped them move in last transfer if you remember. And it was delicious, her husband is a chef so it was crazy good. I had some of the best stake of my life there. So yeah that was basically my week! Nice and detailed for everyone.

 So dad, you finally got it! What kind is it? It doesn't have eagle in it does it? It will be lots of fun to go shooting though, maybe I can beat you! It also sounds like Christmas is in full swing over there in America, I'm jealous! There has only been one time I've even heard Christmas music like America since I got here. But hey in other news today at the temple, I went through the entire session in only Japanese. I understood most of it, but it was still really difficult. So yeah it was a pretty good day! Oh and no the Yokosuka base is not where the Cunningham's are at unfortunately. I'm really excited for moms cooking though! Anyways, I hope everyone has a great week and that you all remember the power of prayer. It's helped me through so many trials, and good times. Have an amazing first week of December!

 Love,

 Elder Gailey

 P.S. No I'm not trunky!

 

American Style Pizza

 

Apple Cinnamon Cheeseburger

Elder Gailey before morning studies - It's Rough!!

Elder Gailey with Chiba Kyoudai

Elder Spackman and Elder Gailey at the temple

A Nativity at the temple

View of Mt Fuji outside the missionaries apartment