Michael's Good Experience: 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