Michael's Good Experience: 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