Michael's Good Experience: It's been a year!

Dear Family,

Well hey there hi there ho there! It's been a year since I last emailed you guys! Sorry about that! Too much has happened in this last year to include all the details in one email, but it's been a good one! Since the last time you heard from me we've only been outside dendoing for about 2 hours total. BUT have no fear, because instead of being outside we have been spending our time at the church having random lessons. We'll have one lesson near end and one of our other friends will randomly call us and want to come right as the last one ends. So basically it's impossible to plan for these lessons, but through the spirit it's been going great!

There were a couple big events, for example zone meeting and the Christmas conference. Those were great, I had to play the piano for the zone meeting but it went pretty well, we also did a three man training on some eikaiwa stuff. Speaking of which, if you remember Nakamura San from back in Yamate, I got a call last night and found out that he will be baptized on the 24th!! I'm so happy! Turns out he is even more of a golden investigator than we had previously thought too, so that's some great news. Christmas conference was a grand ol time as well so our week has been full. Other than that as far as big events is that on Sunday I played the piano for sacrament meeting, it was difficult but I did it! Then on Friday, January 1st, we went to the beach at 4:30 am with 2 recent converts, 2 nonmembers, and 6 missionaries. Seems way early right? Well when you see the pictures from it it will be worth it. We went to watch the 初日の出 meaning the first sunrise of the year. And boy oh boy it was beautiful. I took tons of pictures/videos. So enjoy those!

So yeah, basically we spent any extra time we had this week for dendo, by teaching 4 or 5 people a bunch of times. We taught a guy named Katou, who we didn't think had interest until I invited him to the lessons when he randomly came to church, and he almost has a baptismal date. He has accepted the soft invitation this week and he's been meeting with us pretty darn often. Then we are teaching the after baptism lessons to Takeuchi San almost every day it seems like. Also a few others but I'll tell you about them more as time passes. One of the others is Ahad, he's from Iran and is kind of mysterious/creepy but it's all good. So yeah, it's been a great week! Very tiring, and pretty crazy because we haven't been able follow our plan once yet. But it's great! I love the area, the ward, and my companions. It's been way fun being with a Japanese missionary.

Sounds like everyone back home is still doing well! Ollie is all nice and properly blessed now, and it looks like all the New Years was fun! We'll have to do a little bit of Japanese tradition next New Years! Woo! Anyways I love you guys and I hope you have an amazing week, get working on those New Years resolutions! Heavenly Father will help you for sure! I'll see you later this year!

Love,

Elder Gailey

January 1, 2016 - watching the sunrise!