11 miles in the rain

Dear Family,

Well hello there everybody! This week has been... Very gooood! Me and Elder Okada had very fun time this week. We had a lot of meetings and things that took up a fair bit of time, but other than that pretty much everyday was dendo day! So that's what we did. This is Elder Okada's 3rd to last Monday as a missionary, but he's not getting too trunky. So that's good.

Anyways so this week we intended to meet with Hiro San right? Well unfortunately he was drunk and fell inside the station when he was on the way to our lesson and ended up in the hospital for a few days, basically up until he left for Kyoto. So we weren't able to meet with him, but luckily we got everything set up with the jouyou missionaries down there and tonight they have a lesson scheduled with him, so we'll be skyping into that. So more will come in the future about him, but after today he is officially the Kyoto missionaries investigator. Other than that Kato San is showing signs of actual interest in the gospel this time, so we might start teaching him again sometime soon. We were talking about it and if we really, strengthened his faith he could potentially be baptized next month probably at best. So we'll see!

This last week I had the translation assignment for zone conference with my good boy Elder Brummett. Hopefully you all remember him! That went way well, the biggest struggle is when there was a training on dress and grooming that we didn't know about and those words are not normal words nor church words so basically we had a dictionary party. But it went really well, I translated most of President Wada's stuff and it wasn't as hard as I expected it to be honestly which was nice. We had a couple canceling this week too, for example hero. So that made for some weird time blocks where we couldn't really go anywhere but we couldn't just sit and wait type thing. So we had a lot of strange things to do but we saw some cool miracles as well. One miracle from the week was while we were doing a district blitz we went along one train line stopping at all the stations for an hour and housing around the station. At the last station there was nowhere to park our bikes so we ended up riding straight up the side of a ratchet steep mountain (hill) pretty much like Yamate, and found a shrine to park our bikes at. Then we dendo'd around there and while ringing one doorbell we found out that the person inside was a less active member, she wouldn't talk to us much but she said she had been baptized and was a member. Crazy stuff right!?

Then Saturday, oh Saturday. It rained a good consistent rain all day. So of course it was the day where we had nothing planned and so we went walking, ended up in total walking over 18 kilometers. Then we rode out bikes in the rain and got soaked, but it was a good day! Really makes you feel like a missionary lol.

So you guys asked if I've learned anything new this week, yes! Of course I have! One thing we learned at zone conference was about reflection. Sometimes we will invite our investigators to do things and they will decline and not tell us the real reasons. Well in order to help that we have to listen really well, so one method of listening was reflection. So basically when we ask people to do things like be baptized and they say no we wait for them to give a small reason and kind of say the same thing back to them in different way, not like repeating them but clarifying things and stuff. So it's pretty cool, because they share more and more usually because they can tell that we are listening. It is very helpful with Kato San. Also, sounds like dad had a pretty crazy flight! Glad everyone is safe and sound. Keep me updated mom! Thank you!

Well that's about it for the week! You asked if Poff got into BYU, I found out yesterday that no he did not. But if he gets into uvu he wants to still room together and he will commute to uvu (he has a car) so that's in the possibilities. But I don't really know, haven't really talked about it with him much. So he's going to be praying about it at the temple tomorrow so I'll know more next week. Anyways, I miss you guys a lot! This last Friday I think was my 6 month left mark, maybe 7 I forgot. But almost there! I hope there's lot coming in the last 6 months! Anyways, love you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Gailey

Cool Path!

Look - I'm a bird!

Dragon overhead

Plum Trees in Spring

 

Dinner after Hakone

Rainy Day

 

Volcanos and Onsen!

Dear Family,

Well it's been another week!! I'm doing my best not to get trunky now but do you count this week then we'll I only have 27 more emails like this til I'm home.... It's pretty darn soon! Anyways it's been a good week we've gotten a lot of time to dendo, the crazy thing though is I have almost forgotten how to street... It was a rough time trying to get back into the swing of it. But this week as well as last week we have had some good ups and some rough downs. Overall though a pretty good week. This email will probably be coming in a little late as well since right now we're on a bus to a place called Hakone with some recent converts and an eikaiwa student that wanted to come. Hakone is a huge resort place on Odawara and outside the Odawara castle it's the biggest reason people come here. It's pretty famous for its onsen (public bath houses) but we can't go to those so as a missionary hakone is just mainly fun to look at. Elder Okada wanted to go since he is from southern japan and probably won't come back to Odawara for a long time. There should be some way tight pictures coming from today though!

Real quick before I continue on about my week, bath houses have a lot of different "bathtubs" really they are big pool like things, but I've been told there are some way strange ones up in Hakone. What I mean by that is they have a bunch or random pools for example, a beer pool, a coffee pool, tea pools, strange liquid pools, and all kinds of other strange word of wisdom breaking things. So there is you weird fact about japan for the week! Anyways so first here's Hiro sans update. He is no longer being baptized on the 19th. He's learning/progressing to slowly to be able to make that regardless of how much faith we have, he's actually currently moving backwards in his progression, which has been really really sad to watch. So that's where a lot of our time and focus has been this week. We gave him a really big challenge on Thursday, that being to stop drinking and to follow everything we have been telling him for at least 1 day and ask God if what we are saying is true. The whole time he has been telling us that he isn't drinking, but admitted to us that he has every single day without fail. So we were really disappointed but it explained a lot of different things. Anyways that's when we gave him the challenge. And then we had a big questions of the soul event (where president Wada shows a movie and teaches from it, this time repentance) and hero had basically moved himself back to square one. He stopped looking at the gospel as a good thing for him and now is looking at it from a more reporter type view.  So yeah it's a bit frustrating but we're going to try and really make sure he keeps going with the Kyoto missionaries by giving him a new baptismal date. It should be good.

I feel like I have written nothing about the week but well most of the rest of the time we had we spent walking around and ringing people's doorbells. It went pretty well, no new investigators yet but we're working really hard. I told you about the one we found last week, the Filipino lady. She wasn't home when the sisters went, but they think she'll be there soon, so we're not too worried there yet. I also got a chance to dendo with a Brazilian Elder this week too. His name is Elder Siquera, he's way cool, speaks a little English, barely any though, and less Japanese. So it was a fun time trying to get things ironed out and what not for plans and stuff but hey, if there's one thing I learned from him it's that it doesn't matter if you can speak anyone's language, you can still show how much you love people. He would walk around shouting hello to everyone and giving them a huge smile and laughing everywhere. It was great, a good example of optimism.

Sorry this is so short this week, it feels like I just emailed you all yesterday! Haha anyways Hakone was loads of fun, I wish we could go to the onsen but it was still good anyways! I'll send lots of pictures! Everyone seems like they're getting feeling better, so I'm happy to hear that. I pray for you guys all the time so it's nice to know that it's helping! Oh hey, also while we were in hakone we found out we were literally right next to a currently very active volcano, almost were able to ride in a cable car above it too! It's active enough to the point where there is lava on the surface right now. Crazy stuff, too bad we couldn't see it though. Dad asked if it still feels like family here or not, well it is definitely different without Poff, but for the most part everyone just has a whole lot more on their plate this transfer, so everyone's more stressed out than before. But it's still going well. Also Meagan didn't tell me about the dog thing, so I'll be waiting for that story! Anyways, I gotta go now so I love you guys! Have a great week! Keep me updated too!

Love,

Elder Gailey

P.S. Guess who's translating again tomorrow! I guess they like my translating lately in this zone, wish me luck! Haha

Elder Gailey in Hakone

Elder Gailey riding a stuffed animal in Hakone

Fountain in Hakone

Takeuchi Kyoudai in Hakone

Elder Gailey with fun cutouts in Hakone

Buddhist Shrine in Hakone

Elder Gailey and Elder Siquera (from Brazil) - Beach Adventure

Elder Gailey and Elder Okada with food

 

Skyping with the missionaries in Kyoto with Hiro in the upper right hand corner 

Samurai model village

 Elder Gailey riding the stuffed animal

 

Elder Gailey  in Hakone

 

 

Elder Gailey with a dart gun

Never any time lol

Dear Family,

Well how is everyone doing back at home? I hope good! Sorry I'm emailing so late today, it was temple Pday today. However we didn't go to the temple, Hiro is getting really close to his baptismal date and we want it to be possible for him to make it so when he asked us for a lesson today we agreed and instead of going to the temple met with him. Turned out to be a really good decision, I'll tell you more about his progress later. But anyways this week was pretty good. We got out and did some dendo, housed, streeted, Kubari'd we got the whole 9 yards this week, including teaching! It was pretty good.

So first, last week for Pday we built the puzzle I sent you a picture of, and it was lots of fun, way tough but way fun and it's got Japanese on it! So it was a win overall. Anyways now I'll jump to what you've all been waiting for, Hiro! Well we're not sure if he's going to be able to make his baptismal date yet. He is learning pretty slow. Picking up speed, but still potentially too slow to make the date. We met with him 5 times last week total and today as well. Unfortunately he couldn't come to church, but last night he was thinking and basically through his thinking about random things from his life he figured out the role of the savior, how to repent, and why prayer is so important. As well as gaining more desire to learn. It was incredible, he started the thinking yesterday by wondering if God was there and bam he made it a lot farther than just that. So that was a huge miracle that if we didn't meet today would have potentially gone under the radar because he forgets fast. So it was a huge miracle and we definitely felt guided in the whole thing. Also since he is moving to Kyoto (way out of our mission) right after his date, we called the missionaries down there this week and they skyped in, Elder Monson and Elder Hill, to meet him for a few minutes then had to peace out so that's a cool thing too.

We also met Takeuchi Kyoudai this week and he is an awesome example. He just received his first calling: Ward Missionary! Who would have thought that the Takeuchi who got baptized 2 months ago would have the confidence and opportunity to be a ward missionary! He is super excited to do it, and has already been learning about how to be a missionary, in the past his biggest concern was if he would have to take over for us when the missionaries aren't in Odawara. And now it's true! Haha it was really good meeting with him this week though, he's getting stronger and stronger in the gospel.

Oh also this week I got to give teaching in English a go! I'm not really sure how those English speaking missionaries around the world do it... It's hard to teach in English. We were housing the other day in a pretty random far away place, when we saw a bunch of sheet metal shacks and felt impressed to give them a go. So first we started with the 2 floor apartments next to the metal shacks. Second one we tried had way rusted out stairs, literally almost fell through one of them, but we got up to the second floor and Elder Okada started telling the lady inside who we were and she kind of just said, my husband isn't home, I'm working, I don't speak Japanese and things like that (in all Japanese). She was Filipino so she was pretty confused as to what was happening, then Elder Okada busted out some English and then she looked out and saw a gaijin, so then it was go time with the English. So I reintroduced who we were, she didn't understand Elder Okada's fancy door knocking Japanese at all so, then she started asking some questions, if we were Mormon, why we're here, and then I gave probably the simplest summary of the restoration that I could in English and invited her to learn more from the sisters and she accepted, and also got super excited when I said they would bring her a Tagalog Book of Mormon. So cool miracles, really proved that it really doesn't matter if you can speak the language as long as you try.

And the other awesome thing we had this week was a conference with President Whiting. President of the Asia north area. He came here on Thursday and we had a big half mission meeting with him. First thing he did was a question and answer session that he based the rest of his talks off of. The first question that came it was awesome, it was how do we learn to recognize revelation. So he taught us for probably an hour how to better receive and recognize revelation, and just about everyone there benefited like crazy from that. Sometimes the zone leaders send out miracle reports, and the revelation miracles have been coming in more and more. Basically he told us that when you think or feel something, first follow it. Then if it is not from God he won't let you go far, and then slowly as you recognize the spirit more and more, it will be much easier to know when God is speaking to you. He also told us that especially in meetings to find a way too easily and quickly write down revelation so that when you're flipping through your notes you can know what's revelation and what is important words. For example he flips his notebook on a 45 degree angle and writes revelation crooked. Later on he gave a really great example, he brought 3 missionaries to the front. Spaced them out evenly and likened them to investigators. The right side was golden, and left side has no interest and he asked, where do you want your investigators, then taught us more about the atonement and how it can swing people to the golden side. Then he supposed us all and did it again, but this time not likening it to investigators. He likened it to missionaries, the right being a good missionary has the desire to receive revelation and has faith, and the left where they want to go home. So he had us think of where we are and then taught us how the atonement can help us go to the right side. It was an awesome conference overall. I would love to listen to him speak again. If you ever get a chance, I would listen to him!

Anyways this week has been good, we've been finding, teaching, and having fun. Elder Okada is a great companion and we're enjoying it. So rest easy, I'm doing well over here. Sorry you got sick dad!! Get feeling better! That sounds like it's a struggle. I hope all continues to be well with you too mom and dad, don't go getting to sick on us! Thanks for the videos as well, Ollie is awesome, and tube water polo looks like a lot of fun! Also no I haven't mailed them home but we plan to before Elder Okada leaves. I already talked to him about that one. We might go someday this week. Also glad the Broncos won! I prefer them to the panthers. Also thanks so much for writing my scholarship things! You're the best! And last, it's Meagan’s birthday! I already sent an email to her but HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEAGAN! Thanks for keeping me updated on everything, I love you all and I know that your prayers are helping me out, I haven't gotten sick this winter even! It's starting to feel like I have no time left out here, but I'll make the most of it while I can. Thanks everybody! Love you!

 Elder Gailey

Roller Coaster Week

Dear Family,

Well it's been a long week lots of up and lots of down. Here is the awesome thing though, everything is going well here, I'm all healthy and we're seeing miracles. Especially with Hiro San and Takeuchi kyoudai. So it's been good. We also have had some time to look for new investigators this week. Nothing coming of it yet but we've been using our time more effectively lately and made some time.

Anyways, so this last week (it feels like it's been years) Elder Poffenberger left, he peaced out all the way up to Kamiooka. That was on Thursday that that happened. Tuesday we were starting to clean and pack and went to the church for a less active lesson with Umeda kyoudai and then intended to return to packing and cleaning. It's quite the chore so we needed about 3 hours. Anyways during the lesson with Umeda kyoudai we got a call from Hiro San who we had met and set a baptismal date with the day before and he wanted to come to the church for a lesson. So immediately after Umeda kyoudai's lesson we hopped into a lesson with Hiro San. Then halfway through that lesson we got a call from Takeuchi kyoudai. He also wanted to do a lesson so we did it right after Hiro's lesson. And long story short all day never made it back to the apartment to pack. That whole thing where everyone calls to do lessons randomly is the reason we barely trust our plans anymore cuz every time we make a plan it just gets all sorts of changed, but it's a good kind of change.

Then we packed and cleaned all day Wednesday which was intense, but especially as the transfer was splitting up Elder Poffenberger and I we were way sad. We kept going through bummed stages, where you'd just sit down and stare at the others doing stuff. Then we would come out of it and be fine. It was kinda funny, but we were pretty bummed. I found a guy in our English class that probably could reach your ham radio from japan dad! He's pretty weird but hey why not? Lol then when Elder Poffenberger left on Thursday it was one of the sadder send offs. Takeuchi kyoudai was crying huge huge crocodile tears, sukekawa Shimai was too. So we took some pictures, Poff had a random guy in the Eki take some (he was terrible at it) and then it was two.

Then Friday during district meeting Elder Okada and I experienced one of their weirder things missionaries have to deal with. So here's a story. We are sitting in the church waiting for the zone leaders to start district meeting and there is a random guy trying to peak in the Windows, very abnormal behavior for a Japanese person. So because we're missionaries, and because Law Shimai would have freaked out if we didn't, we headed out to speak with him but he basically just took off. So then the zone leaders arrive and we start and he shows up again. It's pretty weird at this point, but Sister Law being Sister Law stands up and walks out to go dendo this guy. So they go out and we come out, a little bit in because technically we're not supposed to talk/teach people of the opposite gender in this mission, so the zone leaders were freaking out. Anyways long story short, we talk to him, he asks to come inside and sit down cuz it's raining so we did, took him to a lesson room and had him sit down and we sat on the other side of the room. Then he asked Elder Okada to sit buy him and so even more weirdness, but he obliged and we asked him some questions. He met missionaries 2 years ago and took some lessons, and what are the odds, but he was the kid who took our picture at the station when Poff left. The whole time my mind was flying 8000 miles an hour putting pieces together and stuff and then I realized we got 2 calls from a kid in the danger list on our phone this morning. His name in the phone was "kawanishi (gay)". Now I would still usually give him a fair chance, see if he wanted to change and wanted to repent, but that's when it got weirder. He started asking Elder Okada if he liked sports and if he weightlifted (Elder Okada is a very very skinny boy from down south it was pretty obvious the answer to that one) and he asked to if he could feel Elder Okada's arm. And that was huge red flag, so from that point on it took me about 3 minutes to take care of everything, Elder Okada was way freaked out and didn't know what to do because he's Japanese and still didn't want to be the least bit rude. But basically I escorted him out and me and Elder Okada were just looking at each other like "what the heck just happened..." So yeah that was Friday! It got better cuz we had game night and bible study but crazy stuff, stuff that I would never have to deal with in normal life. And lately those type things have been getting more and more common it seems over here, so missionaries have to be lots more careful than when I first got here.

Anyways then Saturday we had a mochitsuki! Where you make mochi and stuff, I'll send some pictures. Before you ask what mochi is though, I would encourage you to look it up on the Internet. Why you ask? Well I have been trying to figure out how to describe it to you guys for 3 days, and well I can't describe it in English. So that's a thing. Have fun on the Google now! :) I played sacrament in piano yesterday (flip that one) so that was awesome! Thanks mom and dad for making me take lessons even when I didn't want to. I'm glad I don't have to practice songs that I don't like, but I needed it for a while right? Anyways, it's been long but good, this week has. I learn more and more about prayer and Heavenly Father every day. There are days when I just can't wait for August when I can finally drift... I mean drive a car again and see all you guys. But I really have come to love the people here and love being a missionary. I hope this week will bring more success, pray that hero can understand and make his baptismal date. We'll be working as hard as possible.

Love you all!

Elder Gailey

From Google - ‘Mochitsuki’ is a widely practiced Japanese ceremony. New Years ritual involving the pounding of rice to make soft mochi cakes. Traditionally a family or community activity, the women would soak and cook the special mochi rice after which the men would take turns pounding the mochi rice with a large wooden mallet in a stone or wood mortar until it was soft and smooth. Another man would kneel next to the mochi, moistening and turning it between the pounding; sometimes a second person would pound alternately from the other side. It was imperative that a consistent rhythm be kept up lest the mochi "turner" get his hands squashed. The pounded mochi would then be divided into small portions, covered with starch or flour, and made into small cakes; some of the cakes would be filled with a sweet bean paste. The finished mochi is one of the traditional New Year foods.

The perk devotional. We all walked in complete silence to go buy Elder Poffenberger's favorite drink to commemorate his time here. Then took a picture. This is at 6:40 am. Flipping early and cold, but... Golden.

Goodbye to Elder Poffenberger

 

 

Elder Gailey's new puzzle

 

Mochitsuki