#singinintherain

Dear Family,

Hello there! How are you all doing this week? First things first, I am really jealous that dad got to eat a Grandma Gailey grilled cheese sandwich. Now that I've got that out i can continue. This week has been HOT. It has been 100% humidity probably 4 times in the last week or week and a half. Lucky me for returning home right AFTER the hottest times of the year. Sometimes walking in that weather and doing missionary work is really really long and tiring. But hey, blessings right?

Speaking of how hot it is i have a funny story to tell al of you. So it was a Thursday. Not a super special Thursday, just transfer day so Elder Hall went to the mission home and picked up his new missionary companion, a bean chan( a bean chan is a greenie, its just the Japanese version) and we went Elder Hilton off to do his final hours as a missionary at the mission home. Then we had to go to a baptismal Interview down in Yokosuka area for an American Investigator named Peter. Elder Dunn was the one doing the interview and did a really good job however I just had to sit outside bored for 3 hours. Anways back to the funny stories. We got on the train and it takes about 20 minutes to return to Kamiooka and we had to go to the church for a game night activity one of our investigators (Sato) was going to. Well about 4 minutes into our 15 minute walk... The sky started to fall. The sky literally started to fall. It rained so hard that before we could even get to cover we were soaked, and we decided that since we were already so soaked we might as well keep walking. So as we laughed and walked we continued to try and dendo people in the pouring rain as they were huddling under their umbrellas and we got the funniest looks. One kid just was so surprised that we were soaked and walking without umbrellas that he literally just stood there with his mouth open for a bit before answering. It was a great day. We also have pictures to prove it. That's what you get when you pray for interesting experiences I guess! 

Other than that this week we found 1 new investigator! I think I already told you but on the way to a lesson once we met a man named Yamanaka who speaks fluent English and used to give biotechnology lectures at the University of Utah. Anyways we met him this week and gave him a church tour and simple overview of the restoration. As he is a scientist though he was saying things like i believe in science not god.. but we were able to handle that decently well by pointing out how much faith and belief there is in science. Then just yesterday he came to church! We had 3 investigators there this week which definitely felt nice! Between the last 2 weeks there have been about 9 people that came from the district investigator pools.

Other than that we had a day where we spent all day outside our area going to district meetings. That was a long day but we rolled out our new zone theme: Baptology M. IV - Commitment. I'll attach it again this time because we're pretty proud of this one too. And seeing the success from last transfers really gave us a lot of motivation to make a really good one. Definitely a blessing.

Here is a miracle for all of you, Sato san is now following the word of wisdom! So yesterday we were talking with Sato after church and seeing how everything has been going lately, just having a really casual conversation but Elder Dunn eventually had to leave to help the sisters with their Russian investigator because she doesn’t speak English or Japanese so you have to have multiple people talking through google translate to keep the conversation going. Anyways so while they were doing all of this Sato started to ask me what they were teaching. He could tell it was something important and he wanted to learn it to. So i got a chance to teach him a little more about baptism and word of wisdom because they were teaching that to Daria the Russian. And even crazier the bishop walked by in the middle of all of this and I was able to snag him and ask him what he does to follow the word of wisdom in a society and culture where they don’t even attempt to follow it. In shortened form what the bishop then told him was that if you decide in your heart, then promise yourself and god, you can do it. So Sato then turned to me and said well... I'll do it. So this week he's planning on selling/donating his coffee machine and going all in. We are so excited for him and teaching him! Its been a great week and the miracles I’ve seen I'll never be able to forget. I’ve heard it a lot that after your mission you really don’t remember any rejection or any of the rough bad things, but what you remember are those priceless moments and the miracles and I really believe that is true now.

I know that the church is true and that God is always busy, he's always doing things for us it’s just whether we take the time to notice. I love you all and I hope you had a great week! See you soon!

Elder Gailey

P.S. Oh hey!  I forgot to tell you but this last week one of my former investigators in Odawara (Hiro Okada) just got baptized this last week! WOO!

The Aquarium