April 29, 2012 - Elder Gandy's first e-mail from Japan

Note from Gayleen: About and hour before this e-mail arrived we received our first e-mail from Joseph and all it said was, "Dear Family." I thought that had to be the shortest letter ever from a missionary. Anyway, that's what he is referring to at the beginning of this e-mail.


Dear Family,

Hey this is a continuation to that first e-mail the keyboard is different so I accidently sent it. Well it has been a really amazing week my trainer is Elder Everett and he is from north carolina. He is great and his favorite sport also happens to be frisbee. My first area is called Oita its one of the biggest areas in the mission. Whenever we go to the church we have to go through a tunnel then over a bridge and then we have to ride up one of the longest hills in the mission. By the end of this transfer I should be able to conquer any obstacle on my bike. Which kind of leads to a funny story my first day here about thirty minutes after getting my bike Elder Everett flipped his bike into a bunch of dirt. So sometimes we tell people that we got into a fight and I won. The people in Oita are amazing I feel so blessed to be in such an amazing area. There have been so many miracles already. We have a few investigators who want to be baptized and one of them has a baptismal date. Its been great even though my japanese still isn't very good. So I decided that I'm just going to e-mail from now on because apparently it takes about two weeks for a letter from america to get here. Oh and since mothers day is coming up you can call me. So the number you are going to call is 011-81-80-2149-6429 and if you could call about 7:00 p.m. on the 14th it will be the 15th at 10:00 a.m. here and that would be the best time for me. I will also send some pictures next week. Everything here is amazing I'm so excited to be here in Japan serving. I love you all and wish you the best.

Love, Elder Joseph Gandy

p.s. Everyone here thinks my name is funny and most of the kids like to call me candy.
p.p.s. I was wondering if Daniel ever got kansho'ed while he was on his mission because it already happened to me.