Dear Family,

So to start off, something that is different is there is this constant noise throughout the day. Its the season of the cicada and you can hear them buzzing everywhere. The crazy thing is I actually haven't seen one yet but I can definately hear them.

It has been an amazing last week. To start off we had a couple of exchanges this last week. I was always in the companionship that went streeting and housing basically all day. It was a lot of fun. We got to teach a bunch of really nice people. Its interesting talking to people who know nothing about our church or even Jesus Christ. It feels interesting to be the first person to share our message of hope and happiness to people who have never heard it before.

We also have some great investigators that we're teaching right now. A couple of them really want to be baptized so we're working really hard to help them make that big step. Yesterday at church we had four investigators come which Elder Everett said is the most he has ever seen. It was great because Pres. Gustafson was also there. He came and talked with all of them and it was fun having him work with us. Miracles really are happening everyday we just don't always notice it.

Another thing we did this week was that the students from our english class invited us to dinner at an all you can eat Italian pizza place. It was so good I especially liked the chocolate bananna pizza. With how long me and Elder Everett have been in Oita we have made so many really good friends here. We also went and saw a firework show for the star festival. It was quite the show I'm not sure if I have seen fireworks that spectacular.

I also had several interesting experiences this week while I was on an exchange with my zone leader Elder Hoffman. The first one is we met these high school kids and one was rather receptive of our message and then the other seemed like he was trying to prove us wrong. It was like in the Book of Mormon when they try to confound the words of the prophets. To make a long story short they both walked away with a Book of Mormon in hand and more interest in our message than before. The next one was we found this guy standing on the side of the street hitchhiking (which no one does in Japan so that made it more interesting). We started talking to him and asked him why he was doing all of these different things. He said that he really just wanted to help people become better. We actually got super excited and told him that is what we do but explained to him how Christ's Atonement makes that possible. He seemed really interested but unfortunately we will not know what is going to happen because he lives on the main island of Japan. We did give him the information to contact the church up there so now we just hope that everything might work out.

It really has been an amazing experience to see how our message can have an effect on the life of people we come in contact with. Through the enabling power of the Atonement we can all become more like our Father in Heaven. His hand is always stretched forth and I love helping people grab hold. I love you all so very much.

Love Elder Gandy
ギャンディ　長老

P.S. Happy Birthday to Nichole coming up soon!