:)

Hey everyone!

I hope you're all doing well. Figured out recently my sister Nancy is having a baby girl! Way happy and excited for the new niece and nephew that will be joining the Spackman family soon.  Too bad they will be about a year and a half old when I get back.. Lol

This week we had a few disappointments we lost contact with a lot of people but things are going well with Kobayashi and Shimizu. We pushed Shimizu's baptism back just because he can't get work off this Sunday.  The next Sunday he has off, we are doing it! We went with him to sushi earlier in the week, I tried eel for the first time (so good) and Shimizu paid for us. He is so nice. We had a few lessons with him this week and we're really hoping he follows through with this baptism. He has had multiple failed attempts in the past. I don't usually ask for this, but please pray for him if you remember. Kobayashi has been really stuck on a lot of deep doctrine lately but we finally have got him concentrated on the basics of the gospel and receiving an answer about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. Really hoping he can gain the testimony he needs to stick true to his baptismal date.

The mission had a big Hawaiian Luau in Fujisawa this week. We took one of our friends, Issei. On the way there, in the train station, something came down off his forehead and started crawling on his face. When I realized it was a good sized spider I freaked and hit it off his face right as it got to his mouth. Soo nasty. Then at the luau our ward mission leader taught everyone the Macarena. I got way too into it (as I do) and he called me out of the crowd to do it on stage.  haha it was way fun. When I came back to my spot in the crowd one of the members in Atsugi that was there said, "sexy man, you sexy man" hahaha I was laughing so hard. 

While at the Luau I got to a chance to see Yusuke, my trainer, Elder Nagano's investigator. When I went on splits with Nagano, we went out finding with Yusuke. He is our age, so funny, and cool. After a night of hard work with those three I started to tell him, "this church is true, that's why we work so hard to share it." He cut me off after true and said yeah it is. We were both really shocked he said that. He now has a baptism date and recently moved it to an even closer date. Pretty excited for him.

I thought I got away from the crazies in Tokorozawa but guess not. There is a crazy old man who has been coming to the church lately. Recently he was going off on how he doesn't trust Elder Brown that he is American. He thinks his passport is "bogus." I asked what he thought of me and he went off on how good of a man I am, how I must have good parents (I do) and lots of money (I don't). As he left he says he thinks I will have two wives. Little does he realize I might, cause I'm Mormon ;) lol 

I sent a picture of him a couple weeks ago, Brother Mouri a member here in Atsugi, is supposed to die this week from cancer. We visited him and he is really really sick. He only had energy to stay awake and hear us sing and pray. At one point he was trying to clear his throat and couldn't... He pressed the help button, he was really struggling. He started yelling and choking trying to clear his throat. He was brought to church later in the week on a stretcher. It was testimony meeting and of course everyone was crying and talking about him. It really seemed like he was attending his own funeral... It looked like he died a few times during the meeting...

The reason I'm telling you this is because Mouri's dying wish was to come to church to take the sacrament. He has brain cancer and has forgotten a lot of things but he hasn't forgotten the importance of repenting and taking the sacrament to be forgiven of sins, so neither should we. He hasn't let severe cancer nor the fact that he is on his death bed keep him from coming to church. With that example we have no reason to skip church and miss out on the blessings of the sacrament that Mouri so desperately wanted. 

Pictures

1. Kobayashi! He's way funny and hard to understand haha, love him (he's next to me)

2. We spent a whole day cleaning our apartment for transfers. I almost threw up. Our air conditioner hadn't been cleaned in over a decade no joke. All the black is mold. We are trying to get someone to come professionally clean it, until then I'm sleeping with a mask on.

3. Some of the mold chunks I pulled out of it

4. Elder Mitabi's goodbye party

5. English class!