Elder Travis John Bloomfield in Fukuoka, Japan: 1 December 2013 - We Have Finally Gotten a Building in Saijo

We HAVE FINALLY OFFICIALLY GOTTEN A BUILDING!! We have been given the keys and we are good to go after it is a bit more furnished! No more having lessons at McDonald's, at a random park, youme town, random street corners,etc.. We can finally teach in an environment where the outside world will not be constantly driving the spirit away! Saijo is ready to explode and we are so excited. Our first church meeting will be in maybe 1 or 2 weeks hopefully. We are still just a group, we don't have enough members yet to be a branch, so we will still go to Hiroshima every fast Sunday, but we will soon have enough members for a branch! Thank you all for your prayers in making this possible.

This week something quite incredible happened. it snowed in Saijo??? That was pretty odd. Pretty exciting too! Us kids not from Utah were quite excited at the small amounts of snow falling from the sky (so small that none of it even stuck and was gone within an hour).

This week we housed into a young couple named Morita San. He is about about 26 and they have a kid who is just a year old. He has the BIGGEST cheeks I have ever seen, not to mention his head is the size of a watermelon. When we first housed into him, he tried to give us the usual "ohhhh actually I'm Japanese so I'm Buddhist, so I don't have any interest in God (pretty odd I know)". We told him well just like my companion didn't like curry before he tried it, is the same with this message. Sure enough after our first lesson he told us kyomi bukai. He has tons of interest and when was that? Just a week before our date of December 1st goal we set to find a couple to take the lessons. When you set goals with your Heavenly Father and pray for his help, I can promise you you will find much more success and happiness as you trust in him to provide.

This weeks lesson with Sho, we basically just shared with him that he is ready for baptism, All he needs to do is trust in Heavenly Father. We read Lord, I Will Believe by Elder Holland with him and bore pretty powerful testimony to him and we are going to have a lesson with him this Tuesday with Son Kyodai, and if all goes well there he should be baptized either this Sunday or next. So, pray for him please that this Tuesday Sho can listen to the spirit trying to guide him to this next step in his life.

Azumi also came into Saijo for a day and she was here only for a day and emailed us and asked us if she could receive an AB lesson from us. She loves this gospel so much! She is so cool. She is pretty nervous about Ecuador though. She was also pretty surprised to hear that the church is there as well. haha She said she enjoys all of your emails though.

Our new apartment is auto locked, so that's purtty dang cool! That means we have to put in a number code that opens the front door. It is something that we as missionaries hate on other apartments, because we will find a nice beautiful apartment to go house and then walk up to it and find out it is auto locked. Quite the bummer ay?

I never got to take a pic.of the old apartment so perhaps I will do that before I get transferred. Just for the memories ayy? o

What the heck is tempura? Also do you cook the chicken egg flour thing in just normal oil or with katsudon? I actually haven't been cooking anything lately because our new apartment hasn't had gas. Which also has meant no hot water for 4 days. The showers were prettyyyy dang cold. It was just cold water but like river water. My feet would go numb by the end of the shower that's how cold it was. That was quite the adventure. The joys of missionary work every week!

Well that's about all I can think of for this week. We are super excited for this Christmas Season to spread the gospel! Our mission is doing our own sort of 12 Days of Christmas, where we will have contact with someone for 12 days, sharing something everyday, and then on the last day we will give them the 40 min. church Christmas program thing. It is similar to our 12 Days of Christmas. I hope to be able to do our 12 days of Christmas as well. The only problem is no one in Japan will ever give you their address so it is pretty difficult in that sense... but we will ganbaru (hang in there).

You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for all! Keep up the good work and don't forget to endure to the end. Miracles happen everyday in your life, it is only your responsibility to recognize them. God will always provide.

ja matta wani

Elder Bloomfield