I'll gladly take a swing for my Savior if that's what it takes.

3/9/09 Email Message

Family,

It feels like just yesterday Mom and Kendall were going to Kimberly's wedding shower. Now you two just went to her baby shower? How crazy is that! Its pretty exciting huh? Asher is one lucky little boy. I wonder if he knows how lucky he is? I mean come on, he does have the coolest uncle in the world right?

I hope you do get to go to Gulf Shores for springbreak. I love the beaches down there. They are sooo pretty and the towns around there are soo fun. Make sure you take some good pics. Oh and are you really going to wicked?! No fair. Haha I hope you realize you have to save at least some fun for when I get back. And dont you love the spring time?

Its warming up around here too. I dont even have to wear my winter coat anymore. Yesterday the weather was absolutely gorgeous. And what made it better is we got to spend a lot of time outdoors. We helped some of our Mongolian friends change the tires on their cars for a couple of hours while we talked to them about the gospel. It was a great teaching situation.

We had district conference on saturday and sunday. President Evans (the area president) came and spoke and it was so cool. Also, Su shimai gave her first talk in church and she did great. She was soo nervous to speak in front of so many people, including President and Sister Evans and President and Sister Tateoka. But when President Evans got up and spoke he just praised her for the first 5 minutes. It was cool.

This last week was pretty good. On the first day that it really started to warm up, we went on splits in a different area. It felt so good and I was so happy to be walking around knocking on doors in such beautiful weather. We were out for a couple hours before we came to a particular house. I knocked on the door and a nice looking man came to the door. I introduced ourselves and our message. He smiled and said (in perfect english) he wasnt interested because he was buddhist. Well of course I wasnt going to let him get away that easily, so I asked him if he had ever met missionaries before. Once again he gave me the same response as before (without answering my question). I thought maybe he hadnt heard me so I asked him again. And then he blew up. All of a sudden he wasnt a little smiling Japanese man anymore. He freaked out at me. He started yelling at me (in plain form offensive Japanese). He told me that I was just a stupid American. He told me to go home and that Jesus was a fraud. He said he didnt want me in Japan and that the Japanese people didnt want me either. I didnt really know what to do. I was so shocked that I just stood there. But somewhere in the middle of his rant I just started to laugh. Big mistake. The little Japanese man that had seemed so nice and smily just 5 minutes before took my laughing as an insult, and he didnt like it at all. He stepped out of his house came up to me and took a swing. I was still a little shocked so I couldnt really react quick enough, but luckily I was able to move my head just in time. He missed, barely. He wound up for another swing, but by that time I had woken up out of my shock and was already running down the sidewalk. Apparently my companions reflexes were much quicker than mine because he was already around the corner by the time I caught up to him. Nice to know he had my back. But I guess thats the life of a missionary sometimes. Not everyone is going to accept us. And I guess some people are even going to take a swing at us. But its worth it. Ill gladly take a swing for my savior if thats what it takes.

I love you! Im so excited for everything that is going on. I miss you! But I hope to hear from you soon.

Much love,

Elder Brendan Kingsford

P.s.- I dont really need any cds. all the missionaries have plenty of music to listen to. Id prefer some toothpaste, a new toothbrush, some JIF peanut butter, and some Nutella. That would be a perfect package!