It made me so happy to realize that Josh is still my brother in the faith

3/16/09 Email Message

Family,

Well its probably my last time to be emailing you from Nagaoka. Its transfer week again and Im almost positive Ill be packing up and leaving to my first new area. Im pretty sad to be leaving but I am also pretty excited. 7 months in one area is a long time for a missionary. But Ill sure miss Nagaoka when I leave. I just hope my next area at least comes close to being as cool as Nagaoka.

This week was good. I got a letter from Elder Josh Bell with tons of pictures inside. It was so cool to hear from him and see how hes doing. It was almost like we were catching up in person. He sounds like hes doing great. He said hes been trainer the last two transfers so things have been pretty busy for him. Also, hes just as shocked as I am to look around and see all the signs that we are growing up. He too feels like we should still be practicing for the roadshow and hanging out at kids kingdom - maybe he and I will just have to hit up kids kingdom by ourselves sometime next summer. But it was really nice to hear how hes doing. I kind of felt like Alma when he met the sons of mosiah. It made me so happy to realize that Josh is still my brother in the faith and that we are both still fighting the good fight. I must be extremely lucky to have a friend like him.

But as for me, my last full week in Nagaoka was really good. We had a Ping Pong Party on saturday for our investigators, members and eikaiwa students. It went really well. Our friends got to have fun with the members, we taught a few lessons, we found one more person who wants to hear about the gospel of Jesus Christ, and tons of people went home with a good experience at church. Not to mention it was tons of fun. Im not going to brag, but I think the Japanese culture is started to rub off on my ping pong skills ;). I may just have to get myself a table when I get home. But weve got a busy P day ahead of us to prepare for transfer week, so I gotta run.

I love you all so much and I hope everything is going fantastically! Hope to hear from ya soon!

Much Love,

Elder Brendan Kingsford