"I got my answer. Its true. What else can you tell me?"

1/4/10 Email Message

Akemashite Omedeto Gozaimasu - or as we say in English...HAPPY NEW YEARS!!

That is so cool Josh got to come for New Years and chow down on Dads famous gyouza. Has everyone recovered from the gyouza burps yet? I hope you and he had a great time together. I miss him a lot. Tell him Im looking forward to the 2011 anual Kingsford Family/Josh Bell gyouza party. It will be the first time weve had the whole clan together in a while...it should be fun!

Also Dad thats exciting! Im glad you won the contract. It sounds like you are going to have a lot of fun for the next few years. I hope everything goes smoothly - lets just hope the government stays out of the way as much as possible ;-)

It was great talking to everyone on the phone for Christmas. I think its funny how it seemed like you all were just in the other room. I havent seen my family for over 18 months but when whenever we talk on the phone its like no time has passed at all. If it werent for the fact that theres a new baby that wasnt there before and Kendall now sounds like an adult ;-) I might think nothing has changed at all. It was definitely the highlight of my christmas!

Today we went with a member family to see Jesus's grave. Apparently Jesus and his brother Isukiri are buried here in the mountains of Hachinohe. There are two graves with crosses sticking out of the ground and a buddhist shrine dedicated to Jesus to prove it. It was pretty interesting. But what was really interesting is the village at the base of the hill is called Herai machi and there are a lot of families that live around there named Herai. Herai is the Japanese form of the word hebrew. Also there are paintings from hundreds of years ago that depict brown haired fair skinned village people living in the area. Pretty weird...

But after that we went to a uma shop and had grilled uma and uma sashimi. In case you are wondering...uma means horse. Yep thats right - we ate horse sashimi...raw horse meat. And it was surprisingly really good. It was really soft and actually kind of sweet. Nothing like anything Ive eaten before. Do they sell horse meat in America? I have never heard of it...

Things are going really well. We have a ton of good investigators and we are teaching lots and lots of lessons. Its a fun time to be a missionary right now. One of the most prepared people I have ever met is getting bapized in two weeks. His name is Anjiki san. We met him 3 weeks ago and every time we meet him his faith just blows me away. He is so excited to learn about the restored gospel. He just wants to know everything - he cant get enough. Every time he learns something new he goes home, prays about it, and then comes back and says "I got my answer. Its true. What else can you tell me?" Its amazing. We are all excited for his baptism - especially the branch. They are kind of lacking in able priesthood holders so they are so excited to welcome such a strong faithful potential leader into the branch. We are so blessed!

I love you! I hope everyone has a good time watching Alabama beat Texas! Talk to you next week!

Love, Elder Brendan Kingsford