Baptism!

Hey family!

This week was awesome! Hideaki got baptized today! The first one in Koga for over a year! It was a really good service and he was so happy. It's amazing the happiness that comes from the gospel. We have stake conference next week so he will be getting confirmed the following Sunday in Sacrament meeting. The Ward was so great with him and already have talked about making him a home teacher and getting him to the Temple soon. We have a temple baptismal date with him for the 25th of next month. Now, we need to find new investigators!! We're really trying to get the Eiken built up right now. We're not sure why but our youth just haven't really been coming. I guess we just have to be relentless with them (and their parents)! But, we do know that this week we should have a few more and Yuuki will be coming so that's good! Yeah, about Yuuki, he says he has lots of interest and seems like it but it's been so hard to meet with him lately because he and Eiki are both very busy. We're doing what we can with him but right now he's not progressing too quickly. One great thing with the Eiken here in Koga, though, is that our Bishop and Dendo shunin are both on board and helping us get it moving. They've both asked us for several chirashi so that they can give them to potential students that they know, so we think that it will get going soon. 

Life is great in Koga! We're working hard and doing what we can. Since we've moved apartments we've been biking like 50-70 kilometers a day which is pretty exhausting. But other than that we're doing well! Love you guys!

Elder Snyder and Elder Fountain

スナイダー長老とファウンテン長老

We are blessed!

Hey everyone! Another week in the books! So many good things have happened with Hideaki and he's doing so great. We were able to meet with him a lot last week and had a member present for each lesson we had in person which was great for him. We had a pretty amazing experience with him that has strengthened my testimony of the Spirit so much. So, we decided that we were going to fast together with Hideaki and some members on Saturday, so that he would be able to come to church and to know if he should be baptized on the 29th. So we did, and then it just so happened that there was a baptism in Oyama, a neighboring ward, on Saturday night. We took Hideaki to the baptism and then went out to eat with him to break our fasts together. At the baptism, he had an amazing spiritual experience, where he said he felt a feeling that he had never felt before. He told us "The Holy Ghost is definitely here." He told us that he would come to church today and be baptized next week. The amazing part is that we got a call from him on Friday night and he told us that he wasn't going to be able to come to church this Sunday, which meant he probably wasn't going to be able to get baptized. We talked with him for a while and ended up just telling him to wait until Saturday after you fast and we know that God will give you an answer about what you should do. And He did just that. Such an awesome experience! 

Things are going well with Elder Fountain and I. He's a really good missionary and we've been having fun dendouing together, even though sometimes it feels like we just want to die in our futons at the end of the night. Haha. Life is good here. It's fun, hard, disappointing yet so rewarding. I'm grateful for God's help in His work. We are blessed! Love you guys!

Elder Snyder and Elder Fountain

スナイダー長老とファウンテン長老

The Koga elders

The pretty purple bike I had to use for about a week!

Preach Like Christ

Hey everybody! It was good to see most of you on Skype last week. Things are good here in Japan. Today we got to go to the temple which was great. My new companion is Elder Fountain. He's from Utah and is a really good missionary. He's transfer 13. I'm transfer 10! Crazy right? Getting old... Not sure if you heard about the earthquake that hit us yesterday. The epicenter was actually just a few miles from where we live. It was level 5 so. It shook the apartment pretty good and had some stuff fall off the shelves. Pretty interesting feeling! Haha.

 Last week was pretty good. We met with Hideaki several times and he is looking pretty solid right now. He really wants to be baptized on the 29th so we are hopeful it's going to happen! We'll be doing our best to prepare him. Yuuki is so busy right now it's hard for him to meet with us, but we are staying in close contact with him and it looks like we'll be able to meet a few times this week. That's about it for our investigators. We have been continuing to visit members a lot, both active and less active, trying to get the dendo fire up here in Koga.

I'm really excited for this transfer and working as zone leader with Elder Fountain! So for our zone motto for the transfer we came up with "Preach Like Christ". Then, for our zone focus, we thought about how we can become more Christ-like missionaries, what our zone specifically needs and also about the 3 things we have been hearing the mission talk about the most. So our focuses are 1. Charity 2. Youth 3. Preach My Gospel. With these focuses, we've thought about end goals that we want the missionaries to shoot for. With charity, it's somewhat difficult to make a measurable goal but we want to start by developing more charity for our companions because we think that's where it starts. We will be doing something that we have somewhat jokingly (because it's corny, haha) named the "Kiryu East love project", which is just something we will be doing to help the missionaries make a conscious effort to serve and love their companions. Of course we know that it has to come from within our hearts, but there are applications that can help us start developing good habits of showing charity! As for our focus with youth, we want to put the focus on Eiken (student's English test prep English class) and finding students through the youth members. We have asked the district leaders to create with their district members a goal for each ward as to how many students they will have at the Eiken class by the end of the pilot program. We want to do this so that the missionaries will always have the urgency for the Eiken as well as their other dendo. We also want to become best friends with the youth! And finally, for PMG we just want each missionary to be studying from PMG daily and striving to apply what we study. 

It's been a good few days with Elder Fountain. He's really experienced and seems to have a lot of great ideas/dendo tactics. He's a hard worker and has lots of good ideas for the area. I'm excited for this transfer!

Love you all! The church is true!

Elder Snyder and Elder Fountain

スナイダー長老とファウンテン長老

Had a minor collision with a car!

Loved Skyping with you all last week!

The biggest bowl of food I've ever seen!

Mother's Day!

We had one of the most anticipated days of families of missionaries yesterday... Mother's Day!! We got to talk to Jake via Skype and it was awesome. He only got 40 minutes of time to talk to us and he kept it down to the second, so the time just flew. He looks great, sounds great, and is doing so many great things in Japan! It's countdown to Christmas now so we can look forward to talking to him again.

Not a lot of time, but some great pics!

Hey everyone! Not a ton of time today but I'll say that things are going well! I'm excited to talk with you guys next week! I'm calling at 8:30 Monday morning Japan time. Love you guys, talk to you soon!

Random kid who was stopped on the side of the road in the rain and couldn't start up his scooter. I was able to start it up with the kick starter and he was soo happy cause he had been trying for about 20 minutes. Good memory!

Elder Porter and me on exchanges with our investigator, Ibata!

Not sure.. Messing with some old Japanese katakanas at a members house.

Did some hedge trimming service for someone.