Eric's Mission, Tokyo, Japan

Hey Everyone! You know what's happening this week?  I started my last week of my last transfer!  And boy are we going to be busy.  As soon as the Bishop in both wards announced to everyone that I only had 7 more days in the ward, everyone started inviting us over for lunch dinner appointments.  I feel so popular because this is the most member lessons that I have ever had.  Pretty fancy!  But this last week has really crept up one me.  During weekly planning, my companion brought up, hey, so you need to start packing this week.  When are we going to do that?  And it hit me, dang, I really do.  It's going to be fun to try to make my bags under 50 lbs each.  But enough about that, let's get into the good stuff. So last Sunday was awesome at church.  President and Sister Nagano came and gave our ward a surprise visit.  Yes, they are both from Japan but their English is amazing!  We were so surprised to se...

Hello Everyone!  How's it going? I guess to start off, I'll explain the title of the email.  After two years of working with our beloved President and Sister Budge, they have gone back to their home in America.  It was so hard to see them leave and I can't imagine having another mission president for two more weeks.  It's hard to fill such big shoes so I wish President and  Sister Nagano good luck!  We had a conference where the missionaries in the Tokyo area met together to welcome President and Sister Nagano to the mission and that was pretty fun.  Their English is so good I was really surprised!  We pretty much had a big question answer session and after a little bit we went back to our areas to teach English class.  I'm looking forward to talking to President Nagano more during our interview coming up in a few weeks. We also had a really fancy fast and testimony meeting last week and after the meeting, I realized th...

Hey everyone! How's it going for everyone?  We had a pretty fantastic week this week. Actually it was one of the most busy weeks that I have ever had while in Senzokuike!  We were able to find 5 new investigators, teach 14 lessons, and 3 of our friends were able to come to church.  All in all a great week!  At the beginning of the week, I  was looking through my journal that I kept while I was here a year and a half ago and I came across a family from Ghana who was investigating the Church when I was here before.  I just had a feeling that we should go over there and visit them so I looked up their address in the areabook and went. Well the address was totally wrong but luckily I was able to recognize the place where we were and from memory I was able to guide us to their house.  It's seriously so amazing that you can remember things from that long ago.  But when we visited them, they invited us into their home and wanted ...

Hey everyone! How's it going?  Well another week has come and gone with a lot of sweet adventures.  I would like to talk about 2 of them in this email. As some of you have probably noticed on my Facebook page, we went with one of our investigators to tour the Imperial Palace and it was so sweet!  It's in the middle of Tokyo and it is so weird when you first see it because it's just a big forest and lawns in the middle of these huge skyscrapers.  They showed us some of the old guard towers as well as the old Imperial Tower where the emperor lived in a long time ago. Unfortunately, it had been burned down so only the foundation remains today.  What I loved most about the tour however was all of the old stories that they told us.  The first one was about 47 Samurai warriors.  Their master was a warlord but he offended the Emperor by trying to kill another warlord who hurt his honor.  The Emperor commanded the other warlord to comm...

Hey Everybody! How's are things back home?  I hope everything is going great and it's not too hot or too rainy.  I suppose that a lot off you are wondering about the strange title that I used to open this email, so let me simply explain.  It is super hot!  So hot in fact, that even while taking a freezing cold shower, I am still sweating like crazy. The good news is, it is going to get worse as July and August come around.  It may not look that hot on the weather app, but since all of Tokyo is a massive sheet of unending asphalt, it absorbs all of the heat so it is literally like living in a oven over here. But life goes on:-) This week I had to say a very sad goodbye to my Canadian friend and companion Elder Faganello.  I am sending this email to him too so maybe I should give him some compliments so he doesn't feel bad.  Lol. Just kidding I love yah Elder Faganello!  He was a great companion and we had so much fun toge...

Well the final die has been cast.  I just got my very last transfer call in Japan.  Elder Faganello will be transferring to Tsukuba and I will be staying in Senzokuike for my last transfer and my new companion will be Elder Hardy.  It's really funny because I was his district leader 3 transfers ago when I was in Togane with Elder Lee.  He is a really hard worker, so we will be flying like rockets this transfer! Oh, and one more thing, do you remember Elder Free my MTC companion? Well, he will be staying in the same apartment as me for our last transfer together!!  I was so excited to find out about that!  We are starting our mission together and ending it together!  I guess we'll get to see how much we have changed these past 2 years. Well enough about transfers, let's talk about last week.  It started out amazing!  We were able to find 2 new investigators right off the bat. It will be interesting to see...