Eric's Mission, Tokyo, Japan

With a population of 13.23 million, Tokyo is a great place to lose oneself in the work of the Lord.    Night contacting   Crowded trains   Urban sprawl   As Jesus Christ said, "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it."  Matthew 10:39.  Tokyo is a great place to be lost!

    Hello everybody!   It's nice to finally be able to email you from Japan!  First off I'd just like to answer some questions.  I got mom's letter on friday and it was so cool to get a letter!  Thanks a lot!  I am sending a letter out today so hopefully you will receive it in 10ish days.  We can't wait to get your care package because they don't have american candy here at all!  Its terrible. my companions nearly mobbed me when they found out I had some jolly ranchers left over from the flight. lol  Thank you so much for all of your emails.  Its soo good to hear from all of you and I hope that you enjoy reading my emails as much as I enjoy reading yours.  Well now to the good stuff.   Well first off, I was assigned to one of the 2 english speaking areas in all of Japan.  I guess the Lord was reading the last email I sent that said I would miss singing hymns in English. lol At...

  Eric is enjoying learning the Japanese language.  Here is a quick lesson on Japanese. In any given sentence there may be four ways to write in Japanese. 1.  Kanji are characters borrowed from Chinese and cannot be sounded out.      Example: 狗  dog 2.  Hiragana are characters of Japanese origin and can be sounded out. They have a curvy look to them.      Example: こんにちは  hello 3.  Katakana are characters of foreign origin and can be sounded out.  They have a straight line look to them.      Example: イエス·キリスト   Jesus Christ 4. Romaji are characters that are English letters that can be sounded out.       Example:  Dore  which Here is a typical Japanese sentence.  Can you find all of the different characters? 公園で自分の犬を歩いている間、私はハンバーガーを食べています  I am eating a hamburger while walking my dog in the park. It looks eas...

Eric finally arrived safely in Japan on a beautiful sunny day.  These 29 missionaries are the newest in the mission and the Mission President said that this group of missionaries can really sing!!  More pictures and updates will be posted soon. 

Eric entered the MTC on 17 July 2013 and has been having a wonderful time preparing to go to Tokyo, Japan.  We will include emails, pictures, and videos for friends and families to enjoy. Hi Everybody, Its time for my weekly update about my life here in the Lord's service.  Things are going very well here, I'm learning the language pretty well and I can now say a prayer, bare my testimony, read and write the hiragana fluently, and answer and ask simple everyday questions.  I just find it amazing that I am able to pick up on this really hard language so easily.  But I know that it's not because of just me. It's because the Lord is helping me every step of the way.  It rele is awesome to be able to feel the spirit all day every day.  This is a new feeling that I have never felt before and I love every second of it.  To answer some questions that I have gotten, unfortunately I dont see Dallin very often, he has ...