Thanksgiving Miracles!

December 02, 2013

Hello Everybody back home! It's good to be able to read all of my weekly emails from everybody! I love hearing from you! So another busy week. I think I should be fine with the clothes that I have right now. The rain pants work really well and they're the konnan brand or something like that, I can't really remember. They also have some boots at the apartment that the other Elders left so I can just use those. And transfers are next Monday so I don't know if I will even be staying for the winter months or not, will just have to see. It sounds like you all had a really fun Thanksgiving back home. For ours we just made some of my mashed potatoes and some chicken. I made sure to document it for you all to see. lol Oh and one of the sister missionary's mom sent us a pumpkin pie and it was super amazing! We had to split it between 5 people but it was still really good.

But Thanksgiving had some really cool miracles too! I decided to do a Thanksgiving fast for breakfast and lunch in gratitude for everything that I had been blessed with and also for our investigator T.... He has been so close to baptism for a long time but he was just embarrassed because of his friends. That Thanksgiving night, we taught T... over Skype because he was sick and we asked him about baptism. And without any hesitation he said, hai, watashi wa baputesuma o uketai desu. Just a random Japanese fact, but usually when they use tai at the end of the verb they use "to omoimasu" (I think I want) and they only use desu at the end when they really want that thing. So we knew that he was very serious about being baptized. It was just so amazing to hear him say that. After the lesson we were rushing home because we were really late for curfew and one of my companions was hit by a car while crossing a busy street. He was thrown 10 feet from his bike and skidded to a stop and was just laying there. My other companion and I jumped off our bikes and ran over to see what had happened and it was a miracle, he was totally fine. He just hopped right up with nothing broken or anything. Unfortunately because of that we were really late for curfew. lol Oh and one last miracle for that day, our companion that was hit by the car was also carrying the pumpkin pie home and the pie was totally fine too! (I think that was my favorite miracle, just kidding).

So did you get the pictures that I sent today? Of me and my son? In the mission we call everyone that we baptize our son. lol After T... asked to be baptized on Saturday we had to get really busy. We had his interview on Friday and then afterwards we got all the information from him that we needed for the church record. (I had no Idea it was so hard to have someone get baptized! You have to fill out so many forms!) And then we asked him who he wanted to baptize him. He thought about it for awhile and then he asked me. I was sooooooooooooooooo surprised! He spoke only Japanese and I'm still not very good at that. For most of his lessons I just sat there and at the end bore my testimony that I knew that everything that my companions had said was true. I felt like I barely knew him because of the language barrier. But he asked me to do it! Which meant that I had less than 24 hours to memorize the baptism prayer in Japanese, but no pressure. lol When the day of the baptism came I was really nervous. I had never baptized anyone before and had no idea what I was supposed to do, but as soon as I stepped into the water a feeling of calm rushed over me and I knew that it was going to be ok. And it was! T... was then confirmed the next day in sacrament meeting. This just goes to show you that I guess you don't need to speak the language perfectly to have them feel the Spirit. It was also very humbling for me to know that Heavenly Father had worked through me. Wow!

Well once again it is time for me to say goodbye. I love and miss you all always. I wish so much that I could be home right now but ratsu ga kunai (that's Niigata slang for there's nothing I can do about it). lol Have another amazing week!

Eric

ps Actually setting up Christmas lights sounds fun! I can't believe that it has been a year since we put all of those lights up!

pps We get our iPad minis this month! yeah! I was wondering if you could get me a wireless Apple keyboard for the iPads for Christmas. Make sure that it has a normal sized space bar and back space! That'd make it so much easier to type emails on!