Eric's Mission, Tokyo, Japan

Crazy stuff happened this week.  First of all my bike broke the day before transfers.  So the first thing I had to do this week was spend $100 to get it fixed.  It's crazy how expensive bikes are in Japan.  So I had to take some money out of my personal fund.  I didn't like doing it.  But I should get my bike on Wednesday so it'll be all worth it. We met a cool Japanese guy who came to church with us on Sunday.  His name is T..., the same name as the investigator that I baptized in Niigata.  I personally think it's a sign or something.  Anyways, we met with him after church, showed him the baptismal font and he asked us when he could get baptized.  We set a date with him on the 20th of September next month so I'm looking forward to that. We are seriously the best friends already.  He sent me an email the other day saying how thankful he was that I transferred to Tsukuba so that we could meet. ...

Hey everyone! This will be the last email that I send you from Tokyo, because I am going to be moving to the more rural area of Tsukuba, Japan pronounced scuba. Not only am I leaving Tokyo but also my English ward, my lovely district family, and my district leader responsibilities. I'm really going to miss being a district leader even though I was always busy. I loved getting to know everyone in the district and it seems as soon as I get really close to the district I have to leave. I'm so sad.  Oh well.  In other news, I'm no longer a district leader anymore because I was just called to be a zone leader for the Matsudo north zone which consists of 2 districts of about 16 people. I'm a little nervous because zone leaders have to be awesome missionaries and I don't think I measure up yet. I hope I can get the zone as unified as this district was this transfer.  My new companion is transfer 10 and his name is Elder Jacox.  I'm no...

Dear Family, Like I said in the title, this was a fancy crazy week. Fancy cuz of all the miracles and crazy because of how busy it was. Especially this weekend. Since I serve as the district leader I get to go on splits with all of the elders in our district, and this Saturday I went with my friend Elder Chugg. We taught 4 people, went to a, oh no, I don't know how to say this in English, a dendo Chosei shukai meeting, and to game night in one day. We skipped both lunch and dinner and made it home just right before curfew. Crazy days like that are always the best, except that you are usually really hungry during them. Also on Saturday we went to a fun place called roppongi. This is a dangerous place at night and if we don't have a lesson appointment there we are not allowed to go there as missionaries after 6 pm . But we had a lesson there so we went. We met our friend J... there right outside his work (a club) and started teaching him about...

Another great week this week!  We had two baptisms this Saturday that we attended.  Both people who were baptized were from Vietnam and they were so excited to be baptized.  As the district leader, I have the privilege to interview anyone that is getting baptized in the district.  I love the interviews because they are seriously the most spiritual experiences that I have ever been in.  One of the candidates was unable to speak English or Japanese so we had to have a translator for her via Skype.  That was an interesting experience because I didn't really know what was going on.  I really had to rely on the spirit for the decision on that one.  The baptismal service was great and they both asked me to bestow on them the Holy Ghost.  That is the first time I have ever done that and it felt really good.  I hope to do that again really soon! We had our second district meeting as a district last week and it went really well....