Eric's Mission, Tokyo, Japan

Hello Everyone, And a Merry Christmas!  Not ganna lie, I am pretty excited for the holiday season, especially because I get to talk to my family in like 3 days.  I can't believe that it is so close.  I will probably be friending you on skype today so yoroshiku onegai shimasu!  I hope I get to talk to Andrew for a little bit too.  Too bad I can't just call him separately, but I guess I'll just have to wait until next year. What can I say about this week, well I guess it was pretty much the same as all the other weeks as a zone leader.  We did a ton of planning, lots of meetings, and lots of talks with the Sister Training Leaders to know where we should take the zone the next few months. Luckily the weather has been pretty cold and rainy so we haven't had to deal with that too much because we have been inside a lot.  We were able to meet with a lot of really cool people this week though.  Idk if you remember Y..., but he fi...

Hello Everyone! How are you doing?  Well the votes are in, and the transfers have been decided.  I, surprisingly, will be staying in my area.  This is the longest that I have ever stayed in one area before.  By the end of the transfer, I will have stayed here for over 6 months.  The ward members are really happy that I will be staying because I was going to be singing for the Christmas party which is coming up next Saturday.  But remember how I said earlier that every zone leader companionship was changing, well ours did.  My dear companion Elder Scoville will be moving to Takasaki and training a new  zone  leader over there.  Since he is leaving, I need a new companion and guess who it is?  Elder Barray.  I will still be a zone leader and I will actually be training Elder Barray how to be a zone leader because this is his first time. So that's 2 zone leaders that I have trained so far the past 4 transfers as a ...

Dear Everyone, Another awesome week over here in the land of the rising sun!  Luckily though, since it's beginning to be winter now, the sun waits to come up until 6:30 instead of the usual 4:30.  Needless to say, with all the extra hours of darkness, I have been sleeping a lot better recently. The only problem is that since the sun is out for only 8 hrs, it has been getting really cold really fast.  I finally broke this week and got my big trench coat and gloves out.  I was looking at the weather for Niigata though and guess what the weather was for the next few weeks, rain, snow, sleet, hail, and thunder storms.  That sounded just like Niigata to me.  Just think, that was me just one year ago.  I'm counting my blessings right now because at least where I am in Tsukuba right now it is nice and dry. I would like to specifically thank all of you for your fasting and prayers this week during fast Sunday.  Because we were all unit...

Hey everyone! It was amazing to hear from all of you again this week!  It's good to hear that you all had a fun time during Thanksgiving and that I was not needed to make the mashed potatoes.  I also enjoyed hearing about the Ohio State vs Michigan game, about how Ohio totally owned Michigan so thanks for sending me the game stats Grandma Stevens!  How was black Friday?  I hope that everyone is safe and that you bought lot of really cool cheap Christmas presents. We had a pretty fancy week ourselves.  We went on splits with the Assistant Elder Sakamoto last week and that was a great learning experience.  We went to visit one of his recent converts, Bell.  He works at an Indian restaurant here so we got some good curry.   We had a crazy big miracle this week during splits.  We were at the big train station in Tsukuba doing some finding, and we only had 10 more minutes before we were going to go and eat our dinner ...