Eric's Mission, Tokyo, Japan

Hey Everyone!   You'll never guess what happened.  We had a mini general conference in our mission yesterday!  That's why pday was moved to today instead of yesterday.  We had Elder Melvin J. Ballard, from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Elder Ronald L. Rasband from the Presidency of the Seventies, and Bishop Gary L. Stevenson Presiding Bishop of the Church come to Japan to visit with us.  It was so amazing and spiritual and I was even privileged to sing in a 10 person choir that performed during the meetings.  We sang "Hope of Israel" and I'm pretty sure some tears were shed, not because of the singing, but because of the spiritual presence that having an Apostle in your midst brings.  He talked a lot about the "Preach My Gospel" book and how we need to focus more on sharing the message of the restoration to our investigators.  He wants us to have our investigators pray to God after every lesson to ...

Hello everyone again! I hope that this week was super amazing like it was for me!  Luckily for me, it's hasn't been that cold here, just between 0 and 8 degrees Celsius so not too bad and we haven't had any snow yet so that's a blessing as well.  But just like last year when I was in Togane, it is super windy all the time and it howls whenever we try to go to sleep at night.  It's a good thing that I still have my ear plugs for the nite time. So this week, I was able to meet with a lot of my old friends that I knew when I was here earlier.  But just like my brother Andrew in Taiwan, we had a lot of lessons cancel as well. :(    But it's been really cool because I was able to meet with two of my old Togane friends this week, A... and K...  Both lessons went really well and it is so awesome to see how much they have changed towards the gospel and how they want to learn more now. Actually when we met with K..., one of the first things...

Hey Everyone! I'm glad to hear that everything is going well for you back in the good old USA. It's fun to hear the stories of everyone and to know that everyone is being protected by the Lord!  Things have been very interesting for me in Japan. So to start off, the first part of the week was full of painful goodbyes.  I hate goodbyes and I told everyone that I said goodbye to just that.  I feel so loved because we didn't have a minute on Monday through Wednesday where we didn't have someone that wanted to say goodbye to me.  I'm sure that you saw all of the pictures on Facebook and that wasn't even half of the people that we met with.  Our ward mission leader told me that I needed to come back when I finished my mission to say goodbye to him again because once wasn't enough.  Tsukuba is awesome and I am going to miss it, especially the Costco being so close.  There is nothing like it in Togane. Then to end the week, it was aweso...

Well, hello everyone!  Long time no see! Sorry I don't have too much time to write today so I can't start off my letter with Japanese this time.  I hope that you were all able to read some of it and if you weren't able to, ask my Dad because he got it pretty well.  Have you studied Japanese a lot Dad? Man, what can I say about this week.  Well, the first few days were really slow and not much happened but, the last two days made up for all the slowness.  On Saturday and Sunday we were able to meet with 11 different people, five of which came to church on Sunday.  I haven't been able to get that many people to church ever since I left Togane! It was definitely a great way to end my time in Tsukuba. Which brings up another point that I wanted to talk about today, we got transfer calls.  And yes, I am leaving my home in Tsukuba.  I have been living here for almost 6 months so I'm not too surprised but, I'm still sad to...