Eric's Mission, Tokyo, Japan

Hello Everybody! As you can tell from the email title, I can finally just wear my short sleeve shirts with no jacket again!  I discovered this momentous occasion a few days ago when I was walking around a Japanese cherry blossom festival held in Togane with an investigator.  I started off the journey with a jacket but then the sun came out and it was just way too hot!  The weather is just beautiful right now and I love it!  Too bad in just 2 months it will be back to being blazing hot and muggy all the time.  I definitely don't miss those times. So like I said earlier, we had our cherry blossom festival last weekend here in Togane.  We went up there with a friend of ours named Y....  He owns a tofu restaurant so we went there to eat right before the festival.  Did you know that they have hundreds of different types of tofu dishes?  Well, I certainly didn't!  Pretty much as soon as we walked in, he started giving us t...

Hello Everyone! I hope that you all are having a wonderful week and are excited for this week's email home!  I guess I'll start off with the mini general conference that we had last week.  We had Elder Nelson from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles speak with us.  Yes, the one who had lunch with us a few years back. We also had Elder Evans from the Seventies at the meetings as well as 3 other Seventy members.  They gave us a huge training on how to use iPads as a missionary and it went really well.  They talked a lot about how the iPads aren't for helping the investigators.  No, not at all.  They are to help the missionaries to prepare for the future when we are going to use technology when we get back home.  They want to train us about how to use technology in a safe spiritual way.  I was very surprised to hear that.  Unfortunately, I have some bad news about the iPads coming up in the next few weeks.  B...

Hello! So today was transfer day, and you know what that means, transfer calls.  This time, I get to stay in my area but I have to say good bye to my wonderful companion Elder Lee.  He will leave me to go to the streets of Tokyo.  He is really excited.  He has been wanting to go to Tokyo for a long time.  Replacing Elder Lee is a transfer 3 missionary named Elder Mützlburg from Australia.  Actually during his first transfer, I was his zone leader so we know each other pretty well.  He is pretty awesome and I am excited to be able to work with him this transfer.  That now makes this my 7th companion not from the United States.  I'm very international I guess.  I'm just a little worried because I don't speak Chinese, and Elder Mützlburg doesn't speak Chinese, and a lot of our investigators only speak Chinese.  It should be interesting trying to teach them. I will deninitely be praying for the gift of...

Why Hello Everyone! Thanks for joining me for this week's adventure in Japan.  Sorry it's a little bit late.  Yesterday was so packed with lessons and stuff that we had to reschedule our Pday for today.  I hope that none of your hearts were broken because of my lateness.  But I guess this email will just have to do. This week was pretty much a normal week.  It had 7 days and we did missionary stuff.  We did have our last district meeting of the transfer this week, which was really sad but it went really well!  Just recently we had a missionary come home from her mission in America who lives in the Togane Ward.  So me, being the kind, and considerate person that I am, gave her the opportunity to relive some of her missionary moments, and I asked her to help me train during the meeting.  She was very surprised and nervous, but after some persuasion she agreed.  She did a great job! She taught a...

Hello Everyone! It was good, once again, to hear from all of you.  Mondays can be so exciting!  Funny thing is, is that it used to be the worst day of the week because it was the day we had to go back to school after the wonderful weekend.  Funny how the mission changes your perspective on these things. First of all, I want to answer a few questions received last week. For the stake conference, I played the violin with a piano accompaniment and a cello player as well.  The cello player was someone who we call Batman Kyoudai (brother) because he can seriously do anything.  He always helps us with lessons and gives us rides, and he even gave us a bench press machine!  And of course, he plays the cello as well.  The pianist was Elder Rasmassen who lives in Togane with us in the same apartment.  Our apartment is so musical!  For the choir during the mini general conference, it was all Elders, except for the pianist...