It's Christmas Time!!

December 09, 2014

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 united in
this, a huge miracle happened! Just thinking about it again makes me
so happy! So do you remember my days back when I was in Togane with
Elder Cannon? Remember how we were working really hard with our
Chinese friends T... and K...? How T... got baptized right away but
K... decided after awhile that he didnt want to? Well, I have good
news for all of you. K... decided to get baptized for real this time!
Yay!!!!!! My old MTC companion Elder Free transferred into that area
and started working with K... again and K... said that he just felt so
good, like he did at the beginning when Elder Cannon and I were
teaching him and he said that it was time to stop waiting and he is
getting baptized in two weeks on the 21st of December! I am
Soooooooooo happy about it! I am going to call him again today to see
how he is doing, but I really hope that I can go and attend his baptism!
It's like 2.5 hrs away from my area by train, so idk we will have to
see. But thank you so much again for all of your prayers towards him.
I feel like he is my Christmas miracle this year.

Well, besides that we saw a lot of really cool things here in Tsukuba
too. We unfortunately have not been able to meet again with my Ohio
State friend Ken, but we finally got a hold of him again on facebook
yesterday so we should meet sometime soon! He told me that he
officially got into Ohio State last week so he wants me to show him
all of the cool stuff in Ohio when he goes. We were also working with
our 85 year old investigator named I... last week and his lesson
went amazing! We were thinking about not visiting him because mostly he
just likes telling us Japanese stories which are very interesting, but
his Japanese is hard to understand, and he told us that he wasn't too interested
in the Church, but we shared with him a message about who God is.
During the lesson, we somehow got on the topic that we have a Heavenly
Mother and he was so surprised! His eyes got huge and he told us that
he always believed that there was a Heavenly Mother but no one else
agreed with him. He was so excited! He kept telling us that he was
so happy that we came to visit him to tell him about that, and how he
wanted us to come over again to talk more next week. And to top it
all off he gave us huge apples! Apples are so expensive here so it
was a real treat! Things are just going so good over here. I love
Tsukuba!

On another note, thanks for the pic of the ornament, it looks really
cool! Does that mean that I have 20 ornaments now? I feel so old! I
wish that we had a Christmas tree in our apartment. We need to get
one so we can have more of the Christmas cheer around the place! Oh,
I'm really excited because next transfer on the 2nd of January, we are
going to have a huge New Year's party with the whole mission! Well,
except Niigata because they are so far away. But what's even better is
that the party is right before my MTC Sisters go home so I will get to
say good bye to them one last time before they go. Seriously in the
next few transfers, we are going to be losing almost all of the Sister
missionaries in the mission. Also, sorry dad, I may have been a little
confusing in the last email, but the violin performance is this week on
Thursday, so I haven't performed yet. But I would still appreciate your
prayers so I can do well. The piece is really good and I'll see if I
can get a recording of it.

Well, I love you all lots and lots! Have a great week and a wonderful
Christmas season! Keep up the faith and I will be talking to you all
soon!

love yah!

Eric Stevens

Here's a pic of my office! lol Actually this was taken back in Togane
in February but I thought you would appreciate it.