Eric's Mission, Tokyo, Japan

Good afternoon everyone, It is a beautiful day and I am reporting live from Tokyo, Japan. I successfully made it back from Togane and am now in my home area. Well Togane is technically my area because my close friends live there, but it's good to be back in the huge city of Tokyo. I'm sure you're all dying to hear about my adventure to Togane so I'll start with that. When we arrived in Togane, we quickly went to our friend T... house because it has been difficult for him to attend church. We went to his house and he met with us, and we had a very wonderful half hour long discussion about lots of random stuff. At first the discussion was awkward, but then we talked about the gospel and I'm telling you we had the most spiritual experience I've ever felt in my life. We shared a lot of our personal experiences with each other including experiences Elder Cannon and I had while T... was preparing to be baptized. We ...

I just wanted to start off this email by saying, "Have a great mission Andrew." Have lots of fun and be looking for a letter from me because I sent you one last Monday so it should be there by now.  I hope you get it because I didn't know what unit you were in, but it should get to the MTC.  Things are going not to shabbily at the moment.  Unfortunately we have not been meeting with our prince friend. The last thing we heard from him was that his lawyer back in Ghana called him and told him that he couldn't get baptized into a Christian church because he was a prince.  I found out more about his situation, and it seems like he is a prince of a tribe up in northern Ghana whose tribe has pretty much been wiped out by the other tribes.  I think that his lawyer may be right about becoming Christian because northern Ghana is unfriendly to Christians.  The Church doesn't have any churches or missions in northern Ghana so IDK ...

I didn't know what heat and humidity were until recently this week.  It has been 35 C here and 100% humidity for the past week.  Not very fun for wearing church clothes around everywhere.  I feel bad for anyone who works in missions more south than me.  What doesn't help is that our AC doesn't work that well either.  We have two AC units but when we turn both of them on we have to turn everything else off or else the power shuts off.  Which is nice for the night time but any other time we either have to be in the dark or the heat.  I guess I shouldn't be complaining too much.  At least I get to eat lots of American food now that I am in the English area. Speaking of weather, we had some weird weather this week. Unfortunately the typhoon happened during the night so I slept right through the whole thing!  Too bad I wanted to see it!  Also the earthquake happened at 4:00 in the morning so I didn't feel it.  We have alarm...

  How is everyone? Well as you can see from the title of this email we had our transfer calls this morning, which means I am now transfer 8, which means that I am on top of the hill starting to go over it.  As for what happened with transfers, I am staying in the English area but my dear companion is going to take my place in Togane.  So jealous!  I'm giving him tons of advice so he can hit the ground running there.  I was made a district leader and our district is the biggest one in the mission. We are starting something new in our district, having more sisters in a district than elders.  It's the first time so I'm excited to see what happens.  Do you remember Sister Snow from Togane? Well, she is in the English ward with me.  I was so excited to hear that she was moving here because she is awesome. Should be a fun transfer.  But I'm a little sad because this will probably be my last transfer in here.  There ...

So first of all I want to tell my dear brother Andrew something. Guess what I just found out, missionaries in Taiwan have Facebook! I can't believe it.  I thought Japan was supposed to be the first mission outside the U.S. to have Facebook. It's not fair!  But I guess this means that when we start teaching more Chinese people you can Skype in and help us out through Facebook video chat, so make sure you have really, really good Chinese in the next few months. I'm just telling you this now so you can prepare for this big responsibility by making a Facebook page now. So make sure you make it really good with lots and lots of pictures that don't include you and just a girl so that other people can see you before your mission. Facebook is pretty sweet. At first I was a little worried that Facebook would be very distracting for me because I've never used it before. But never using it before really helps me a lot because I don't know exactly what I can do...

Sorry, just practicing my Japanese typing because I haven't had to do it in a long time since I've been in Tokyo. My Japanese is slowly slipping away! Oh no!!!!!!!!!   We had a pretty great week.  A lot of the people that we are trying to meet have just been in the hospital which is really weird. We are going to try to visit them there soon. We have done lots of train dendo! Since we are now in the rainy season of the year we have been very creative in how we find people. Instead of just streeting, we ride trains and dendo in barber shops so we don't get wet and so people aren't running away from us, and the rain, when we talk with them. And what do you know it, densha dendo is awesome! Train dendo to use English. But speaking of rainy season, I thought we had it bad in Japan but I was looking at the weather for Taipei since Andrew is going there soon and they are getting way more rain than we are so good luck Andrew! Try some train dendo when you...

Hey everybody! How's it all going?  We have been keeping really busy recently. Actually this week I have taught the most lessons that I have ever taught on my mission so far.  Elder Tu'ua and I have been working really hard and we have seen the fruits of our labor in Tokyo.  Tokyo's a great place but would you believe it, I went back to Togane yesterday.  But don't worry I came back to Tokyo again. The reason I went back to Togane is because an investigator that I was working with was baptized yesterday and she really wanted me to come and see it.  So after a 2 hr train ride and $26 we arrived in my old area.  She was so excited to see me that she forgot all about the mission rules and tried to give me a big hug, but me being the obedient missionary that I am, turned it into a handshake very smoothly. Lol. Funny story, elder maki and I found her and talked to her awhile about the church but she said that she wasn't interested so we left.  But the next ...