Elder Dylan Sadler's Adventures in the Japan Tokyo South Mission

Another great week in Japan! My first Christmas in Japan and it has been great. I will say, it is nothing like America though. In Japan, Christmas is purely commercial. No purpose, no caroling, no Savior. It is a very strange thing (and a sad thing as well) to experience, but it has provided lots of opportunity for Elder Dowdle and I to teach the true meaning of Christmas. One great experience we had was just yesterday on Christmas Day. We went caroling as a ward in the local Eki (train station). Lots of people were stopping to listen to us and  even recording us with their phones! It was such a neat experience to be caroling in Japanese and still feel the meaning behind the songs and see all the passer-byes get to experience those songs about the Savior as well. What an amazing opportunity we have (not just missionaries) to share this wonderful message about the Savior. In this past week, we have been really busy leading up to Christmas. Lots of members were in the Christmas spiri

Another week has flown by in Japan! I cant believe its already p-day  again! This past week has been really good! Last Monday we just took it easy and did some shopping around which was really nice. On Tuesday, we went out to eat with our super cool investigator and we got Italian. A great mix up from Japanese food! On Wednesday , we did some housing in a gigantic apartment complex we call the aparto (real creative, I know). Afterwards we had a shokuji (basically just a meal with a member) with our ward mission leader. We ate Costco pizza and chocolate pie; it was so good! Thursday was transfer day. Palomino 長老 and Porter 長老 left, and Poff 長老 and Uemura 長老 came to Fujisawa. They are both great missionaries. Uemura 長老 is on his last transfer and Poff 長老 is transfer 4 (There are 16 transfers in a mission). On Friday, Dowdle 長老 and I did a lot of weekly planning and set a lot of solid goals to help us really pick it up for this new transfer. A lot of our people have fallen through on us

My how the time has flown. We got our transfer emails this past Saturday (my first transfer email!). Elder Dowdle and I will be staying together in Fujisawa, which is great because the Fujisawa members are great with the missionaries (especially for Christmas!).  This next transfer will be eight weeks though (as opposed to the usual 6 weeks) because of the holiday seasons. I have already learned so much and I am excited to keep learning from Elder Dowdle. He is our district leader so he goes on splits with all the other elders in our district every transfer, which is great because I also get to go on splits with every one else. It seems that everyone has sort of their own specialty (i.e. streeting, housing, language, etc.) so I get to learn a lot! Besides all the splits, this past week has been pretty normal. Dowdle 長老 and I are still pushing along to get out of the small drought we are in. A lot of our investigators are falling through, but we have a few that look promising. We do

Can't believe it's already week 3 in Japan! Seems like just last week I reported to the MTC! Week 3 has been great so far! Today, we went to Anoshima, which is a small island in Tokyo bay. It was so much fun! We  woke up early this morning and biked for an hour to the coast to do our studies. It was so great to be on the ocean again! After studies we went to check out the island. It was awesome. We went down to some rocks around the bottom of the island and accidentally got our feet soaking wet... it was a ton of fun though. No regrets! P-days [preparation days] are pretty great around here! On Sunday , we had stake conference. It was pretty good, just really hard to stay awake... especially when you don't understand much of anything. Oh well, slowly but surely. Other than all the fun we have, this past week was pretty long. Me and Dowdle 長老 are in a little bit of a rut right now. We had to push back our baptism date to January 14 but it is looking pretty solid for that