Happy New Year from Japan!

Happy New Years everyone!
明けましておめでとうございます!

This week was definitely a fun one! On Tuesday, our whole zone went to
an area in our zone called Ibaraki to do a blitz. A blitz is when all
of us are in the same area, and we all go out and dendo and try to
strengthen the area. When we got there, we rented bikes and we chose
to rent electric mama chari's. (A Japanese bike) They were sooooo
fast, and definitely made riding a bike pretty fun.  Even though me
and my companion looked really awkward on them because we are so tall!
Haha. We went on kokkans (companionship exchanges)with the other
missionaries in the zone. I was companions with one of my favorite
people from the MTC! Vui choro!!! He is one transfer a head of me, so
we are both are pretty new to the field, but we had tons of fun. We
rode our bikes way down to the other side of that area, and did some
finding along the way. We were able to teach a couple lessons together
that day and it was way fun! That night we had 12 elders in one
apartment, which was lots of fun, but it was really squishy haha.

We met with an investigator this week named Kawaguchi. He is GOLDEN!
It was my first time meeting with him, and my companions second time.
We taught about the gospel of Jesus Christ and the 5 steps which are
faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, recieving the gift of the
Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. He was amazed about baptism when
we brought it up! He just kept saying "subarashii , subarashii"
(wonderful) so we decided to invite him to be baptized and he said
"Hai hai, itsudemo!" (Yes yes, whenever!) We explained to him that
here was stuff that we had to do to prepare him and we set a baptismal
goal for the 24th of this month. But on Sunday, he got called into
work, and wasn't able to come to church, so it looks like we will have
to push the baptism back to February. But that's okay! I'm excited
that he wants to follow Christ and change his life! Pray for him to
have his schedule work so that he can start coming to church, because
he really wants to come.

This week we are planning to invite 2 other people to get baptized.
One of them comes to church every week, and has for months, but she
just hasn't been baptized because no one has asked her haha. So
hopefully in the next couple weeks she will be baptized! The other
person is a really strong investigator that we think will accept the
invitation! I'll keep you all posted on how those go! As of right now,
we have 2 investigators with baptismal dates, and hopefully by the end
of this week, we can make it 4! The work in Japan is getting so big
right now!

New Years in Japan is huge. This whole past week, we haven't had to
make a meal other than breakfast. All of our lunches and dinners have
been with members at their house! Lots of people have work off, and
school off for a couple days, so families are all together. It was a
lot of fun to be able to be with our ward members in their homes, and
to be able to share messages with them to help strengthen their
families.

Anyways, I think that is all that really happened this past week. I
hope everyone had a safe, and happy New Years! Make goals and try to
reach them throughout this year! My goal this year is to learn
Japanese and to be able to use my Japanese to help and strengthen the
country of Japan!

Real quick just wanted to shout out to my companions bands! They are on
iTunes so go check them out! His band with his friends is called
Solarsuit and they opened for Imagine Dragons 2 years ago! His other
band is with some of his family and its called Luna Lune! They are
awesome!

Love you all! Have a safe week!
エバンズ長老

I have no captions for the pictures this week.  

All I know is that some of them are from their dinner appointments this week.