Our Man in Japan

Dear Family and friends,

I hope all of you had a Merry Christmas and are having a Happy New Years. It`s been a while since I last got a chance to do email, so I`ll have to use my journal to remember what happened.

Umm... On December 20 I bought a baked sweet potato from a street vendor and ate it plain. It was pretty good and filling. There was also a ward Christmas party that day. It was pretty good. Though every family in the ward took pictures with Santa and the missionaries so we had to just stand behind Santa for about 45 minutes while everyone was doing the cake decorating and stuff.

The ward gave us a bunch of presents for Christmas. All of it was food. Mostly candy and a bunch of curry packets. One of the members runs a small restaurant, we stopped by there on Christmas Eve and she made us some delicious food.

Things are going well with Maria. She had her baptismal interview yesterday and it went well. She should be baptized this coming Sunday after church.

I haven`t been taking many pictures because my camera while being a perfectly good camera wasn`t very convenient. So on Christmas I went out and bought a fairly inexpensive smaller camera. (IXY Digital 2015). Since getting the camera I`ve taken a lot of pictures, too many to email. We also went out and ate Tonkatsu with a couple members. Besides that Christmas was a fairly normal day.

I got assigned a 10-15 minute talk in Sacrament meeting on January 18. I think it has something to do with making goals for the New Year.

The weather is pretty cold here. I`ve been doing a fair amount of bike riding I guess. It`s hard to judge how much, and I don`t want to buy a speedometer for my bike because I think it would get stolen. I am used to the food. I have made chocolate no bake cookies. I don`t know what I want for my birthday yet. I have been to some places I`ve found interesting but I really don`t have much time for email today.

Next week I`ll write more. Thanks everyone for your letters. :)

Sincerely,

Elder West.