Long Time No Chat

What's up everyone? Sorry it's been so long. I didn't get to email
last Monday because we actually didn't get P day until today. Soooo I
get to email today, and in 3 days on Monday. I'll try to keep it
shorter because a ton happened, but I don't feel like putting a whole
lot of effort in right now.

Just a head ups. Transfer calls are on Tuesday. I'm banking that I'm
staying, but you never know.

3 things I want to talk about:

1) CHRISTMAS DAY! I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I got to call
my family like all the other missionaries (via Skype) and it was
awesome. The time went so fast. With a couple minutes left in my call,
my mission president showed up at the church where we were skyping. To
clarify, he called me and elder Rees earlier in the week and said he
wanted to go dendo (missionary work) with us on Christmas. To clarify
further, that is not very common. I'm one of 3 or 4ish missionaries
still in the Hokkaido to have done that. I was so freaking nervous. My
mission president is the nicest guy I've ever met, and his English is
really good, but I was so afraid he was going to give us tips to be
better by tearing us apart. That didn't happen. Elder Rees and I were
freaking out that whole day. Walking from place to place was very
quiet, because we were both too scared to talk. Taught a lesson with
the 3 of us, and visited a member. Everything went really smooth. I
love my mission president so much. He truly is a man called of God.

2) this week I had the opportunity to go on splits with a Japanese
elder named Elder Tamura. I was in his area, but right before we split
elder Rees and I went down to their area, because as district leader,
elder Rees was conducting a baptismal interview with those elder's
investigator. I ended up teaching the investigator with the baptismal
date later that night. He was one of the coolest people I have ever
met. He was so grateful for the missionaries, and you could literally
see the light the gospel has brought in his eyes. It gave me a lot of
desire to be better. Idk what it is, but so far I've had little to
none success. I'm on my 6month mark exactly, and still haven't found a
new investigator in 2 areas. It's tough to stay motivated, but after
seeing the light in this investigator's eyes, I forgot all of that.
These people need to gospel. I need to truly forget myself and go to
work!

3) just an awesome thing about this ward. Because it's Christmas time
(even though the Japanese people don't celebrate Christmas hardly at
all) and the Japanese people know how much Americans love Christmas,
we are getting fed 2 meals every day for the past week. We got from
one ward member's house to another. I'm going to get so fat!

Culture and weather: in Japan, new year's (shogatsu) is like
Christmas. Everyone is out partying and buying ridiculously expensive
food

It's pretty freaking freezing. When I went on splits, I woke up and
the apartment was 8-9ish degrees Celsius.

I'm going to send so,e good pics. Hope everyone has an awesome year!

I won't be home till 2017!!!


敬具 (sincerely yours)
ー  シャイト長老 (Elder Scheidt)