Hey

 What's up everyone. This week was awesome! I hope everyone had a good week back home as well. It was Christmas so that had to have been really fun. This Christmas was really cool for me because compared to this time in my life I have never felt closer to the savior, so although no one here really celebrated it I felt like I inched closer to the person I want to become which is what matters most!

I got to start of the week in Sendai, Japan, which is a really cool city. Me and my companion arrived at 7 pm in Sendai by bus and coming from a small town we took advantage of the 2 hours we had and explored a little bit and it was really refreshing. There was no snow which was awesome. We weren't able to talk to many people but it was still fun. After that we went to an elders' apartment there and stayed with around 12 other elders piled onto the floor in the apartment, haha. It was awesome. After that we had ZC which was great for improving my teaching ability in Japanese. After it ended we headed back to the snow and rain that night which is about a 3 hour bus ride. The next day, on Thursday, I did my first baptism interview in Japanese. The guy was awesome and so prepared for baptism. I was so surprised haha. He got baptized on Christmas Eve and confirmed on Christmas which was cool to see and feel his excitement for it. Then, after the interview, in order for me and my companion to find someone like him we decided to take the 45 minutes bike ride down the highway to a mall in the middle of nowhere to find people to talk to. It was kind of tricky getting there with the weather and road conditions but we made it and talked to a guy who owns a shop there with a lot of clothes from America. My companion ended up spending some money and he posted about us on social media and we are hoping he will come play ping pong with us as a start. After we left the mall it had already become dark and was raining. Well, 5 minutes in, it started pouring rain with wind and keep in mind there was still a lot of snow somehow on the sides of the road haha it was epic. Our busted up bikes were not catching gear either haha. I wasn't sure if we would make it back. It was great though and no frostbite was received. The next couple days we had some crazy snow thunderstorms and we did our best. Church was good, the usual 30 minute sacrament meeting haha. It is kind of cool though because I get to bless the sacrament every week in Japanese. So, at this rate, I'll have the prayers memorized in Japanese soon! Then on Sunday evening we managed to convince this Ethiopian guy to make gyoza with us and it worked! I was so happy to have something on Christmas. We did it at the church and they turned out great and we taught him a lot of important things and he has some crazy beliefs haha. By the end he said he wants to read the Book of Mormon and that's all that matters. I don't have high expectations for him but I guess you never know, right! 

Well everyone I think that covers it for this week, Thanks for reading!

-Sent from yours truly, Elder Parker

-Pictures

I forgot to take many sorry.