Happy New Year! あけましておめでとうございます!　Happy 2014! Well what a week. Since I emailed last a lot has happened... and yet not a whole lot... last Tuesday we had the in-Sapporo missionary Christmas Eve Party, which actually went according to plan! Seriously it went smooth and everyone had a lot of fun! There were games, that all ended up being related to animal things...? We then had a white elephant gift exchange, I bought a box of popcorn, and ended up getting a pack of sumo wrestler playing cards and pumpkin flavored toothpaste, so I WIN! There was a nativity program, we watched the Church's First Presidency Christmas Devotional, and had a delicious American Christmas dinner! I even went to the trouble of assigning everyone seats so people wouldnt end up sitting in their usual groups, everyone ended up liking it. From there we headed to this big park in the middle of town to carol, while 4 of us went around and contacted all the people who stopped to listen. That night our apartment went ahead and had our little Christmas celebration, opened our gifts from the ward/each other/our families. I got an electric shaver, which is convenient, and my family went me a Nerf door basketball hoop thing, which I thought was kind of dumb, but it turns out we are all addicted to it now, doing trick shots and playing horse and stuff. So thanks Jones! The next day was Christmas, got to talk to my family and spend the day in the office. Thursday we headed off to Obihiro, my last area, to go on splits with the Zone Leaders there. Had a good time, came back Saturday morning and got caught in a pretty decent snow storm, but our van handled it just fine. Saturday night was the local Messiah concert with a lot of local church members and missionaries. Its not my style (I went last year too so I knew what it was) and I ended up getting a much needed nap. But there were a lot of people to talk to after the show, ended up being a good time. Sunday was pretty normal, as was Monday. Yesterday, Tuesday, was the day of reading the Book of Mormon. Unfortunately there were some missionaries who needed to be moved mid-transfer, and so we had that in the middle of the day. Last night only 2 of the 4 of us, Elder Matsuhashi and I, stayed up to see it to 2014! So today is New Years Day and I'm not sure what the plan is but we'll ring it in right! Elder Andrew Kade Jones