The 5th Email         Sent from Provo, MTC         Thursday, November 20, 2014

Hey Mom and Dad and Family and Friends,

Thanks a ton for the package, it came on Friday and the sweaters have been lifesavers.Thanks a ton for the letters this week, they really mean a lot. I loved hearing from Abbie, and getting Liz's letter every week is so awesome. I'm so tired right now and not really thinking too straight right now, so this week's update is going to be shorter, sorry!

Last Saturday I woke up and had pink eye. It sounds bad but really it was awesome. We got to leave MTC campus and go to the health clinic and pharmacy. Then I couldn't go to class because I was contagious so I got to sleep all day which was really awesome. We weren't teaching or anything so it worked out. On Sunday, Erickson Choro and I got called as zone leaders, who knows how. I'm really grateful for the opportunity and am working my hardest and trying to love everyone and lead by example. Erickson Choro is a really good example for me on how I can become better. The cool thing is that the Italian branch president always asks our branch's zone leaders to orient the new Italian missionaries because they only come every six weeks, so there is no overlap between the groups. This is cool because it means I get to orient Hayden when he arrives! That is going to be way cool.

I'm really excited for thanksgiving this week, they have a big service project planned that the zone leaders are playing a big part in, but they won't tell us what we're doing. There is going to be a general authority coming, one of the twelve, it would be way cool if we got to meet him. Especially Elder Bednar.  We could talk about Chapel Hill and Eric and it would be way cool. The only thing that stinks about it is that it's on our P day so we don't get a long gym time or temple time this next week, but it's ok. Last P day I went off in basketball. It was awesome. I couldn't miss :). 

We're more than half way done at the MTC! It's nuts. It's gone by so fast but also felt like forever. I'm getting more and more ready to get out and bike and be outside and in the outside world and helping people and eating good food and making people happy and spreading the gospel. It's going to be so great. This week has been pretty normal, nothing too special or crazy. I did have a cool experience with Oozeki son, she has really been feeling that the church is true so we invited her to baptism. She said she really wants to but her mother-in-law is really opposed to religion and she's too afraid to ask. I felt like I should tell her that it will all be ok and work out and that Heavenly Father will help her, and I know it will be! I love this gospel and am so grateful for the opportunity to go to Japan and help spread it! I love you guys, have a great week!

Calhoun Choro

P.S. Sorry, I didn't really take any photos this week either. It's hard to remember to bring my camera and every day is basically the same. I'll try to take some pictures of the MTC and our classroom or something this week so you can see what our lives are like.

More Pics

 Jenner Choro, James's zone leader from Australia, who has a great sense of humor

 R to L: Erickson Choro, Calhoun Choro, Irma Huisken (going to Brazil) and companion

Canon Choro, Nicholson Choro, Calhoun Choro 

 Erickson Choro, Johnson Choro, Calhoun Choro

 Nicholson Choro (Tokyo S) and Calhoun Choro

Provo Temple. James says it's really growing on him :).

Email #4 sent from Provo MTC Thursday, Novemver 13, 2014

Hello Family and Friends!

This week, i'll have been in the MTC for a whole month! Wild. The blog is up! So exciting. Just a couple of things to fix. The formatting on the last post is really weird, maybe dad could fix it? And the picture at the temple labeled, "Elder Brown, going to South Korea." That is actually Seagle Chorro, he is going to Kobe and is in my zone. He is incredibly funny and nice. And maybe you could remove the quotes around Yuki? Sorry, but you know where I get my perfectionist genes from. Thank you so much for your letters this week and for sending the package! I haven't received it yet, but I am very much looking forward to its arrival. I don't have anything to request in the mail this week since you guys are so amazing at sending everything! Regarding the letters from other missionaries though, could you just ask the moms to send them to you? Then just copy and paste the letter into a Dear Elder so I don't use email time. It was awesome reading Cam's though! One more thing I still need is evidence that North Carolina is the BBQ capitol of the world. I am also getting my shot today for Hep A, and it is around $75. I'll try to pay with insurance info, but I have my debit card. Is the Citibank account set up? I would really love it if you would let me know so I can know if I can keep using my debit card or not. Thank you so much Betsy for the package, the Sees Candy were a huge hit with my district and so good! Also, thanks to Lisa for her letters, they are so awesome (surprisingly). Dang. I think I'm losing my sarcasm a little bit, everything just sounds mean now. Sorry Lisa, love you! The watch band brand is Triwa, you can find one on their website. It's ok if not though! It was also great getting a letter from Abbie! I'm glad that I have not been forgotten at school, and hope you will always be known as James's sister. Nope, all the ties I have I brought, our Branch Presidency doesn't want us to do tie exchanges. All the awesome ones are thanks to Bryce! I've gotten tons of compliments on them, thanks Bryce. That's super exciting about your patriarchal blessing. I read mine so often now, and it means the world to me! I miss you too! and Liza and Mom and Dad and Kuma! And that's so awesome about Quiggle! Please tell him congrats for me and that I'm super excited for him! I still haven't received a letter from Catherine or Kelsey or Bailey though (cough cough). 

It's been another awesome, great week. Our district is really getting super close and becoming good friends. I'll include some dumb stories from this week just so you still know I'm a teenage boy with lots of room to improve. A couple of weeks ago, Elder Diderickson got some pumpkin bread from his family. He said we could have some and I was talking to some people in our zone and eating some and then it was gone. I had eaten almost the whole loaf on accident! Elder Diderickson was really nice about it. His family sent a new loaf for him and while he was in the shower, I cut off all of the loaf except one slice and hid it in my closet. He thought I had eaten the whole thing again and wasn't very happy, but thought it was funny when I gave it back to him. I wrote his family a letter apologizing for eating the loaf they had sent. He's a great guy. In class, Pearhson Kyodai, one of our teachers (same guy as Yuki) loves long pieces of chalk. I do too, but I have broken two of his pieces by using them. I am no longer allowed to use his chalk, as evidenced by this picture. Once, I replaced the long piece with three short pieces so he thought I broke it. I gave it back to him. I'm a funny guy. There are a few more but they're all dumb and I don't have much time. It's nice to have a district that has the same sense of humor as me, and that has fun while working hard!

 This week has been pretty normal. I feel like I'm plateauing a little bit with learning, so I just need to focus more and work harder! I am also so tired all the time, but I'm figuring out how to work with it. Lindsey would be happy to know that I still fall asleep in class sometimes, especially during personal study. I have to get up a lot and jump around and sing Taylor Swift's, "Shake It Off" to stay awake. I'm getting better though! I did have a really neat experience this week. On Monday of last week, Pearhson Kyodai challenged us not to use our Ninja, or the book that has a bunch of pre made sentences in our lessons. So, for the past two weeks, we've been making our own sentences. We have really had the Spirit more and the lessons have been going much more smoothly! On Friday, the day after I emailed you last week, we had a lesson with Oozeki Son, and it was one of the first lessons we taught with our own sentences. During the lesson, the Spirit helped me so much, it was like He was pulling words out of my mouth that I would never have thought to use or say. It was so neat!

I need to keep working hard and being obedient to keep the Spirit and keep progressing and improving! Sometimes it's stressful because I always feel like I could work harder and be better. Vocab flashcards are hard for me, I really don't like them and it takes me a little bit to learn each one. But I'm getting there! I have also been doing choir and loving it. It's so frustrating though, I can hear that I'm not hitting the right notes but can't fix it. It's great being around such great singers though and feeling like I am too. The choir director is awesome, he's super nice and tells super great church history stories. Heavenly Father really is blessing me with the gift of tongues, along with so many other things. A great district, a wonderful companion, health, loving family and friends, patience, more humility, a strengthened testimony, discipline, a better work ethic,  more of the Spirit, an amazing Branch Presidency, and so much more! I am loving it here, working hard and working hard to work harder, and feel like I'm doing ok! I'll send some pictures after this, that's about it for the week! Love to all of you!

Calhoun Choro

Email #3    Sent from MTC Thursday, November 6, 2014

Hi Family! I'm going to start this letter the same way as last time, with the things I would love for you to send. Thanks a ton for all the package you're sending Mom! If you haven't sent it by the time you get this, would you mind adding the following? If not, no worries! I would love some tabs I can use for my scriptures. The ones that are colored on the end and see through on the sticky part. I'm going to use them to help mark my lessons, so if possible light blue, orange, green, purple/pink, and yellow would be the optimal colors! They have them here at the MTC but they are like 8 dollars which is ridiculous. I would also love a Mead spiral notebook, like the ones I had for school. Not the massive one, but one with one or two dividers would be awesome. Also optional requests: a yo-yo and some bouncy balls. Some of the guys are very good yo yoers and having something to relax every once in a while is such a stress reliever. Could you also dear Elder me some evidence that North Carolina is the BBQ capital of the USA? Maybe Dad could do that, I made that statement in class and no one believed me, they were much too stiff necked. That's about it for the packages, thanks a ton! I got an email from President Budge this week, I need to have at least $250 either in cash or on my debit card when I leave for Japan. $150 is for the checked bag, which the mission reimburses, the other $100 is for a bike helmet and bag. Is everything up and running with the new account? I do have one other request. Instead of emailing me the missionary updates, could you send them to me via Dear Elder? That way I wouldn't use any of my email time to read them and I could see them not just on Thursdays. I would love to hear from as many people as possible, including Cam, Tessa, Nate, Hailey, Jolie, Camille, Stephen Tenney, Nate Livingston, or whoever you can think of. It's so fun to hear from other missionaries, especially those who are in the MTC with me, and see their take on things. Thank you so much!

This was a pretty normal week. Our temple session was really great again, and I talked to President Butler, our branch president, about the questions I had. He helped a lot! It feels so good to go outside on P days, and throw around a frisbee or a softball. As you know, I ran into Sister Kennedy and Sister Huisken at the exact same time last thursday! We ran into each other in the cafeteria, it was and is so great to see them around the MTC. How was your Halloween? Ours was pretty great. We had a normal day, but lots of people in our district got Halloween stuff which made it super fun. Elder Diderickson got glow stick swords and teeth and stuff. When we were heading back to our flat, our Sempai, or the Elders a few weeks ahead of us, had rushed back and put on whatever stuff they could find and dressed up. They then came rushing into our room and we had a dance party while they threw candy everywhere. It was super fun. Their costumes were super creative, two guys were men in black, complete with glasses and ray guns (no idea where they got them), there was a ghost, Santa Claus, Superman, and an evil jack o lantern man. I know this sounds so dumb but you have to take whatever entertainment you can get in here!

I worked a lot on grammar and Katakana this week. I almost have it all the way down, and I'm working on my sentence structure. Japanese sentence structure is so much different, it's crazy. If you wanted to say, "I know that the Book of Mormon is true through prayer," the structure in Japanese would be: Prayer through the Mormon Book true is I know." At least I think that's write, I'm probably still wrong! It's a work in progress though, and it's getting there! One of our teachers, Pearhson Kyodia, said we weren't bringing in the Spirit as much as we should because we were reading from this book we have called the Ninja, which gives sentences in Japanese and is super helpful. He challenged us to not us the Ninja for sentences at all, and to come up with our own. It has been way hard but really good for learning and it HAS brought the Spirit into our lessons way more! I'm glad we have teachers that are so kind and helpful but also super honest. 

The best part of my week was the combination of Fast Sunday and the devotionals we heard. There's an Elder who just left the MTC, Elder Lee (He's actually going to my mission, i'm so excited!). He's from Hong Kong and is honestly one of the nicest, most kind, happiest people I've ever met. He works incredibly hard and is always smiling and asking you how you're doing. I was wondering how and why he's so happy and how I can share his same happiness, so I decided to fast on Sunday to be a happier missionary. I had a little dumb epiphany during testimony meeting. Someone was doing something that was really bugging me, I don't even remember what it was. It was making really irritated and thus less happy when the thought struck me, "Why is this irritating me?" No good is coming out of it, they aren't doing anything wrong, and I'm just being dumb. I've been really trying much harder since then to not let little dumb things bug me, and I've noticed that I've been much happier because of it! We had a great devotional on Sunday by Wendy Nelson, Russel M. Nelson's wife. She talked about having questions going into devotionals and asking for specific things for help and lots of other good stuff. The Tuesday devotionals were the best though. We got to go to the Marriot Center in the morning and heard David E Evans speak, the same man who said, "May our strength be faithened." He had a great attitude about it and even talked about it. He then spoke about tenacity and being a tenacious missionary. (All of the speakers talk about tons of good stuff but I just don't have enough time to tell you everything they say!) We had the Goldens come that night, Elder Golden is a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy from South Africa. His wife spoke first, and wouldn't you know, she spoke about being a happier missionary! She spoke about 5 things we can do to be happier missionaries: Understand that we are working on the most important work ever, to leave behind the things of the world, to work as hard as we can, to be as obedient as we possibly can, and to love the Lord, my companion, and the people we are going to teach. Her talk really helped me, and it helped me with my testimony of fasting! Elder Golden also gave a great talk. He was called to be an Area Seventy in his thirties, and was called to salt lake when he was 48. He thought he was going to be released, but President Hinckley called him to be an General Authority until he turns 70! (You really don't have it so bad, Dad). He thought that President Hinckley made a mistake because he was getting older (his own words) and was about to call to confirm, but then thought, "I don't want the Prophet to think he's called a fruitcake as a General Authority!" He asked for a sign that it was the right thing for him, and he opened his scriptures to a scripture he had never marked or really registered before, and the next day, when President Monson was setting him apart, he quoted from the exact same scripture! Wild. He also had a great line in which he said, "Faith is personal righteousness." I really like that, and am working on increasing my faith!

Well, that's about it for this week. I didn't really take any pictures, the only ones I took are with Sister Huiskin and you already have them! I'll be sure to take more this week. Can you do me a favor and fix any spelling errors I made before you send this out? I'm sure there are plenty of them, I just don't have time to fix them! Love to all of you, especially Liza!

Calhoun Choro

P.S Please thank Lisa and Liz for their letters this week! The Halloween cookies were a huge hit in our district and the other gift that came with it came right as I ran out, so thank you so much! Also please thank George for his letter and Tessa update last week. Also, thank you Heidi and Bradley for the package, and Nana and Betsy for the cookies, photo album, and supplies! I bring my photo album to all our lessons and all the investigators love to see the pictures. I'm still expecting a letter or email from Kelsey too. Liza: here are two Japanese words for you: Chikaraziyoi means powerful and ai means love! 

MTC Email #2

                                                                                            Written and sent from the MTC, 10/30/2014

Hello Family!

We went to the temple after I emailed you guys and it was amazing! I had so many insights but no one likes thinking about that stuff like I do and I can't figure out the answers to my questions which is driving me nuts but I'm living somehow. It was a great session! The day after last P day, we all woke up and were soooo tired. It was the worst. Our day off took the most out of us! It was great to here from Abbie and Liza, I totally remember how Abbie feels, but we have 16 hour days every day of the week so just think of me every time you don't want to get up. I'll try to write Abbie and Liza a letter this week, we have such busy days and only an hour to email on p day so it can be hard! Please thank Nora and the Bunches and George and Liz for me. Getting Tessa's weekly update was awesome, it's fun to read about things I can look forward to! I loved hearing from Nora and want her to know I learned from the best. Her! The Bunches' survival kit was a huge life saver last week, my thanking them got lost in the depths of the emails I sent last week I think. I've been bring Siracha to every meal and everyone loves it. It was great to see pictures of the cousins and get the update from Liz! It was also pretty good to hear from Lisa I guess. Just kidding, it was great! She's such a great speaker that it doesn't what time she has to speak, she'll do great! Thanks for telling people about DearElder, it's seriously the best thing ever. 

My Nihongo is really coming along! I have my Hiragana down, i'll attach a picture in the next email I send, i'm afraid to attach it to this email because of what happened last week. I can write them all out in order from memory which is super satisfying. We can also sing hymns for the most part, the fast ones are really hard but we're getting there! As always, I'm a step behind Elder Erickson. He is crushing it in every department, he can write all the Hiragana faster than me and is a flashcard machine. He does like 30 every day and I struggle to do ten. It's a motivator though, it's great that he's competitive and it really helps that he can help me! Our district is doing super well, everyone is either up to plan or ahead of it. We all get along really well, and everyone helps each other. I am 100% sure we are in the best zone in the MTC. Our Sempai rock. They help us all the time and are so nice and easy to get along with. They still come in every night to aishtaymas us. We also have the best schedule in the MTC. We have gym right when we wake up which is awesome because you don't feel stir crazy all day and you only have to shower once. There are some ballers in our gym time. Cannon Choro, one of the guys in our district, is unreal. He's like 5'6 but impossible to stop and is ambidextrous so he has incredible touch around the rim. He's super strong and knows how to use his body. He's fun to guard. I'm getting to know the guys in our gym well, they're all great guys and fun to play with. There's a companionship going to South Korea who we bump into all the time and they're great. Elder Brown and Elder Baker. Elder Brown is like 6'4 and plays ball with us too. They're way nice and fun to talk to. 

It's been a pretty normal week class wise. Yuki, our first investigator, moved back to Japan according to Watanabe Shimai, but she totally lied. He turned out to be our second teacher! We knew all along but pretended to be surprised. He's a great teacher! He isn't nearly as affectionate as Watanabe Shimai or Olson Kyodia but he's a wonderful teacher. He only writes in Hiragana which is hard but it is forcing us to learn faster. On Monday, we did this thing called TRC, where they bring in real Japanese people or return missionaries who are all members and you have to teach them a lesson. It's tough because they are only supposed to speak in Japanese. We had to teach two lessons, and the first one was a train wreck. We taught a RM named Brittany, and she wouldn't speak any English. We read a scripture after apologizing that we can't read in Nihongo yet, and she was like, "Oh I didn't understand any of that," even though she totally did because she's from Las Vegas. We ended up sitting in silence looking for things to say because we burned through our lesson because she just said yes to our questions and nothing else. The second lesson WAS SO GOOD. We taught a woman named Irre, and she is Nihongen! She was so incredibly nice and easy going and spoke to us in English as best she could as we spoke to her in Nihongo as best we could.  It got me so excited to go to Japan and teach the people there! I'm getting less and less apprehensive to leave and more and more excited!

We also got two new investigators, but all of our investigators are our teachers pretending to be people they taught. Watanabe Shimai is Oozeki Son, a super nice lady who wants to find out how she and her family can be more happy! She asks like a million questions per lesson which is great but they can be hard to answer sometimes. We taught her about Christ like attributes and how having charity can make her more happy and draw her family closer together, and she said that it worked! It was great. Our second new investigator is Iwamoto, a 60 year old man who drinks, smokes, and gambles and is recently divorced. He wants to be happy and thinks the church can help him, and I know it can! We teach him later today for the first time and hopefully it will go well. 

I have run into a few people I know this week, which has been way fun. I ran into two EFY friends, Kayla Stockwell and Grace Hendricks. Kayla is hoping that Kim will send her Jewel's contact info, especially his email address so she can email him. She was in the EFY group with me, Cam, Jordan, and Jewel. Maybe Kim could DearElder me the info or send it to you and you could send it to me so I can give it to her? Grace was friends with the people I hung out with at my first ever EFY, I don't think she recognized me because I've become so much more handsome, but it's ok. Jared Nickerel, my buddy from that same first EFY group, was in Elder Erickson's ward at BYU! Small world. Maybe Dad could facebook message him for me and tell him, and that I'm thinking of him? Maybe you could give him my email address too and ask him where he's going. I haven't talked to him in forever! And last and definitely not least, I saw Karen Fuller! She was walking behind me on the way to the mail room and I didn't recognize her until I saw her name tag. We had a good talk and I forgot to take a picture, but it was super fun to see her. It's crazy that she's in Rome now, but she'll be great! Hailey Kennedy got here on Wednesday and I haven't seen her yet, but I'm keeping my eyes open. It's going to be way fun to be at BYU with all these people.

That's about it for this week's report, I am loving it here! Despite the hard things, the Spirit and the love that are present here make everything worth it. I also think I had such low expectations about the MTC that everything is better than I thought it would be, which helps a lot. It actually isn't being locked in a class room for 8 hours at a time, which is great! I'll send pictures from this week and hopefully they'll send this time, fingers crossed! I love my companion, I love my district, I love my zone, I love the MTC, I love my teachers, I love this church, I love the gospel, I love Christ, I love you guys!

Until next week,

Calhoun Choro

  Calhoun Choro, with his AWESOME
MTC companion,  Erickson Choro

 Elder Calhoun with the other Elders in his district
(see names is district photo below)

Seagle Choro in James's zone, going to Kobe

 Hiragana alphabet missionaries have been mastering

 District teachers: Olsen Chorro and
Watanabe Shimai (amazing!)

 Lost in thought ;)

A day in language class at the MTC 

 Elder Calhoun's missionary badge

 Erickson Chorro with "investigator" Yuki

 Daily Schedule

 Elder Calhoun feeling enthused about Hiragana

 Canon Choro and Calhoun Choro.  Canon Choro
is an incredible baller according to James and all
 the missionaries in his district.  They play basketball
 for gym every morning (but Sunday) before class.

 Watanabe Shimai and Calhoun Choro

James's district:  L to R (no respect to rows) Goto Shimai; Bullock Shimai; Goldberry Shimai; Frazier Shimai; Jurado Shimai (petite one not bending down); teacher Watanabe Shimai; Hamilton Choro; Erickson Choro; Calhoun Choro (who says "not sure what I'm doing in this picture"); Didericksen Choro; Mutz Choro; Nielson Choro (closest to camera)

MTC Email #1

                                                                                                Written and sent  from Provo MTC 10/23/2014


Mom! I'm sitting here in the computer lab writing my emails and I'm not sure where to begin. It has been such an amazing week. Thank you so much for your letters, they make my day 1000000000% better. I would like to quickly express my disappointment at my father and my two younger sisters, Abigail and Elizabeth. I have received no communication from them and it is only my first week in the MTC, not a good sign as I will be out for 1 year, 11 months, and 3 weeks more. If this continues, I will have to withhold more and more information from them weekly, until no emails are sent. See how you like that! My unit number is 58, and Dear Elder is seriously the best thing ever. Please tell everyone and anyone about it, it makes my day so wonderful. Thanks for giving me the update on everyone! How is the horse show prep going? How's driver's ed Abbs? It was the worst for me. I'm glad Liza is starting to share my same love of horses. How's school going for both of them? I miss and love them! That's super exciting about dad! Who is the new Branch President? I am sending my love and prayers his way during this super busy time. I have to say, I was pretty happy when I found out because it means you guys can't move to Utah. We have eleven missionaries in our district, and they are all so wonderful. I have some pictures to send you, but I have no idea how to do it. I'll send a second email with them if I figure out how. I don't have very much time, so if I can attach them I'll give you their names.

My companion's name is Erickson Chorro and he's the greatest guy ever! He's from Minnesota, but grew up in Seattle. He did a year of BYU before he came and is incredibly smart. He is way into sports and can name basically anyone playing any sport right now, it's super impressive. He also has virtually a perfect recall with names and where people are from. He's so humble and won't admit how smart he is, but he helps me so much with the language and with working hard, he's a great example. He got called as district leader and is doing a wonderful job at it. He is good at all the things I am not, and it is such a blessing to have him as my companion. 

My teacher is so wonderful! Her name is Watanabe Shimai and she is the nicest, most smiley person I've ever met. She made our first week here go so well, it was such a blessing. She only speaks in Japanese and I'm starting to understand more and more of what she says. I have been working on my Hirogana and I almost have it completely down! Erickson Chorro and I race to see who can recognize and say all of the 46 characters on our flashcards, and I'm winning right now at 32 seconds. Learning Japanese is going much more smoothly and is much easier than I thought it would be, and that is mostly due to the Lord's help. It is absolutely amazing how much we have learned in just a week, we can already say simple prayers and know lots of church words. We have been teaching an "investigator," but really it's just a teacher at the MTC. We aren't supposed to know that though. His name is Yuki, and our lessons are going really well! We have already had four of them and we are giving our fifth today. I got a picture with him and I'll send it in the second email if I can figure out how to. 

We have had some of the best devotionals I've ever heard here. We had one on Tuesday with Elder Goroy, the Brazilian member of the 70 who spoke in Portuguese at General Conference. He talked about what it takes to be a good missionary, especially Alma 26:22. It was so spirit filled and cup filling and motivating, I loved it. He said that we need to to repent to just be a worthy missionary, to work hard to be a good missionary, to pray continually to be a missionary that does great work, and to exercise faith to be the best missionary we can be and to work miracles. He asked us how we would feel if our parents were here with us for a few days. Would they be proud of how hard we were working? I am working hard and am trying to make you guys proud! 

It is amazing how much my ability to love has already increased. I love my companion, my district, and my zone so much. Our zone is seriously the best in the MTC. Every night everyone comes into our room and says aishtaymas, or I love you. They are so nice about being willing to answer our questions and talk to us and love us. They are all such good people and all are hard workers. I am praying to love the Japanese people and their language and culture, and it's helping! I'm so looking forward to going out and teaching them and I know that I can better their lives with the gospel! 

Gym time is the best, we have it right when we wake up, which I love. You only have to shower once a day, it gets you up and going, and you don't feel stir crazy the rest of the day. I play basketball very poorly, but it's super fun. There's a little guy in our district named Elder Cannon who is such a good player, it's ridiculous. He's like 5 5 but no one can stop him. I'll send you a picture of him next week, he's such a nice guy. There are some real ballers during gym, it makes it super fun. 

The food is good, but super heavy. I'm really looking forward to the food in Japan. Lots of the Chorotachi here had their Dad's go to Japan and they are getting me really pumped up about the food, the people, the place, basically everything about Japan. I love it here! I love the MTC! I love my companion! I love you guys! I love the Lord and his Church and his gospel and am loving preparing to share it! Can't wait to get all those Dear Elder's you are going to send me this week! ;)

Lots of Love,

Calhoun Chorro