Email #16

Dearest Family and Friends,

This week was amazing! So many miracles, and super fun! On Tuesday, we went to Cozy's Buddhist shrine. He's one of our investigators, and he's having a hard time going from Buddhism to Christianity, even though he loves the gospel and reads the Book of Mormon and prays. He knows the Book of Mormon super well, and was asking us about Ammon and King Lamoni. He said he wanted to be more like King Lamoni without us even bringing him up! We always ask him why he doesn't get baptized, and he just says, "I'm Buddhist!" We're getting there though. He is super funny and a really nice guy. Sorry, I'm sidetracking myself. We went to his shrine because they were doing Oni dancing, and we wanted to relate to him more as a Buddhist. It was crazy! Oni is Japanese for demon, and they do this crazy dance thing where these brightly colored potbelly demons with huge swords and hammers climb over a wall and do this sumo intimidation dance, and then everyone throws beans at them and they die. It was pretty wild. I have a video of it I'll send after this. Hoshino is also doing way better, he hasn't been able to remember how to pray, but this week he gave an awesome, correct prayer without help! It was sweet. He's also reading the Book of Mormon more, which is awesome. On Wednesday, we had a good district meeting in which we set new transfer goals. We set the goal to see two baptisms and have 30 people, not including missionaries, at church. Nozomi Shimai, one of the sister's investigators, is for sure getting baptized this transfer, and there are so many other investigators close to baptism! I think we can reach it. And I know we can do the 30 people at church goal, but I'll tell you about that when I get to Sunday. On Thursday, we went down to Nagaoka, the area where the zone leaders are, for district leader training. Joetsu, one of the areas in our zone, has a really tiny church, smaller than ours. The man who rents out the church building there just went bankrupt, so the church has to find a new building! The problem is they don't have enough people coming each Sunday to get a mew building, so President Budge sent up Elder Sakamoto to take care of things. Elder Sakamoto was the senior Assistant, but he was transferred up here just to take care of it. Pretty crazy! He's one of the district leaders now, and it was fun to see him. He's a fantastic missionary. During the meeting, I went with the other district leader's companions and handed out flyers at the train station. We call it Mitsuketaikai-ing. The other missionaries were really good at it, and I tried my best to keep up with them! We handed out all of our flyers, which felt good. This week, we have been really trying to focus on Yugi Kyoudai and getting him back to church. He doesn't like sitting down and having lessons, so we are trying to build a friendship with him so we can get to that point. On Friday, we went out to ramen with him. It went really well, and he came to church on Sunday! He is making big progress. Nothing really happened on Saturday, but I went and had Sukiya for the first time. Sukiya is a restaurant where the serve beef, cheese, and onions over rice with soy sauce. It's really good. I'm starting to appreciate Bradley's letters so much more because food is often one of the high points in my day. I could talk about it for a long time, and the food here is incredible! Sunday was a day of miracles. The weather was fantastic, the weather the whole week was super amazing: no snow, no clouds, just sun and it was around 50. Perfect! But today it's mid 20's and snowing hard. Bums. Sunday was looking to be just a normal day, but more and more and more and more people trickled in before church! We had 12 friends (investigators, less actives, and recent converts) at church! Our total, not including missionaries, was 33! We met our goal on the first Sunday of the transfer! It was incredible. It was mostly from Sister Palmer and Sister Peterson, they are super hard workers and crushing it! It was amazing, the sacrament meeting room was pretty much full, but there is still room for improvement. Tsuchida Kyoudai, our missionary leader, said it was the most people ever in the church! A huge miracle. Today was super fun! We went bowling, Elder Mobley likes it as much as I do. I'm still struggling to do as well as my one fluke game at BYU. It's getting there though. I've also been trying to learn We Thank Thee O God For A Prophet in any spare time I have at church, and I almost have it down! I'm still making quite a few mistakes, but i think I'm almost at the level where I can play in sacrament. I'm going to try to learn a few hymns so I can at least play a few in my next areas. Here are a couple of pictures with Elder Mobley and the Sisters. Sister Palmer is the one next to me, then Nozomi Shimai who's about to get baptized, then Sister Peterson. I have a side story. The day that picture was taken, I ran out of my good American hair stuff. It was super sad. Now I have this gel called Gatsby and it's rough. It's like 6 times as powerful as my old stuff and smells super strongly of strawberry and comes in a pink case. I didn't think it was for men at first. The first day I used it turned my hair into sharp, immovable, strawberry smelling spikes. Probably the saddest moment of my mission. It took me like 3 tries to wash it out. My life is hard. I'll send the videos after this! That's about it for this week, love you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Calhoun

Love,

Elder Calhoun

 Elder Mobley Followed by Elder Calhoun

Back to front: Mobley Choro; Peterson Shimai; Nozomi Shimai; Palmer Shimai; Calhoun Choro