Email #18                      February 24, 2015

 Japanese English :)

 How cold it was in the beginning of February.  Burrrr! 

Elder Cannon! 

Planning meeting (in bed)

Dearest Family and Friends,

Hello hello! Sorry for no email yesterday, we had Elder Ballard come speak to us, so they pushed our p day back to today. This week was pretty crazy. We did a lot of fun stuff. Last Tuesday, I went on exchanges with Elder Walker. I really love Elder Walker. Elder Mobley has nightly calls every night because he is district leader, and Elder Farnworth takes his showers at night, so Elder Walker and I end up talking together every night for quite a while. We're a lot alike, except he is much better at Japanese and being kind and forgiving and flexible than me. He is going to BYU-Hawaii when he gets home, but wants to transfer to Provo. I really hope he does! We had a couple of lessons together, and then went to Tsubame, the next town over, to house. We didn't have any luck, but as we were waiting at a red light to go home, we heard some loud whistling behind us. This Japanese man came up and started talking to us! It was crazy! That never, ever happens. His name is Leo, and he introduced himself as Leo the Lion. He believes in God, thinks that family history is really important (he brought that up out of the blue, just randomly asked us where are roots are. Crazy again), has a family, and said he really respects what we're doing. He doesn't have a whole ton of interest right now, but we got his number and Elder Walker has called him a few times and he likes talking over the phone. Pray things will work out with him, because this gospel will really bless his life! On Wednesday we had a good lesson with Okamura, our Buddhist investigator who doesn't really know he's an investigator. He is trying to convert us to his religion, a pretty crazy sect of Buddhism, but is willing to hear our message and has ran into about 10 sets of missionaries throughout his life. Elder Mobley said that maybe it's God's will for him to be a Mormon, and he said, "No, it's MY God's will." Which is way weird because they don't believe in God and either way, he becomes LDS! Hey, whatever works! On Thursday, we had weekly planning. Elder Mobley and I were both extremely tired, so we did it in our futons. Here's a picture. Amazingly, I didn't fall asleep and we ended up doing it in less time than we planned! After that, we went to work on Elder Mobley's training for Zone Meeting. He had to give a training about companionship unity, and the importance of unity. The plan was to have a crepe cookoff between our companionship and the zone leader's companionship, where we worked together and they didn't, and then Elder Mobley would talk about how much better things went when we work together and have the same vision and then we all eat crepes. We then discovered how long it takes to make crepes so our plan had to be changed. We ended up using a microwave chocolate cake recipe that was much faster and easier, but we brought the crepes we had already made, there were enough for everyone to have one. On Friday, we had zone meeting down in Joetsu! Joetsu is an area in our zone that only has 3 active members coming every week, so we had the zone meeting down there then did a blitz for the rest of the day to find new investigators for the Joetsu missionaries. The zone meeting went really well, I got to meet our new Assistant, Elder Cannon (he's the older brother of the Elder Cannon I idolized and still idolize from the MTC), and Elder Mobley's training went really well. After the meeting, we went on zone exchanges. My companions for the day were Elders Hutchings and Yoshino, both from Joetsu. They are beasts! Elder Hutchings reminds me a lot of Cam. He is quiet but an incredibly hard worker, and he had a fractured foot and was running everywhere! Elder Yoshino is Japanese, but speaks really good English and is awesome. He isn't afraid to talk to anyone, and is incredibly nice. We were able to talk to some really nice people and teach a little bit about our church. We had to jog back to the train station because of how far our area was, which was exhausting, but Elder Hurchings did it with no complaining on a fractured foot. He's an animal. The only way I found out his foot was fractured was because when we stopped running, he was limping. He's crazy. The zone saw some really amazing miracles! Joetsu now has at least 2 more investigators, and lots more people coming to English class. It was a super fun day. Saturday was a really amazing day, and literally nothing went according to plan. We went to church after study and then to get money at the post office. While there, we ran into a Filipino man named Joey. He said he was looking for a Christian Church, and then followed us to church for a tour! It went really well. After that, Cozy, one of our investigators, asked us to go to the flea market. We went, and found out he runs a stand, which is why he can't come to church sometimes on Sunday. He is so nice! He bought us dinner and then gave us some wrenches for free. #freewrenches. After dinner, we met with Takashi! He wanted to hang out, which is awesome because he hasn't wanted to for a couple of weeks. We ended up having a member present lesson at church which also went well. It was a really awesome day! On Sunday, we had a pancake party before church, which was awesome because only a couple of people came, which meant lots of pancakes for the Elders. We didn't have very many people at church, which was a bummer, but lots of people were sick. Joey didn't come! Bummer. We got his Facebook information though, so we can message him and try to meet. Later in the day, we went to the Elder Ballard member broadcast because our mission leader asked us to so we could share it with the members who didn't go. It was really good, although a lot of it didn't really apply to us as missionaries. Yesterday, we went up to Niigata to watch the Elder Ballard missionary conference, and it was amazing. He spoke a lot about being good teachers and the importance of teaching the restoration. Elder Rasband and Bishop Stephenson also spoke, they talked about the importance of being able to communicate in Japanese and using our language study time well. It was good. Last night, we had a really good family home evening at church. We played musical chairs again and I won this time because it wasn't anyone's birthday. It felt good. Today has been a very tired p day. I have slept for the past 4 hours. Please pray that I will be able to sleep tonight. Sorry for the incredibly long email! Have a fantastic week!

Love,

Elder Calhoun