Email #19        Monday, March 2, 2015

 district dinner

Tatsuhiro--funniest kid ever in our branch

Dearest Family and Friends,

I bought a keyboard! Now I should be able to send more emails, because I was terribly slow at typing on the iPad keyboard. This week was really awesome. I'm going to try to do a few things better in my weekly emails. I'm going to try to do a better job of sharing my spiritual experiences and insights during study that I have had during the week. This means I'll probably be talking a lot more about the Book of Mormon and things from it, so to my non-Mormon friends who won't understand, you should just read it! It's full of great things and it's online or an app or you can order it for free. It's an awesome book! I'll also try to explain the lingo I use I little bit, but if you have any big questions or don't understand something, just email my dad at wcalhoun@cci.edu. He's super chill and awesome and can answer your questions. Or, you can text Dylan Jarmon because it would be good for him. The other thing I feel like I've being doing a lot of is sharing the non missionary things I have been doing, like eating ghost peppers. I promise that isn't what I am usually doing! I think because basically all I do is missionary work, the normal/crazy things I do stand out more because life can be a little bit repetitive and repeating. I probably won't stop sharing those things, but just know that they are the exceptions, not the norm of my days. Ok. This week. On Wednesday, we had a good district meeting and a really good Eikaiwa. I taught the advanced class, and one of the student's names is Kosuke. He doesn't have interest in the church, but we had a good discussion about the purpose of life and what he wants to do with it. He had a lot of questions about the earth and himself and what he is and made of and how the earth was created. It was a really interesting conversation. We aren't allowed to do missionary work (dendo) during Eikaiwa (Engilsh Class) because it is a community service, and he left really quickly after class, but I am going to tell him after class this week that our church has answers to his questions. After Eikaiwa, we had a super good lesson with Cozy. It was a really powerful experience. It really felt like the Spirit was telling me what to say or what to have Elder Mobley say, because I still can barely talk to people. It went really well, and we invited him to baptism twice. He declined both times, but said that he felt something at Nozome Shimai's baptism that he can't deny, and he know that the Book of Mormon is true. He is so close! On Thursday, we went to Nagaoka, a city south of us where the zone leaders (two missionaries who lead over our zone. A zone is usually three or four areas, and each area has two sets of Elders, or male missionaries, and one set of Sisters, or female missionaries. I hope this is all making sense!) live. Elder Mobley had a baptismal interview for one of their investigators (someone who is meeting with the missionaries to learn more about the church) that went well. On Friday we had ping pong and visited the city office to find service opportunities. It turns out there is a huge service center in town that has lots of opportunities. We went on Saturday, but it was closed, so we are going to go back tomorrow. Saturday was pretty uneventful. We did a lot of prep for this upcoming week. We also did a little of bit of housing, or going door to door to try to find new investigators. We try to do that as little as possible because of how ineffective it is. Sunday was good. We had around 25 people at church, not including missionaries. The highlight of the day was going back to visit a guy we housed into on Tuesday. On Tuesday, he said that he was busy but that we could come back. On Sunday, when we went back, we saw him walking his girlfriend out to her car in the rain with an umbrella. After he got back, we talked to him and gave him a Plan of Salvation pamphlet, and he said he would read it and that we could come back whenever! Really exciting. His name is Sakami  and he is an incredibly kind man. We are really hoping it goes somewhere. It was a really good week! This week in study I read a lot of the New Testament and in 2 Nephi.  As I was reading Luke, I was reading it with the study guide. There were some quotes from older general authorities that I really liked. Elder Talmage talked about how Jesus received the ability to die from his mother, but the ability to choose not to die from His Father, God. Because of this combination of parentage, He was able to fulfill the Atonement. The agony He experienced was literally so much that He had to willingly choose not to die from it until He was on the cross. I thought that was really insightful and interesting. I also really liked Elder Holland's insight that God didn't forsake Christ, He had to leave Christ for the short amount of time that He did so that Christ could fully experience the penalty of  sin, or being cut off from the presence of the Holy Ghost. I really liked 2 Nephi  33:4: And I know that the Lord God will consecrate my prayers for the gain of my people." I can do this for the Japanese people! I know that Heavenly Father will answer my prayers, even if it is in a way that I can't see or know. That's about it for this week! Love you all, have a fantastic week!

Love,

Elder Calhoun

P.S. Sorry, on notes, the program that I write my emails on, the keyboard doesn't do so hot and does a lot of double spaces and letters and I can't fix it. Sorry!