#43 August 17, 2015
Dearest Family and Friends,
This week was a week of recovery after destroying Elder Henderson at
capture the flag. I was tired pretty much all week but feel much
better now. Naps are amazing things. On Tuesday, we were supposed to
go to sukiyaki with a less active but he cancelled on us. Sukiyaki is
this delicious Japanese food where you get a ton of vegetables and
other stuff like potatoes and mushrooms (are mushrooms vegetables?)
and then this super thinly sliced pork and beef and it's all you can
eat. All you can eat restaurants in Japan are really good, the quality
of the meat isn't like it is in America. Anyway, we scrambled really
hard to get someone to go with us but no one could. We were craving it
super hard so we just went anyway for dinner. It was super good but
Elder Alder got sick the next morning from eating so much meat. He
repented of not being a man and being able to handle his meat. We've
been eating out much less than before and it feels really awesome.
Eating out a lot is the worst. This past week was Obon, a really big
holiday here in Japan where people believe that their ancestors come
back to their shrines in their house and then leave at the end of the
holiday. It's really good for family history work, but because
everyone goes back to their hometowns for it, a lot of our
investigators left Tokyo or were busy for the week. We had to cancel
our English bible class we teach every Tuesday. On Wednesday, we had a
good day of work and then went to Eikaiwa. One of our investigators,
Ken, comes to Eikaiwa every week and really likes it. He says it's the
highlight of his week, and that we're some of his best friends because
we're kind and care about him. The gospel is so awesome. Ken reads the
Book of Mormon because we ask him to, but doesn't completely
understand why we ask him or the blessings he can get from reading.
We're trying to get him to switch from reading because we ask him to
to reading because he knows it will bring him happiness and the
Spirit. Eikaiwa is always fun, I love our students. They're so funny
and awesome and the game we play at the end is always hilarious. On
Thursday I went on exchanges with Elder Ogata, the recorder here in
the mission home. He's a beast. He's so kind, he's always doing dishes
and cleaning up and showing love to everyone. He's the man. We went
and visited some less actives, none of which were home, then went to
another less active's house who they are working with named Yamamoto.
He has kind of a rough living situation. He had the craziest wiring
I've ever seen, he had like wired his apartment himself and had a
bunch of speakers around his house so his record-player would have
sick surround sound. Yes, correct, he uses a record player. It was
actually kind of cool, he played some Bob Marley for us to show how it
all works. I'll include a video of it. That night we went to a super
good ramen place around Ikebukero, the second biggest train station in
the world that's in our area. It's seriously massive. It's bigger than
a lot of airports I've been in. We went finding that night and it went
well. I'm liking finding more and more, I feel like I'm working hard
when I do it and it always feels effective. It's a good feeling. On
Friday, we had a good zone meeting in the morning. One of the
districts in our zone has been working on making this huge, door sized
Book of Mormon to use at Shibuya crossing, the biggest crossing in the
world. We went in the car to pick up the Book of Mormon and drop it
off at the Shibuya church. Having a car is so nice. The Japanese
Elders drive and we just tag along and study or do calls or something.
It's awesome. Zone meeting went really well. Elder Cannon had a great
training about the mindset of doing missionary work and Elder
Lamminatious (I know I spelled his name wrong but there's no way it's
happening), an Elder from Finland, about working with members. We went
to all you can eat indo curry, this really delicious kind of curry
from Nepal or India with bottomless Nan, the most delicious bread on
earth. Elder Cannon and I had been talking smack about who could eat
more nan and he has an iron will so I had to do some preparing. I took
Cam's advice and pounded a ton of water right before bed, a whole
gallon. It was a bad idea, I had to get up like 4 times that night to
use the restroom. However, it worked. I won. I ate 17 and he ate 14,
but we were both out eaten by a missionary named Elder Seager. He had
26. He's legendary for his eating abilities. He gained 100 pounds his
freshman year at BYU because he would have a cake every single day,
half of it for breakfast, a large Chick-fil-a meal, Creamery Ice
Cream, and would pound at the Cannon Center. He's an animal, he can
eat like no one I've ever seen. We had some good tech time after and
then went to volleyball. It went really well, we talked to these two
Nepalese guys we've been working on for a while about coming to church
to play ping pong and one of them came the next day! He wants to learn
about Christ and Mormonism, as his cousin is a less active here in the
ward and he's never really heard or learned about Christ. He's 17 and
an absolute tank. Huge guy. Saturday, we had a great day. We worked on
some things for the giant Book of Mormon and then went and did it! It
was such a cool experience. We just talked to everyone we could at the
crossing and talked about the Book of Mormon. We ended up handing out
around 40 copies in the short 2 hours we were there! It was amazing.
There was one group that just walked up to us and asked if they could
each have a Book of Mormon, as they were from China, where they aren't
allowed to have religion, and really wanted to learn more about
religion and Mormonism. It was super cool, we had brought Chinese
copies of the Book of Mormon that we gave to them. We're trying to
take it past just Shibuya and hopefully get it going online. We're
using the hashtag #thebook in our posts. Mormon friends with
Instagram, Facebook, and/or Twitter, please post about the Book of
Mormon using the hashtag and invite your friends to do the same! I
think this has some really awesome potential. We are trying to send it
out to some big Facebook pages too and have them explain what we're
trying to do. We got one page to make us their cover photo, LDS
Missionaries, but they didn't explain the hashtag or anything. It
still has like 2,000 likes which is kind of cool. Anyway, please post
about the Book of Mormon using the hashtag! Sunday was great too. We
had a good church, lunch, tech time, and then YSA church. One of the
YSA guys took like 4 pieces of bread and then they ended up being like
2 pieces short. Probably the only time in the history of the church
someone has sinned while taking the sacrament. It was super lame. We
went to a devotional they had that night by the new BYU-H President
with a less active. He ended up just walking out like 3 minutes in but
there was a general authority there and we didn't just want to stand
up and leave so we listened to it. It was really good. He talked a lot
about loving learning and how God wants us to love learning. Not just
studying to get good grades, but to make learning a lifelong pursuit
because it's an eternal principle. It was good. Elder Whiting also
talked about how much revelation and the Spirit he has felt from
people talking from the pulpit where he was standing, which was a call
for repentance for me. Staying awake in English Sacrament is kind of
hard, but staying awake in Japanese Sacrament Meeting is downright
impossible. Sacrament meeting Japanese is literally like impossible to
understand and we can't use our iPads to search words or read other
gospel materials so the members don't think we're slackers and just on
our iPads during sacrament. I'm really going to do my best to stay
awake in sacrament from now on. Pray for me though, I seriously need
it. Today was good too. We just chilled and napped and played ping
pong. Lots of fun and relaxing. I love all of you, have a great week!
Love,
Elder Calhoun
This week was a week of recovery after destroying Elder Henderson at
capture the flag. I was tired pretty much all week but feel much
better now. Naps are amazing things. On Tuesday, we were supposed to
go to sukiyaki with a less active but he cancelled on us. Sukiyaki is
this delicious Japanese food where you get a ton of vegetables and
other stuff like potatoes and mushrooms (are mushrooms vegetables?)
and then this super thinly sliced pork and beef and it's all you can
eat. All you can eat restaurants in Japan are really good, the quality
of the meat isn't like it is in America. Anyway, we scrambled really
hard to get someone to go with us but no one could. We were craving it
super hard so we just went anyway for dinner. It was super good but
Elder Alder got sick the next morning from eating so much meat. He
repented of not being a man and being able to handle his meat. We've
been eating out much less than before and it feels really awesome.
Eating out a lot is the worst. This past week was Obon, a really big
holiday here in Japan where people believe that their ancestors come
back to their shrines in their house and then leave at the end of the
holiday. It's really good for family history work, but because
everyone goes back to their hometowns for it, a lot of our
investigators left Tokyo or were busy for the week. We had to cancel
our English bible class we teach every Tuesday. On Wednesday, we had a
good day of work and then went to Eikaiwa. One of our investigators,
Ken, comes to Eikaiwa every week and really likes it. He says it's the
highlight of his week, and that we're some of his best friends because
we're kind and care about him. The gospel is so awesome. Ken reads the
Book of Mormon because we ask him to, but doesn't completely
understand why we ask him or the blessings he can get from reading.
We're trying to get him to switch from reading because we ask him to
to reading because he knows it will bring him happiness and the
Spirit. Eikaiwa is always fun, I love our students. They're so funny
and awesome and the game we play at the end is always hilarious. On
Thursday I went on exchanges with Elder Ogata, the recorder here in
the mission home. He's a beast. He's so kind, he's always doing dishes
and cleaning up and showing love to everyone. He's the man. We went
and visited some less actives, none of which were home, then went to
another less active's house who they are working with named Yamamoto.
He has kind of a rough living situation. He had the craziest wiring
I've ever seen, he had like wired his apartment himself and had a
bunch of speakers around his house so his record-player would have
sick surround sound. Yes, correct, he uses a record player. It was
actually kind of cool, he played some Bob Marley for us to show how it
all works. I'll include a video of it. That night we went to a super
good ramen place around Ikebukero, the second biggest train station in
the world that's in our area. It's seriously massive. It's bigger than
a lot of airports I've been in. We went finding that night and it went
well. I'm liking finding more and more, I feel like I'm working hard
when I do it and it always feels effective. It's a good feeling. On
Friday, we had a good zone meeting in the morning. One of the
districts in our zone has been working on making this huge, door sized
Book of Mormon to use at Shibuya crossing, the biggest crossing in the
world. We went in the car to pick up the Book of Mormon and drop it
off at the Shibuya church. Having a car is so nice. The Japanese
Elders drive and we just tag along and study or do calls or something.
It's awesome. Zone meeting went really well. Elder Cannon had a great
training about the mindset of doing missionary work and Elder
Lamminatious (I know I spelled his name wrong but there's no way it's
happening), an Elder from Finland, about working with members. We went
to all you can eat indo curry, this really delicious kind of curry
from Nepal or India with bottomless Nan, the most delicious bread on
earth. Elder Cannon and I had been talking smack about who could eat
more nan and he has an iron will so I had to do some preparing. I took
Cam's advice and pounded a ton of water right before bed, a whole
gallon. It was a bad idea, I had to get up like 4 times that night to
use the restroom. However, it worked. I won. I ate 17 and he ate 14,
but we were both out eaten by a missionary named Elder Seager. He had
26. He's legendary for his eating abilities. He gained 100 pounds his
freshman year at BYU because he would have a cake every single day,
half of it for breakfast, a large Chick-fil-a meal, Creamery Ice
Cream, and would pound at the Cannon Center. He's an animal, he can
eat like no one I've ever seen. We had some good tech time after and
then went to volleyball. It went really well, we talked to these two
Nepalese guys we've been working on for a while about coming to church
to play ping pong and one of them came the next day! He wants to learn
about Christ and Mormonism, as his cousin is a less active here in the
ward and he's never really heard or learned about Christ. He's 17 and
an absolute tank. Huge guy. Saturday, we had a great day. We worked on
some things for the giant Book of Mormon and then went and did it! It
was such a cool experience. We just talked to everyone we could at the
crossing and talked about the Book of Mormon. We ended up handing out
around 40 copies in the short 2 hours we were there! It was amazing.
There was one group that just walked up to us and asked if they could
each have a Book of Mormon, as they were from China, where they aren't
allowed to have religion, and really wanted to learn more about
religion and Mormonism. It was super cool, we had brought Chinese
copies of the Book of Mormon that we gave to them. We're trying to
take it past just Shibuya and hopefully get it going online. We're
using the hashtag #thebook in our posts. Mormon friends with
Instagram, Facebook, and/or Twitter, please post about the Book of
Mormon using the hashtag and invite your friends to do the same! I
think this has some really awesome potential. We are trying to send it
out to some big Facebook pages too and have them explain what we're
trying to do. We got one page to make us their cover photo, LDS
Missionaries, but they didn't explain the hashtag or anything. It
still has like 2,000 likes which is kind of cool. Anyway, please post
about the Book of Mormon using the hashtag! Sunday was great too. We
had a good church, lunch, tech time, and then YSA church. One of the
YSA guys took like 4 pieces of bread and then they ended up being like
2 pieces short. Probably the only time in the history of the church
someone has sinned while taking the sacrament. It was super lame. We
went to a devotional they had that night by the new BYU-H President
with a less active. He ended up just walking out like 3 minutes in but
there was a general authority there and we didn't just want to stand
up and leave so we listened to it. It was really good. He talked a lot
about loving learning and how God wants us to love learning. Not just
studying to get good grades, but to make learning a lifelong pursuit
because it's an eternal principle. It was good. Elder Whiting also
talked about how much revelation and the Spirit he has felt from
people talking from the pulpit where he was standing, which was a call
for repentance for me. Staying awake in English Sacrament is kind of
hard, but staying awake in Japanese Sacrament Meeting is downright
impossible. Sacrament meeting Japanese is literally like impossible to
understand and we can't use our iPads to search words or read other
gospel materials so the members don't think we're slackers and just on
our iPads during sacrament. I'm really going to do my best to stay
awake in sacrament from now on. Pray for me though, I seriously need
it. Today was good too. We just chilled and napped and played ping
pong. Lots of fun and relaxing. I love all of you, have a great week!
Love,
Elder Calhoun
"A Food Thing Is Caught." Japanese English is the best!
My main man Ken!
The door-sized Book of Mormon
My friend, Elder Lamminatious (Elder L), from Finland
Doing missionary work at the busiest intersection in the world.
People here have issues with Spam. They love it.
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