Email #63         January 25, 2016

Dearest Family and Friends,

This past week went well! Life is great. I'll just go through and give
a quick rundown of what happened. On Tuesday, we went to the temple
and the zoo. The zoo was pretty fun. I tried to send pictures last
week but they didn't send, so I'll shoot them your away again this
week. On Wednesday, we did a lot of member visits and finding along
the way. Bike dendo, or stopping people while biking, is brutal. It's
the hardest way to stop people for sure because it's so abrupt and can
be incredibly awkward, but doing it feels really good. We are really
trying to do it a lot more and do more effective finding by visiting
less actives and members and finding along the way. We had a good
Eikaiwa that night as well, it was pretty normal. On Thursday, we had
exchanges. I was with Elder Porter, a young missionary from Utah. He
went to Lone Peak and is a great missionary. It was fun working with
him. The way that we do exchanges has been changed by the missionary
department. Now, both sets of Elders work in the leader's area, so
both companionships worked in Kasukabe. It went well, we were blessed
to find three potential investigators between both companionship sets.
Elder Porter was an animal and talked to people despite not knowing
very much Japanese, which is great because you never know enough of
it! No matter how much Japanese you know, it isn't enough. It's
madness. The longer I'm out though, the more I want to become fluent.
I know there is no way it will happen on my mission, but I for sure
want to use Japanese at my job and study it at school, and living in
Japan for a few years after college is becoming more and more
enticing. I can't loose my Japanese! On Friday, we were in the church
all day. It was brutal. We had district meeting, then a special
worldwide missionary broadcast, study, and then weekly planning while
waiting for people to come to our new tutoring service that President
Nagano has asked us to focus on lately. On Saturday, we went to
Japanese class. I was with Lucy, a crazy Eikaiwa student. It went
pretty well, we usually go to find people afterwards, but all the
people we normally work with bailed before we had the chance to talk
to them. Next week! Sunday was also good, I taught gospel principles
by myself because we were on splits and Elder Faganello was in Young
Mens. It went well though, I just had them talk in groups pretty much
the whole time. Not teaching teaching is the best when members are
present. It was a great week! We're going to focus this week on
finding new investigators and making all of our potential
investigators into real investigators. We need new people! Please pray
for us. Life is good, the work is great, and things are going well! I
couldn't be happier!

I've been thinking about faith and God's timing recently. Heidi sent
me a talk that I really, really liked called, "But if Not." It talked
about true faith, about how faith is complete trust in God's will. I
think there's a lot of confusion about faith amongst missionaries, and
I am finally starting to begin to understand faith a little. At the
beginning of my mission, I always thought that not seeing a miracle
was because of a lack of faith, and saying "if it's God's will" was
just a way to allow an easy exit if the result wasn't what we were
aiming for. I'm starting to realize just how wrong I was. Honestly,
I've had a lot of faith throughout my time here in Japan and have
worked hard and given my all, and haven't seen much success
numbers-wise. At first, this frustrated me. But now, I'm starting to
understand God's timing and real faith. I'm incredibly grateful for
the experience I am having in Japan, and how it is helping me learn
about real faith. I also have faith that as I give my all and trust in
God, he will fulfill blessings that have been promised to us, even if
it is not on our timing.

I love you all, have a fantastic week!

Love,
Elder Calhoun

 Bowling with Zack and Issei

 It snowed a few inches on Monday.  It brought back good memories of last winter.

 Panda at the zoo

Zoo creature

 "I swear the scale is off."

The Secretary Bird.  This bird has seen things we can't even begin to comprehend.

The zoo with Tokyo Skytree in the background

Email #62         January 17, 2016

Pre-post :)

Beloved Family and Friends,

This week is temple p day, so I'll write you all (or at least attempt
to) tomorrow! Have a great day!

Love,
Elder Calhoun

Real post:

Dearest Family and Friends,

This past week was great! I feel like we are back on top of things
after falling apart a little bit last transfer. Our dendo is much more
organized and we are working more closely with the ward leadership!
It's been a great start to a great transfer! We were blessed to see a
ton of miracles. After interviews with President Nagano on Thursday,
we felt like we really needed to focus on starting up tutoring. We
made chirashis for it, and from Thursday to Saturday were able to find
three, solid people really interested in it. On Friday, we had a good
meeting with a kid named Zack and his friend Issei. Zack is from
Pakistan. He wants to meet us again, but with more friends next time.
The friend he brought when we met on Friday was really interested in
learning English and attending the 家庭教師 service we had just planned
out the day before. He also wasn't hantai when we talked about our
purpose and why we became missionaries. It will be good to get him in
the church and really be able to set good expectations and get him
progressing. The next day, Elder Faganello and I really felt like we
needed to be finding machines, so we decided we were going to stop
every sweet spot kid we saw on our bikes. We stopped the first and
only kid we saw, and he had a ton of interest in learning English and
coming to 家庭教師! We were able to exchange numbers and hopefully we'll
see him on Friday. On Saturday, we went to a community Japanese class
they have here that's a really good finding opportunity. We were able
to tell Maki, a kid from Indiana that we've been trying to work with
but can't figure out how to, that we can help him with his homework,
and he had a lot of interest! He said he might come, which is a lot
further than we've gotten with him before. Sweet miracle! We were
really blessed with a ton of miracles as we aligned our actions with
your and the Lord's vision. Sunday also went super well. We went to
ward council in the morning and it was much better than usual. We
shared some thoughts about member missionary work and how we wanted to
work more closely with the ward council this transfer. After church, I
had a good talk with the 2nd counselor in the bishopric about how we
can make ward council more effective for the missionaries. From here
on out, the missionaries will be given time at the very beginning of
the meeting and then we can leave after that so we can go dendo or do
reports or greet members or do other, much more effective things. It
was a really good talk. We are really united with the ward right now,
and I am excited to continue to strengthen our relationship.

We had a good district meeting on Tuesday where we set district goals
for the key indicators. We put our biggest emphasis or finding two new
investigators every week, because all the other key indicators
basically come down to us having progressing investigators. I know as
we focus on finding and teaching investigators we will be blessed to
do exactly that. We are going to have this week's district meeting be
about how we can find effectively, especially through our own efforts
and through working with the members.

I had a great exchange with Elder Kuwana on Wednesday. We worked hard
and were exactly obedient to the promptings of the Spirit, even though
we didn't see any crazy miracles as a result. It felt good to know
that we were doing everything the Lord wanted us to do though. Elder
Kuwana is a great example of finding with faith and bringing up the
gospel. I learned a lot from him.

Working with Elder Faganello has been super fun, he's a beast! We went
to the temple today then to Ueno Zoo with a lot of the elders from the
zone. It was super fun and only $6. It was a great p day.

My spiritual thought for the week is about having an attitude of
gratitude. The more grateful we are and the more we express that
gratitude, the happier we become. I really love happiness. I'm really
trying to work on being more full of gratitude!

Life is good! I am loving everything about it. I don't have very much
time (even less than normal) so I won't be able to send many personal
emails today. I'm sorry! There are so many people I need to email and
feel so bad about still not sending one. I apologize if I just
described you, I'm working on it! Have a great week everyone, love you
all!

Love,
Elder Calhoun

Email #61     January 11, 2016

Dearest Family and Friends,

This past week was great! Last Monday was transfer calls. After
transfer calls, we went to zone p-day in Urawa. It was great, I beat
my arch-nemesis/good friend Elder Burch at every sport we played. It
was oh so sweet after all of our smack talk. I love Elder Burch, he's
a great missionary and guy. We played ping pong and dodgeball and
basketball as a zone, and we found out that they are combining Saitama
East and West zones, which will make zone p day even more fun because
twice as many people will come. I'm also really excited because Elder
Yoshino is in my zone now. I love that man. Tuesday went well, we did
a ton of walking. The mission home never sent Elder King his bike,
probably because he was transferring, but it made us do a ton of
walking when we were together. We did some good finding and taught
Kaneko Kyoudai that night. He's a great guy. He's a recent convert of
a little over a year, and he is working to get the Melchizedek
Priesthood right now. We've been reading the Isaiah chapters with him,
and it's been going well. On Wednesday, we did some more finding and
had a good Eikaiwa. Transfer day last week got moved to Thursday
because the new missionary's flight got delayed. We met with Ien that
morning and talked about the Book of Mormon, then went back and
finished packing the other Elder's stuff. We went to the train station
and I saw Elder Unsworth and Elder King off. Poor Elder King only got
one Sunday and one Eikaiwa here and then had to transfer. We were
pretty surprised when we found out. He's a great missionary and super
cheerful and funny. Elder Unsworth is going to Matsudo with my buddy
Elder Chou from Taiwan. He's going to have a blast, Elder Chou is the
best. Elder Unsworth was a great missionary and I loved him and
working with him. After seeing them off, I met up with Elder
Faganello, my new companion. He's great! He's one transfer below me
and speaks Japanese really well, so it's going to be awesome to have
someone who can help me and help my Japanese. He's from Victoria,
Canada, and loves to draw. He's a really gifted artist. Since he came,
we've taught a few recent converts and found some nice new people. We
found a super nice guy named Sultan from Saudi Arabia. He said he had
lived in America and loved the Mormon missionaries because of how nice
and cheerful they were, and loved the Mormon church because we believe
in one God and don't eat pork, just like him. We could see the
disappointment in his eyes as we explained the word of wisdom and the
Godhead, but it was a good opportunity to get his phone number and set
expectations to meet again so we can explain our beliefs. On Friday,
we had to go to a training meeting in Urawa. We got on a train that
was about to leave, and as the doors closed we looked around to see
who we could talk to. To our great surprise, we got onto an all
woman's car. We were the only men in the whole car and it was packed
with women, all staring at us. It was pretty embarrassing, but
thankfully it was only one stop. I'm not sure how we didn't notice
that there were only women in it the first place, but it was a good
conversation starter to talk to people on the train the rest of the
week. Elder Faganello also ate Coco's Curry House level 10 spiciness.
It's hard to describe how hot it is. It's for sure hotter than chili
pepper or habanero, it's super hot. The worst part is that it just
takes so long, because it's this thick curry with rice. He took it
like a champ though, eating it slowly but surely. I'll include some
pictures of the ordeal. It was a great week!

I've really been thinking a lot about the scriptures lately. Never
before in my life have I realized the depth of learning that can come
from reading the scriptures, or just how wonderful and beautiful they
are. PMG talks a ton about the importance of study, and it nearly
always specifies to study the scriptures. I have never read more
slowly, but more insightfully, than I have these past weeks. I have
been reading in Mosiah and have been really loving the opportunity I
have had to read and learn from the scriptures. It is amazing how much
doctrine and just amazing things are jammed packed into the
scriptures. I am really starting to realize the import of two
scriptures I love:

1 Nephi 6:6
Wherefore, I shall give commandment unto my seed, that they shall not
occupy these plates with things which are not of worth unto the
children of men.

2 Nephi 4:16
Behold, my soul delighteth in the things of the Lord; and my heart
pondereth continually upon the things which I have seen and heard.

There is seriously nothing in the Book of Mormon that isn't of value,
and more I find that value and the realize the depth and beauty and
importance of the scriptures, the more I delight in the things of the
Lord and find true happiness in my work and in the gospel and in who I
am. The gospel is amazing, and i am so grateful that we can learn
about it in the scriptures.

This upcoming week is going to be great, we're going to be meeting
with some good potential investigators we've found recently, build our
relationship with the ward, and really work our hardest and have faith
that we can help the Lord build our area! I love you all, have a
wonderful week!

Love,
Elder Calhoun

 Goodbye to the Three Muskateers.  I'm looking fly with my waist strap

 Elder Faganello experiencing the pain progression of level 10 Coco's curry

 Eating dragonfruit

 My favorite place to ponder on the way to church.  We always stop here for a few seconds to look at the fish and enjoy a little bit of nature.  It's rejuvenating

We made mochi a few weeks ago.

Love you all!  Have a wonderful week!

Email #60       January 4, 2016

Dearest Family and Friends,

These past three weeks have been great! Merry Belated Christmas and
Happy New Year! We've had some good stuff happen to us these past few
weeks. A week or so before Christmas, we had a really good Christmas
Concert in Koiwa, an area in Tokyo. All of the musically talented
missionaries sang or played an instrument and it was really good.
Elder Unsworth sang. It was fun to see a lot of my mission buddies and
get to know Shohei a little bit better. Shohei is the man, he's a
young convert who speaks good English and is super famous in the
mission. He's super cool. The next day we had the ward's Christmas
party. It was really fun. There was an open house for investigators an
hour before and an hour after. The ward helped us do a tour of the
third floor of the church, where the investigators learned about
different aspects of our doctrine, like eternal families, temple work,
and the gospel of Jesus Christ. It went well, there were 200 people
total at the party and the ward is normally 110 people on Sundays, and
not even close to all the members came. A few families did work, they
each brought 3 families each. We didn't get any new investigators from
it, but the sisters got one I think. It went well, and the ward is
planning on doing the same kind of thing again a few times in the
upcoming year.

Our Christmas was great. We visited some less actives, ate at an all
you can eat meat place, and cooked dinner for our bishop. It was a
pretty crazy day. There's this thing in Japan called yakiniku, where
they have a grill in the middle of the table and bring out these
little slabs of raw meat and you cook it yourself. It's the best. The
place we went to also had all you can eat cotton candy, crepes, and
ice cream, so you can bet that we went pretty hard. Our Assistants had
asked us to do service anonymously for our bishops for Christmas, and
we decided to make him and his family dinner. We looked at their
Facebook and saw that they wanted to eat Navajo tacos but couldn't
find corn flour. I had exchanges and we ate at a restaurant that
exited into an import store that had corn flour! I bought it and we
decided to make them Navajo tacos. We told them to come at 6:30 on
Christmas day, and we were going to make it and then head out before
they came. They ended up coming at 6:00 and we hadn't finished making
it yet so we had to turn off the lights and pretend like we weren't
there. We tried to do everything we could to get them to leave, but it
didn't work. Long story short, we were in the kitchen for like two
hours and then made an emergency escape by jumping off the balcony. We
ended up finding out the next day that they knew it was us the entire
time and we could have just eaten with them or not wasted all that
time. Oh well. At least we were obedient!

New Years was also great. The last day of the year and on New Years
Day we weren't allowed to go outside and work. New Years is a super
big holiday here and I guess they didn't want us disturbing people. We
stayed inside and cleaned our apartment really thoroughly on the 31st,
and then read the Book of Mormon on the 1st. Unfortunately, we had a
lunch and a dinner appointment on the first, and we were unable to do
more than 4 hours of reading the Book of Mormon. I had biggest
aspirations at the beginning of the day to get through Alma, but I
ended up just making it through 7 chapters of Mosiah. It was some of
the slowest studying I've ever done, but also some of the most
insightful. My love of the scriptures is finally beginning to blossom.
I'm really starting to love them more and more and really appreciate
their relevance in my life and their beauty. The scriptures are
amazing! Despite the sadness of only being able to read for a little
bit, our appointments were amazing. We had this traditional Japanese
food that they always eat on New Years, "お雑煮." It's called ozouni and
it was pretty good. They had beans covered in gold and these fish
cakes and tons of meat. The fish cakes were not my favorite, they were
sweet like a cake but then with a fishy taste. Each different thing is
supposed to bring them something different in the New Year, like money
and good luck and fertility. They also eat tons of mochi, or this
pounded rice that's really stick and gooey and really good. My ability
to eat seafood has increased significantly on my mission, seaweed has
really grown on me along with fishier fish and other good seafood.

This past week, we had 5 dinner appointments in 4 days for New Years.
It was great but I for sure couldn't keep that up my whole mission. I
feel so heavy from all of the food they've fed us, I don't know how
stateside missionaries do it. It makes me want to eat so much more
healthily. New Years is huge here. They don't have Christmas off for
work or school, but everyone has a few days before New Years and after
off. People in Japan are super busy and don't take long breaks. New
Years is one of the longest, and is a time to spend with family. It's
like the Japanese family holiday equivalent of Christmas in America. I
really hope that I'll get to be in Japan for another New Year someday
and go to a shrine or really get to see the things that they do.

Last Sunday, Elder Miller, one of the assistants, called us and told
us that we would be getting a new companion, Elder King from
Australia. We went and picked him up on Tuesday. He's the man! He's
from Perth and super laid back and cheerful and funny. His Japanese is
good, he went home after a few transfers and has now come back, and he
works hard. He's a stud. I was looking forward to working with him
this upcoming transfer, but we got transfer calls today. Elder
Unsworth and Elder King are gone, and I am staying! I'm pumped to
still be here in Kasukabe, it's the best. My new companion is named
Elder Faganello, he's just a little bit younger than me in terms of
mission age and from Canada and loves art. That's about all I know
about him, but I'm really excited to work with him. It's been a blast
working with Elder Unsworth and Elder King and I'm going to miss them.
Life is great, the work is great, Kasukabe is great, Elder Faganello
is going to be great, I couldn't ask for anything more! I love all of
you, have a wonderful week!

Love,
Elder Calhoun

In church we can request food that we want by writing it on a sticky note and putting it on the church fridge (in Japan, we don't have a ton of meal appointments, but the members bring food for the missionaries to eat in their apartments every week).  On one of my sticky notes, I asked for a Book of Mormon book cover with the painting "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa" on it.  This is a super famous and incredibly cool painting.  I figured there was no harm in asking.  The Bishop's wife said that she could probably make it for me, and spent the last couple of weeks doing so, asking me what fabric I wanted.  She finished a few days ago and now I have this amazing Book ov Mormon cover with a ton of iconic Japanese paintings. SUPER nice of her!

Elder King bought this for himself on his birthday and pounded it like a champ.  It was way bigger than it looks.

New Year's traditional food

Elder King in the futon dryer.  It's to clean our futons by killing all the potential bugs in them using warm air.  He got in it to stay warm.

I got a haircut and thought I would just go for the special since it was around Christmas.  They went to shave my face, and started with my forehead (not sure why you would need a forehead shave).  The lady asked me if she could do my eyebrows, and I said I was ok.  She persisted and said she would only do a little, and I relented.  I look Egyptian now.

Dessert at the Hosoya's house

The missionaries in Kasukabe made a senbazuru for a member in the hospital here.  A senbazuru is 1,000 handmade paper cranes strung together, and receiving one means one wish you have will come true.  The sisters made around 950 of them and we made about 50.