Email #66  February 16, 2016

Dearest Family and Friends,

I am transferring! I'm going to Narita, in Chiba Ken. My new
companion's name is Elder Cardon! I'm really excited to go work there
with him, it's going to be a blast. I don't have much time because I
have to pack and want to say goodbye to the members here. I will send
a good catch up email next week. Love you all, have a great week!

Love,
Elder Calhoun

Email #65    February 9, 2016

Dearest Family and Friends,

I'm sorry, I don't have a ton of time this week. I'm just going to
share most of my President's Letter from this week so you can know
what I am up to and what I have been doing.

This past week went really well. We were blessed to see lots of
miracles. I am loving working with Elder Faganello, he is a great
missionary and friend. We have really been working on talking to
everyone, especially about Christ. We are making sure that with everyone we
talk to, we bring up our purpose and talk about Christ, not just going
straight to tutoring or Eikaiwa. We still have a little room to
improve, but we are doing better and better and becoming the finding
machines you told us we were. The biggest miracle we saw was probably
yesterday (Saturday). We had the ward basketball activity, and two
investigators and two less actives came. One of the investigators
doesn't have a ton of interest, he just comes for the basketball, but
we have been teaching him after we finish playing, and he has been
listening to what we tell him and taking what we give him, like
pamphlets. His native language is Thai, so we are trying to hunt down a
Thai Book of Mormon right now for him. The other investigator has a
lot of potential. He is the friend of a very less active youth named
Kichiro. Kichiro and his friend both love basketball, and we have really been making an
effort to reach out to him and his friend. After playing with them, we
were able to teach them with the ward mission leader, and Kichiro
committed to coming to sacrament meeting! He has been to sacrament
meeting once since I have been here, but before that, he hadn't been
to church in years. Last time he came with Riku, his friend, so
hopefully they will come together. Mashuu, Kichiro's more active but
still less active older brother, has been to church two weeks in a row
and also committed to coming to church today! The Lord is really
blessing us, and I am so grateful that Mashuu and Kichiro, members of
a family I have really come to love, are moving in the right
direction.

Elder Faganello and I are really trying to, as Elder Faganello put it,
"end this transfer with an explosion." Despite our hard work this
transfer, we have had a ton of rejection and a lot of our
investigators have dropped off the map and we haven't been able to
find many new investigators, even though we have been doing kinjin
dendo. However, we know that as we continue to work hard and be as
exactly obedient as we can, we will be blessed to see miracles. I
don't think I have ever been more happy receiving rejection than I am
at this point in my mission. I have really been praying and studying
and working to be filled with charity for my investigators and the
Japanese people in general, and Heavenly Father is blessing me to feel
more and more a stronger and stronger love for them. As a result of
this increased love, talking to everyone has been getting easier and
easier and even though it is always sad when people reject the gospel,
the thing that would bring them more happiness than they could
imagine, it is becoming easier and easier to just be happy all the
time despite the rejection.

I had an insight this past week about charity and feeling love for the
people here. I have always loved the Japanese people, but the past few
weeks I have been feeling that I need to strengthen that love and just
be filled to overflowing with charity, especially for the people I am
working with. When I hear about other missionaries, I sometimes have a
tendency to say things like, "It would be so much easier to love the
people if they showed emotion or that they appreciated my love." The
grass is always greener. I realized this week that I have been looking
at things all wrong. If I really want to love the Japanese people and
have my heart be filled with charity for them, I need to love all of
them, all of the aspects of their culture that are hard sometimes,
understand and appreciate them. I have been making more of an effort
to do this, and I have been incredibly blessed to be filled with more
and more love and appreciation for the people I have been so blessed
to labor among. I still have a long way to go, but I am so grateful
that Heavenly Father helped me realize this and has increased my
charity!

I'm so grateful for the gospel and for all of you, I love you all!
Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Calhoun

Email #64        February 1, 2016

Dearest Family and Friends,

This week was great! I had the most rejection I've had yet on my
mission this past week. We've been having a hard time getting people
to church and meeting with our investigators this transfer, but we're
doing our part. Despite having a ton of rejection this past week, it
was a really happy, good week. Nothing out of the ordinary really
happened, but it was just good. The harder I work and the more I throw
myself into the work, the happier I am, no matter what happens. We
were blessed to have two walk ins at sacrament meeting. One was a
nonmember couple who just moved into the area and found the church on
google. They slipped out before we were able to get contact
information, but hopefully they will be back next week! There was also
a man who lives nearby who just came to see the church because he was
curious. He didn't seem 100% there, but it was a big blessing to have
2 people we had never met just walk into the church and stay through
sacrament meeting. I've been really thinking about love this week, and
how I need to be filled with more love for the Japanese people. I
already love them so much, but just like pretty much everything else,
I feel like there is room for improvement. Please pray for me that I
will be filled with love for the people here in Japan, my area, and
the people we are working with!

In other news, I learned how to whistle this week. For as long as I
can remember, I have wished that I could whistle. I would hear other
people who could, and wish that I could be like them and be able to do
some sweet whistling. However, I never really put in the time I needed
to become a whistling beast. In Elder Paul Cannon style, except much
less flowy and in a much shorter way, I would like to compare
whistling to our testimonies. I think that my journey to whistlehood
has much in common with the journey to acquiring our testimonies. Just
as there are those who have been able to whistle for as long as they
can remember, there are often those around us who have had testimonies
their entire lives. We may look at those who know that Christ is their
Savior, that the gospel brings happiness to their lives, and wish that
we were like them, that we could just know the same things. Some of us
may have gotten our testimonies quickly, after attending church or
reading scriptures for the first time. Others of us may have been
going to church for as long as we can remember, doing all the things we
need to be doing, and still may not have received the answer we have
been looking for. However, unlike whistling, having a testimony of the
Savior and His gospel will bless our lives beyond anything we could
imagine, make us happier, strengthen us in our trials, and give us an
irreplaceable feeling of peace. And even though there are some of us
who may work hard and long to be able to whistle, we may never be able
to. However, I know that if we put in the work and are sincere, we can
all be blessed with the happiness and peace that accompanies knowing that
Jesus Christ is our Savior, that He loves us, and knows us
individually. I am so thankful for my testimony of Jesus Christ, and
for the opportunity I have to help develop that same testimony in
others. My favorite scripture, 2 Nephi 4:16, sums it up pretty well I
think:

"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."

My soul truly does delight in the Lord and His gospel. If you can't
whistle yet, keep trying! If you have no desire to whistle, or to come
to know that Christ can bless your life through the gospel He has
restored through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
please consider it, as I know that it will be the same joy and peace
to you that it has to me and millions of others.

Love,
Elder Calhoun

 I went in between 2 metal poles after going shopping, thinking I could cut in between them without slowing down.  I didn't factor in the swinging of the bags, and the pasta sauce in one of the bags hit one of the poles and pretty much exploded.  It's hard to see, but it got all over my pants, shoes and bike.  I pretty much greased my bike chain with pasta sauce.  It was pretty gnarly.

 Elder Ito put on a wig today at zone p day and straight up looked like Zero from Holes. 

 I gave him my shoes and it was lights out the same.

Classic Japanese English