Dear All:

This week was, I would say, pretty good. The language is coming more and more quickly. This Tuesday we played a game called Tanaka san. The way it works is that each person draws a name, and if you're tanaka san, you can't communicate in English the entire day, only nihongo. Demo, at the end of the day, everyone votes on who they think tanaka san is. The goal is to get the most votes, even if you weren't tanaka san. That means that you also want to try to speak in nihongo all day, even though you're allowed to speak english. It was way fun. I wasn't tanaka san, but I managed to get through the whole day without speaking an english. I was really scared of the game at first, but once I got into it it started to get really fun. It was actually a real confidence booster to realize that I could say a lot more than I thought I could, and, if I didn't know how to say it, I had the resources and knowledge to figure out what I wanted to say and build the sentences I needed. 

By the end I was really in a groove and even started to think in Nihongo a bit. When it was over it felt weird to go back to eigo. I didn't win, but I was one of two non tanaka-sans to make it through the day without speaking eigo, the other was eadie-choro (we rock. We're a straight up power couple). I really like that. We're going to start playing it every tuesday (tanaka san tuesday) which I'm excited for. 

We got a second teacher this week. We had heard rumors that our new teacher would be the first investigator we had taught, and low and behold that's who it was. He walked in and the whole district groaned because he had first hand experience of our language and teaching skill.  It was really weird at first because I had to switch from teacher mode to student mode when around him. It was also hard to stop calling him hotta san and start calling him cook kyoudai. Also it's funny because at first he would sometimes ask me the exact same questions that I had asked himi when we were teaching hotta san, and it was kind of a surreal experience. It's good though. He's a great teacher and I've already learned a lot from him. 

We've started playing a game every day called tango (vocab) bang bang where you go up against someone, the teacher says a word, and you have to translate it and shoot the other person (finger guns only, this is the mtc, not detroit) before they do the same. Eadie choro and I have made a goal to memorize one sub-lesson vocab section (about 30 words) each day so that we can win that game. So far it's working and helping a lot with our speaking and comprehension. 

There are two missions represented in our district, nagoya and tokyo south, and so we do team tango bang bang competitions with one mission v the other. So far nagoya is undefeated so that's a source of pride right now. The language really is picking up like I said before. It's still challenging but I don't feel like it's ever beyond what I can learn. I'm picking it up at a pretty good clip, I feel like (an opinion that I'm sure in retrospect will look rather ignorant once I'm actually in Japan). That doesn't mean, of course, that I'm any good yet. I made two language mistakes in teaching this week (well, many more than two but these are the most noteworthy):

1. Our investigator asked why bad things happen to good people. I was trying to explain that because Heavenly Father loves us he gave us the ability to choose, and that way we can learn how to get back to him and sometimes those choices result in bad things like death or sorrow, but that those trials are necessary to learn. I'm pretty sure I accidentally said that because Heavenly Father loves us, he kills us so we'll come back to him. I suppose that gets across the idea that He loves us, but I'm not sure it was the best way.

2. I was trying to tell another investigator that I played the trumpet. In trying to remember the word for "to play," I tried to think of the word in the list of words I had seen it in. Unfortunately, I remembered the word next to the correct word and told shouhei san that I threw up trumpets. He was confused.

Speaking of investigators: Our two teachers have started roleplaying as two investigators that we teach every day. One is shouhei san, a 16 year old with depression and the other is toshi san, a rapper/singer who loves american music and hates japan, and goes clubbing every night. They're both going to be much harder to help than hotta san, especially with our limited nihongo, but I'm up for the challenge. 

Other interesting things:
Last week we got a new district of nihonjin, or japanese natives, in the classroom next to us. They're all great, but one of the elders, Mihara choro, is just about the funniest person I've ever met. I have some pictures of him that hopefully I can send next week that will tell you what I mean. He's just crazy. He met eadie choro and just kept saying "macho man. macho man" and told him he had beautiful biceps, fantastic biceps. It was so funny. He calls eadie choro the hulk now. They all leave on tuesday, which is quite sad.

We went to the temple last thursday which was an awesome experience. It was great as usual and it was fun to sit in the celestial room with my district and people I've grown so close to after the last couple weeks. I also saw brother tolman there, a man I hometaught. Afterward we had study time (again) and it was one of the best study times I've had here. Eadie choro and I just sat down and talked about the gospel and what it has done for us and how it's changed and blessed our lives. We really settled on four main themes of the gospel (after reading and discovering those same themes on our own): Love, Deliverance, and Hope, and Joy. 

That's really what the gospel is. It's just hope. Through Christ and Heavenly Father's love for us, we can find deliverance from whatever trials, sorrows, or sins we're struggling with, and that's so hopeful. I don't know. I just love it. I've really started to fall in love with the Book of Mormon this week. It's just so beautiful, both in message and presentation. 2nd Nephi is awesome. A scripture I found this week that I really like: Romans 8:38-39. Nothing we can do can keep Christ from loving us. He's always going to be there for us, his love is always extended. 

Couple other things before I sign off: We had a fireside about Christ's name on tuesday, and the commandment to not take His name in vain. One of the things that I'd never thought about was that when we're baptized, we take his name upon us and therefore we should be trying to act in the name of Christ or to act as if we were Him. This means that when we do things that are not pleasing to Him or that He woul disapprove of, we are taking his name in vain. Interesting thought that changed the way I look at that commandment. Anyway, that's all the time I've got. Take care.

Elder Callahan

p.s. Forgot to attach these. I just have a few because I barely bought a memory card, but here you go. (Also, mail is becoming like a social status here, and I want to be on top of the ladder, so if you feel like sending me something, please do. It will make me feel important and that's really all I'm here for. If you send it through dearelder.com then it's even more cool because I've got a physical letter from someone.)

Jake's missionary nametag

Eadie Choro as Robocop

Eadie Choro says, "Put down the camera and nobody gets hurt."

Dear family, friends, acquaintances, and those I don't like but somehow made it on the list anyway (I'll let you figure out which one you are):

It's been a great week! It really is like drinking out of a fire hydrant .I was the first one to get to our first class (which occurred half an hour after arriving) and had the opportunity to carry on a conversation with our teacher. I learned very quickly that in that he was only going to speak Japanese to me, so it was a pretty rough conversation. A lot of the Japanese that I had halfway learned in high school came back to me though so that, at least, was helpful. 

On Friday, two days after we got here, we got to teach our first "investigator." His name was Hotta-san, and his story was that he had been given a book of Mormon ten years ago in japan, but lost it, and had recently had a dream about the word Mormon, so he sought out the missionaries. Our first two lessons were terrible. We couldn't understand anything he was telling us, and so we couldn't answer the questions he had about the church, so we just kind of had to read off a prepared script. It was frustrating, because we knew that he had questions we could answer, we just didn't know what they were. So that weekend we spent most of our study time in the computer lab just practicing listening to nihonjin and figuring out what they were saying. That helped so much. 

On monday we came in wanting to talk about the book of Mormon, but we realized that he was asking us about getting answers to prayers, so we just talked about that (as best we could) for the lesson. We walked out feeling really good about what we taught, and that we had finally the felt the spirit a little bit in our lesson. It's crazy though how one day you can feel really good about where you are, but the next day feel the opposite. 

Our next lesson was rough. We had assigned him to read Moroni 10 (which is a marvelous chapter, by the way) and pray to feel the spirit, but we didn't think to follow up on that, so we came in planning to talk about the Restoration. Instead, he asked us what the gift of the spirit was, and how you get it, like he had read in Moroni 10. Well we weren't prepared for that (i.e. we didn't know any Japanese pertaining to baptism) and so we walked out feeling like we didn't help him learn anything. 

Yesterday in class we talked about how you need to teach the principles of the gospel, but you need to teach them to the needs of the investigator. It really clicked to us then that we had never just asked him what he wanted to know, and tried to teach that. So we prepared a lesson plan on the atonement and the doctrine of Christ, but our goal was to just ask him what he wanted to know and then teach that. So we came in and sat down, prayed, and just asked that. 

He told us that he had hoped the missionaries would be able to help him figure out what he should do with his life, whether he should keep working at his book store or go to college or find a different job, or what, but we had just come and started talking about god and Christ and the spirit. Now, those are all REALLY good things, but they weren't framed in a way where he saw that they helped him. So we told him that we couldn't help him figure out what he should do with his life, but God could, and asked him to pray about it, and just pray about the things he wanted to know and wanted to have. SO he prayed and it was really sincere and you could tell it was different than they ways he had prayed before. Then he said he thought prayer was good but felt like he needed more in his life than just prayer, so we started to teach the doctrine of Christ. 

Unfortunately we ran out of time because the companionship before us had turned their 20 minute lesson into a 60 minute one, so he had to leave, and it was SO frustrating. We had finally gotten through to him and framed the gospel in a way applicable to him, and we didn't have any more time. You could ask my companion, I was really upset. I felt like our first 4 lessons were wasted, and we were just beginning. It was rough. However, I knew that we were on the right path with our teaching, and my companion assured me that we would start out right next time, and I believe that.

Speaking of my companion, his name is Elder Eadie (Eadie Choro in japanese). He was a power lifter at the Air Force Academy before coming here, and could take me out as soon as he wanted to. He a really good guy though. We're both kind of "Type B" personalities, so there have been lots of times when we just don't say anything to each other. We're working on communicating more with each other though, and we're becoming better and better friends each day which is good. Also, our district is becoming really really close. We spend just about all day every day together, with 9 or so of those hours in a small classroom. They're all really cool and we all come from really different backgrounds, so it's a great mix of personalities. 

There's one elder, Farias Choro, who's from Brazil. His companion taught him how to challenge people to fights in Japanese, so he keeps on telling all of us to "come at him" in nihongo whenever we tease him about Brasil losing to Germany 7-1 in the world cup (which is a lot). He thinks it's his fault because he reported to the MTC 8 hours late so he could watch the game, and God was saying "oh, you're going to keep watching instead of being where you're supposed to? Here's another goal!) It's really funny. 

Along with that, we have some really spiritual times where we all share scriptures with each other and just talk about them, and I think those times are when I feel the spirit strongest here. One of the Elders in our district wasn't active until a year or so before his mission, and whenever he tells us stories the spirit you feel is amazing. Also, we're engaged in a residence building-wide war right now. See, there are only two irons in the entire building when there should be sixteen. So we've been seeing who can keep the irons on their floor the longest without them being stolen. Currently we're winning because Eadie Choro and I have them locked in our lock-boxes in our bedrooms. 

Also, I inadvertently invented a new game when I first got here. Whenever I saw elder miller (Eli) at meal times, I would steal food off his plate. After a few days of this, Eadie Choro suggested that I start giving him food to throw him off. I gave him a banana, and so we started trying to give the banana back in more and more creative ways. This turned into a Japanese -missionary wide game where we try to sneak bananas into each others pockets and other personal belongings. It's fun but the paranoia is building. We also have a soccer rivalry going with the Korean elders. They keep beating us though. 

Angie's dad spoke at our Sunday fireside, and gave a really great talk about charity and loving who you teach. I knew that you had to before, but it helped shift my focus and clarify some things that I was doing wrong, and I think it contributed to our success in our lesson the next day. That went really well with our Tuesday fireside where a former general authority spoke about taking Christ's name in vain. He pointed out that it's not just saying His name, but we as members, and especially missionaries in a literal sense with our name tags, have taken on Christ's name and are His representatives, so we should be working to represent Him in all that we do. As missionaries, that means teaching those we meet with charity. And Wednesday I learned that that means teaching what they need, not what you think they need.

I can really feel my testimony growing. I'm trying every day to be more like Christ both for myself and so I can represent Him better as a missionary, and it's helping me learn and believe more and more about the gospel. The gift of tongues is a real thing, I've learned crazy amounts of Japanese in a week, more than I ever thought was possible. Also, it's just wonderful being with a group of people (my district) that loves the gospel so much and who talk about it all the time. 

In one of our scripture sharing sessions, we read a scripture in Alma that's stuck with me all week. Alma 7:11-13. I know it was a scripture mastery but it's just really taken on a new meaning for me as I've thought a lot about the atonement and how I need to use it to help me and those I teach. Have a good week, y'all.

Love, Elder Callahan.