A weird thing is that this is my "Week 7" email, but we're finishing up our "8th Week" here on the schedule, and, even though our schedule says we're here for 10 weeks, we have 10 days left. That's crazy. 10 days till go time. That's a crazy exciting thought. I thought I was excited to go last week, but this week my excitement has ratcheted up even more. 

Some fun things:

Every 3 weeks, a district of Japanese natives comes in and they have the classroom next door to us. Yesterday, the district that will be leaving the same time as us came in. We've always tried to be friendly, but it was hard because we've never been able to communicate with them in any real fashion. Demo yesterday we went over there to say hi and ended up talking to hem for about half an hour, until they had to go to an orientation meeting. It was so fun, and it was a real confidence booster for me in the language. I'm still terrible at it, but it was comforting knowing that I can at least carry on some form of a conversation, and knowing that I've come so far since the last nihonjin district. They're all way cool and one sister is going to Nagoya with us. 

 

Our lists have moved on to some more unique things. The other day we all gave each other "Japanese" names by picking a natural occurrence and an element that goes with that for each other, and then finding the kanji for those elements and trying to figure out how it would be read. This most likely means all of our readings our wrong, but it was a fun exercise. I was given 賢森, which we've been reading kenshin, but I don't know how correct that is. It was fun though.

I've also been reading the book "The Power of Everyday Missionaries" by Clayton M. Christensen. If you haven't read this book I highly suggest you do. It's really a wonderful book that talks about how you can share the gospel and touch others' lives in the most effective way, which does not include being obnoxious or abrasive. In fact he talks about hose worries in the book. Two main points I took out of it were these:

1) Members are so so so important to missionary work. They are much better missionaries than the missionaries are, in most cases. Members are normal, every day people instead of suit-wearing, nametag-having, pimple-sporting 19 year olds who are kind of weird to most people. Don't get me wrong, the missionaries do good work, but when members go about it in the right way, they can be extremely, extremely powerful. The book tells the true story of a branch in Massachusetts, where, in the space of one year, 450 people (about, I can't remember the exact number) were baptized into the branch. This all started through the efforts of 3 member families, directed b the branch president, who each just found one other family who they thought could benefit from the gospel (fun fact: that's everybody) and invited them each to church. That effort snowballed into the amount of baptisms I mentioned above. 

2) I mentioned this briefly above, but the gospel is for everybody. Elder Christensen repeatedly tells stories of asking the Lord to help him find someone with whom he could share the gospel, only to be led to someone who looks and acts nothing like the golden candidate he would have imagined. But by trusting the Lord and extending and invite or talking about the church he found that these people were more receptive to the gospel than a lot of those "golden" potential investigators. I think that's a good reminder for all of us, especially me, that the Lord is no respecter of persons. He does His work how He wants it done and we're here to follow His plan, a plan that often includes people and actions that we wouldn't expect. So I've been trying really hard to prepare myself so that when I do get to Japan with real people who I can help and talk to, that I don't get to decide who needs our message. That's God's job. He has told us we just have to open our mouths and then He'll take care of the rest. 

We had a couple really good lessons yesterday. One of the lessons, our "missionary investigator" lesson (about which I talked last week, I think. Maybe the week before.) was particularly good, I felt. We taught about faith, and our investigator said that what we were telling him sounded wonderful, that all these blessings we were promising if he just would take the steps to strengthen his faith sounded amazing, but he just didn't feel that he was worthy of God's love. 

Now, our investigator was only acting, but he was playing somebody he really knew, and the thought hit me that there are people out there who really believe that our Heavenly Father does not love them, that it's their fault, that they've done something that has caused Him to withdraw His love from them. And that breaks my heart. Because if I have any testimony at all, it is that our God loves us unconditionally. There are no exceptions to that promise. Nothing we have done, can do, or will ever do can cause His love to cease. I have found that true time and time again, that even when I feel at my lowest, Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are there for me, because they love me. That is the foundation of my testimony and something that I will never cease to believe. And I was prompted to share Romans 8:38-39, which I have shared before in my emails. It says:  

38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

 39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That is a divine promise. And it's one that I've felt time and time again. It is truth. Love you all. Hope everyone has a great week.

Love 

Elder Callahan

Pictures:

Elder Hilton and I. One of our zone leaders, with whom I've become very good friends.

Sometimes we role play in class.

Hey all!

Another fantastic week at the wonderfully exciting Missionary Training Center. Nah, it was way boring. But that doesn't mean it wasn't good. There were some bright spots amidst all the studying and class work. Last night, we did TRC again. However this time we did a skype TRC, in which we got to Skype with a Japanese member living in Japan. His name was Miura kyoudai. It was especially exciting because this man lived in Nagoya and he told us to come find him when we got there. We had a great discussion about the Book of Mormon, and he shared with us the story of how he was converted by reading and praying about it. Then we talked about our favorite scriptures and why they were important to us. That book's got some power, I'm telling you. It's not just a story someone made up. It can change lives. 

We saw that last night with Miura kyoudai. You could just see how much he loved the Book of Mormon and how happy it made him to talk about it. He just lit up when he shared his favorite scripture and talked about why he loved it. That doesn't come from a mere fairytale. It's God's book, straight up. The Spirit was strong that lesson. He was a way cool guy too. He wrote down our names and afterward took our picture so he could put it on facebook and share his experience with he friends. That was really cool. 

Another fun experience this week:
President Mills, the man in charge of all the international MTCs did a "fireside" with our district on Tuesday. He used to be the mission president in Fukuoka, and he talked to us about our expectations of missionary work in Japan. We talked about how much power our expectations had over what actually happens. Something he said that I really liked was "Expectations shape attitudes, attitudes shape actions, and actions shape results." And so he talked about how when we come in expecting that people aren't going to accept our message, they won't. But if we act like we're expecting them to listen to and talk with us, it becomes far more likely that they will.

That's something that has kind of struck me a couple times this week, the power of our attitude. Something Miura kyoudai told us last night after we were finished was that he loved how positive we were and happy about what we were talking about, and it made him more willing and happy to talk too. That's a powerful tool to wield. Your attitude (shaped by your expectations) can change other peoples' attitudes and their willingness to listen to you.

I changed my name in our missionary investigator lessons from Voltron to Andrew, because it was too hard to take things seriously. However, in the companionship that we teach, the member named himself Chris Brown after the rapper. So that is hard sometimes. 

Some other fun things we've been doing:

Sometimes when we're burned out and need a break from studying, our district makes lists. We pick a story or genre and give everyone characters from that story or genre. For example, on Tuesday we did Harry Potter characters, and everyone got a good and bad character. We've done that with Disney and with Superheroes. Sometimes it gets heated because people get angry about what character they get assigned, but it's all in good fun. My least favorite was when I got Vector from Despicable Me. That was a low moment in my life.

....and that's pretty much all I can remember. I'm sure we had some more fun moments but I guess they weren't fun enough to remember. We got another district in our zone yesterday so that will be exciting.  One day we got 12 letters at once. That was pretty cool. 

As you can tell it's getting kind of monotonous here. We've got 17 days left before departure and time is running way too slow. I'm so so so pumped to get out to Japan and actually start helping people. I'm way excited. We may get our travel plans sometime this week. That will be great.

Hope everyone has a good week. 

Love

Elder Callahan

(It has come to my attention that some of my pictures have not been coming through. I apologize for this fact. I'll see if I can fix that. I may have to forward some other emails to do it.)

One of the aforementioned lists

We're going crazy in here

Somebody sent Rees Choro a tomato. Just one tomato. Oh! which reminds me. If anyone has some extra real, not steamed or cooked, raw vegetables they want to send my way I would be the most grateful person on the planet. I miss them so much.

This is the cake I talked about in my last email.

Once again a rather mundane week. I'll start with a couple funny stories that should hopefully jog my memory and get some spiritual stuff in here too.

So:

1) We all got a new investigator this week. Our previous two investigators (who I guess we're still teaching) were our teachers acting as investigators, and this new investigator is a different missionary from our district. So each companionship teaches a different companionship, with one person acting as an investigator and one acting as a member friend. So each companionship both teaches a companionship and gets taught by a different companionship. Hopefully that makes sense. 

Anyway, Eadie-choro is the investigator in our companionship, and he worked out exactly who he was going to play as and what kind of investigator he was going to be (he based it off a real person), but I, on the other hand, totally forgot. So, we're sitting in our first lesson, and after the missionaries got to know the investigator, they turned to me and asked for my name. 

At this point, I panicked. If you've been to fast food restaurants with me you'll know that when they ask for a name I almost invariably supply the name "Voltron." Now, this is all well and good (I think), except for the fact that I've done this so much that Voltron is the first name that always surfaces when someone asks for a name. So, before I could really stop myself, I replied, My name's Brother Voltron. 

They kind of stared at me for a second, with a look of "really?" on their faces, and then just went with it. So for the rest of the lesson we're all trying to take this seriously and feel the spirit, but we can't because we're all too busy trying not to laugh whenever someone says "Brother Voltron." This may be a hard activity.

2) Sometimes, our district likes to prank each other by hiding alarm clocks in each others' rooms, with alarms set for unfortunate wake up times. This is a fun activity, and so we told our kohai (the younger group of missionaries who came in three weeks after us, two of whom are in our room. I think I mentioned this last week.) about this. 

Well, one morning I wake up at about 6:25, before my alarm usually goes off, and I look around for my clock to unset the alarm, and I find it in a weird place under my bed. I look at the alarm and it's set for 3:30 in the morning. I find this a little strange because I couldn't remember setting it like that and I didn't wake up, so I figured I just accidentally hit the buttons in my sleep or something. 

In actuality, one of the elders in our room, a wonderful sweet spirit by the name of Birch choro, had the brilliant idea of "clocking" me. So, he got ahold of my clock while I wasn't looking and changed it to 3:30 AM and went to bed feeling very pleased with himself (this comes from him, not me). 

However, he did not know that I am a very deep sleeper, and I have to believe, for his sake, that he just forgot we sleep in the same room, and didn't actually think he wouldn't wake himself up with this clock as well. Whatever the case was, 3:30 rolled around that morning, and the alarm apparently went off, but I didn't wake up. So Birch choro, after letting the alarm run so long it's turned into one continuous high pitched squeal, was forced to get out of bed, make the (I assume) very shameful walk over to my bed, and turn the alarm off himself. The poor guy pranked himself. Hopefully that teaches him a valuable lesson.

3) This isn't necessarily a funny story, but on Monday one of the elders in our district got a package in the mail from his parents, a cake. I think it was for the halfway mark in the MTC or something (it's not like we're counting or anything). Anyway, this event was probably the most exciting of our entire MTC stay here. 

We took the cake out and did a "cake photo shoot" where we all took pictures with the cake and of the cake before chowing down. You guys, cake is a big deal here. It was actually not that special of a cake, but we were excited. I'll attach pictures below.

Language is coming well, I think. I'm still sure that opinion will change when I get to Japan but for now I'm feeling good. I can pretty much say what I want in lessons, even if it takes a very long time to get there. We did TRC again this week and could tell that our Japanese has improved leaps and bounds since last week, which is comforting because sometimes you don't notice the progress day to day. 

Our lessons have been going a lot better. Last night we had two lessons, both of which went great. We talked about families in one (the other missionary investigator) and really got down to why prayer is important in the other, with Toshi san. We're both teaching more equally, which has been a struggle for us, because a lot of times one of us would just teach most of the lesson, but this time we were firing pretty evenly. It was great, we felt the spirit, and walked out of there both feeling  really good. 

On the spiritual side of things, I've been thinking a lot about how we really can't do anything to convert anyone, and that can be really frustrating. It's all on the investigator to find out for themselves, to take the information we give them, learn about it on their own and then take it to God and ask Him whether or not it's true. 

We have one investigator who is really good about that (we assigned him to read a chapter out of 1st nephi once and when we came back he was into 2nd nephi) and one who is really bad at it (we're still trying to get him to realize that prayer is something he needs if he wants to learn about our message), which is actually kind of nice because we get to see the contrast in methods and realize how important it is. 

However, I came across Alma 26:27 this week (well, came across again, I read this scripture quite often) but it particularly struck me in regards to the previous subject. If we "go among our brethren," teach them as well as we can and are just patient, both with them and with ourselves, then we will be successful, whether that success be baptism, or just the knowledge that you did your best. 

So that was my week. Hope everyone else has a good one.

Elder Callahan

One month down. 23 to go. Everything's starting to get pretty repetitive here. However there were a couple fun things. I forgot to mention last week about TRC. It's kind of like a family home evening style teaching appointment where you show up and get to talk with and teach real members, all in Japanese. We do it on Mondays. Our first week was an absolute disaster. We taught two 20 minute long lessons. The first lesson went all right, we didn't really understand what was going on but we made it through without any major problems. However, as we were about to walk into our second appointment, the brother running TRC said "Oh by the way, the brother in there brought a real investigator with him. Good luck" and opened the door and sent us in. 

We were terrified and forgot the very important step of getting to know the people in their and just launched into our lesson. We were "teaching" (I use the term loosely in this situation) about recognizing and listening to the holy ghost. We each tried to share stories and a few scriptures about times when we've recognized and followed promptings. Then we still had about fifteen minutes left so we asked the member (who said his name but I totally missed it) if he had any experiences of that kind. He shared something that we didn't understand and so we asked the investigator (whose name I didn't catch either) what she thought about all this.

 She didn't really want to answer at first, but with some coaxing from the member she started talking, and it was all really fast and really unintelligible (at least to us). However, I did catch one thing she was saying: "to omoimasen" which she said at about the end of every sentence. This phrase unfortunately means "I don't think that..." and so the only thing we could tell from what she was telling us was that she was negative about what we said. But since we didn't know what else she was saying we couldn't respond or address her concerns. So, with five minutes left, we said "We're out of time. Goodbye!" and walked out. It was bad. I never wanted to go back. 

That's why, this week, when we never got a notification about TRC and I thought we didn't have it, I was way relieved. My hopes were dashed when the TRC coordinator walked into our classroom at 6:30 on Monday evening and said: "Hey! Sorry I forgot to give you a notice, but you've got TRC tonight at 6:40." That was one of the most terrible moments of my life. We all packed up and rushed over there, had probably 2 minutes to prepare a lesson, and were each thrown into a room. 

The member in the room's name was Amy (I think that's how you spell it.) She's a Japanese native from Tokyo who's living here and studying English at BYU. Because we didn't really have a lesson prepared, we just spent a lot of time getting to know her and becoming acquainted. She was awesome. She's just the sweetest woman, and she wrote down our names so she could come say hi next week. We also forgot our Japanese scriptures, and so when we shared some scriptures in English, she wrote them down so she could read them at home in Japanese. You could just feel her faith. It was a wonderful experience, and we walked out of there feeling that we'd made a friend and been spiritually uplifted, both from that fact, and from the brief message and discussion we had shared and had about revelation from the Book of Mormon. 

The next lesson we taught was very similar. We spent more time learning about Aaron, the member there, and less time focusing on what we were teaching and we had the same result. It was a great lesson. We've talked a lot in class (and I know I've talked a lot about it in my emails) about teaching people, not lessons, and this was a real life example. The first week we focused on lessons and got our trash kicked, but the next week we really tried to focus on who we were teaching and had a great experience. It was also really encouraging to see how much my Nihongo improved in just a week. I had felt that I hadn't really learned anything this week, and that I was at the same place as last week but I understood a lot more and was able to say a lot more on the fly than I was last week. I'm looking forward to TRC now. It was way fun.

Other things that have happened:

Investigators: We have one investigator who is very easy to teach and very receptive to our message. He has a baptism date and we're working toward baptism with him. Our other investigator, who I may have mentioned before, is far more difficult. He doesn't really open up about his life and why he's talking to the missionaries (the reason he gives being that he wants to learn english, but seeing as we haven't spoken a single word in english the entire time we've taught him, there's either another reason, or it's just the fact that our teacher has to play this investigator and meet with us until we leave), and so we're really working on becoming better at what I mentioned above, about teaching people not lessons. 

That's kind of felt like our theme for this week. We're trying to help him understand the nature of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, who he thinks are mean, powerful, judgemental, and impersonal beings that want to punish him through commandments, and I think that until we can figure out why that is (a goal that has been hindered by both our poor nihongo and poor teaching skills) we can't help him understand  what God and His Son are really like. So that's what we're working on this week.

On Sunday we watched a video called "For Such a Time as This" by Elder Holland. It was like "Character of Christ" that I mentioned last week, in that it was a talk he gave at the MTC that they keep showing because it was so good. His point was that he was thankful to live in this time, because it's the dispensation that has given every righteous person in previous dispensations hope. Those people knew that eventually their dispensation and all the work they had done to preach and teach in it would go to waste. The gospel would eventually leave the earth and, in essence, those people would fail.

 But we are the people who will eventually win. The gospel's never going to leave the earth. Our dispensation is the last and it is the one that will stay, and so it's our job to take full advantage of it and ensure that we are living up to the hope that all those that came before us had. It was way awesome. I don't know how available these videos are outside the MTC, but if you can get ahold of it, watch it. It's amazing.

Fun stuff:

It was kind of a boring week in that regard. One cool thing: one of our new roommates, Elder Rees, has an older brother serving in Fukuoka. That brother is Nick Walton's companion, and has been for like 7 months. We also found out today that the two of us played on the same lacrosse team in 8th grade but neither of us remember until today. So that was kind of fun. 

Also a prank war has erupted in our residence hall, one in which I have yet to take part. It's involved cranking up others' thermostats so they come back to a sweltering room, lobbing thin trash bags full of freezing water into the showers (which explode on impact) and locking alarm clocks into other people's drawers--set for 3:00 in the morning. I'm lucky I haven't been caught in the crossfire yet. 

My scripture this week is D&C 50:21-22, which really teaches about the topic I discussed above, teaching people and not lessons.

 21 Therefore, why is it that ye cannot understand and know, that he that receiveth the word by the Spirit of truth receiveth it as it is preached by the Spirit of truth?

 22 Wherefore, he that preacheth and he that receiveth,understand one another, and both are edified and rejoice together.

So there you go. Have a good week everyone. Also send me mail, preferably through Dear Elder (unless it costs money, I don't actually know. If it does then forget that). Like I said, it's a status symbol. Plus when no one gets mail, and that mailbox is empty, it makes everyone sad. Not just me. So really it's for the good of the community.

Eadie Choro with Eadie Brodie on his back.

Eadie Choro and Me (and Day Choro in the background)

Dear All:

It was a good week this week. Last Thursday, the temple was closed on account of pioneer day. Stupid pioneers. They could have walked just a little faster and gotten there and established zion one day earlier, but no, they had to ruin our pday. No consideration, those pioneers. Pioneer day is the worst. 

We ended up with four or five free hours with nothing to do, seeing as the MTC isn't necessarily known as a rockin entertainment center. I learned from this experience that it is a bad idea to give a large concentration of 18-20 year old guys unstructured free time in a closed environment. We spent most of the morning at the gym and field playing basketball, volleyball, and soccer, but in the afternoon, during our temple time, our district invented a fun game that mostly just involved two teams standing on either side of the hallway and taking turns hurling that nerf ball at each other as hard as they could. I took a nap. 

Our Pday Hallway Game

Our week was kind of uneventful. We had a great fireside by John Groeberg, the man on whom The Other Side of Heaven was based. He talked about testimonies and how sharing them is the core of misisonary work because when you share your testimony it creates a spiritual bond with those you share it with, and their spirit resonates with yours kind of like two identical tuning forks. He also talked about how the person you are and the person you're trying to become is a testimony of that in which you believe. I though that was cool, because on Sunday we watched a talk from Elder Bednar called "The Character of Christ," in which the main point was that Christ completely put of the natural man by turning outside of himself and being completely selfless at every point in the way. That was His character. So in order to truly have a testimony of Christ, then He is the kind of person we have to be trying to become. This means being as selfless as possible. I thought that was a cool logical progression on one of the reasons to strive to be selfless. 

Our lessons have been going much better. One of our investigators, Shohei-san, committed to baptism in our last lesson after we talked about how following the commandments of God brings everlasting happiness (Mosiah 2:41). I really felt the spirit during that lesson because it was a move away from our (unfortunately) usual process of teaching something, then asking him what he thinks, then teaching a doctrine related to that thought, then repeating the process. We just walked in and asked what he had questions about. He said he had read the story of the tree of life and was curious what that meant, which led to our conversation on commandments. We mostly just bore our testimonies in that lesson, and it was really cool. That's the kind of thing we want to do more often. 

I also had an interesting experience teaching our other investigator, Toshi-san, yesterday. We planned for the lesson in the morning, and we really wanted to just spend that lesson getting to know him and figure out what he really is missing in his life, because we really hadn't up to this point. We also decided to plan to teach about the gifts of the spirit, because he is a singer and wants help to become better. For some reason as we were planning I kept thinking that we should prepare to talk about the nature of Heavenly Father. I pushed it aside because we had already talked about that and thought that what we were talking about would be better. Well, we got into our lesson and our discussion almost immediately moved to his perception of God and what Heavenly Father is really like. We were woefully underprepared to answer his questions, both Nihongo wise and scripturally. We struggled through it and it ended up going ok, but it was definitely yet another wake up call that I can't know what our kyudosha need to hear about, and that I need to listen to the Spirit way way more. 

Other Fun Things:
One missionary (Monson Choro for those who know him) came into our classroom looking for his burgundy colored notebook.  By the end of our encounter, I had him convinced burgundy was a country next to russia, only after his European companion backed me up. This probably makes me a bad person. 

Monday was our teacher Gregory kyoudai's birthday. We wanted to do something, so one of the elders in our district (elder hilton) asked his family to send him some balloons and another elder (elder mitchell) asked his mom to send some brownies. Well, the balloons we got were left over from a baby shower, so on Monday Gregory kyoudai walked into a room full of "It's a boy!" balloons. He was really confused (and kind of worried) for a little bit. 

All of the older missionaries (the ones who were at six weeks when we got here) left for Japan on Monday and Tuesday. It was pretty sad because I got pretty close to a lot of them and they were all really cool. (I wrote that only because several of them are reading this) It's weird without them here because now we're supposed to be the Japanese and MTC experts in our zone. Which is unfortunate, because we know nothing about Japanese or the MTC.

This is Mihara Choro, who I mentioned in my last email. Like I said, he's crazy.

 Also, this means that we will be expected to give talks in sacrament meeting (they call two of us up at random to give talks in nihongo) which means we all have to stop writing 3 sentence talks and calling it good. On top of this, we got new roommates. Eadie choro and I had a four man room to ourselves, but last night we got a new kohai companionship in there with us. It's fun, but also kind of hard because we can't each have 3 closets any more. All of the new kohai are really cool. I'm excited to get to know them all. 

Other than that it was kind of a boring week. 

All my study material. Also note the picture of the first presidency handing lopsidedly by a twisted piece of tape in the background. We love the first presidency here.

My scripture this week is something I've been realizing a lot as I observe all the different missionaries here, and as I hear stories from the Elders in my district about friends they have and people they know. I mentioned it earlier, but it's Mosiah 2:41:41 And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. O remember, remember that these things are true; for the Lord God hath spoken it.

Love you all and hope this finds everyone well.

Elder Callahan