So here we go. I have 3 days left in the good ol' United States of God Bless America. It went by fast. This week was really great. Let me explain.

No, there is too much. Let me sum up. (That's a quote, folks. First one to name it wins my undying and eternal friendship)

So we got our flight plans last Friday. That was a very exciting moment. Half our district is flying straight to Tokyo and the other half is flying to Detroit and then Nagoya. That was a bittersweet moment because our district has become very very close over the last 8 or so weeks (when you're with a group of people the entire day you have to choose to either become very close or be miserable the entire time. Luckily we chose the former) and we knew for sure we would have to go our separate ways a little before before we had hoped.

 

I'm excited to return to the Detroit airport, actually. It's where we flew through to get to Europe, and there's this cool rainbow tunnel that connects the two terminal buildings, pictures of which can be found on my Facebook page.

We've got a countdown on our board of days until we leave for Japan, hours until we leave to Japan, the number of meals left before we leave to Japan, and underneath it all we've taped a picture of Elder Holland who is saying "Gariben Jikan" or "Time to grind." I'll attach a picture below, I think it's pretty funny.

And I guess I have been "grinding." I've really tried to ramp up my study habits. I redid all my study plans, upped my goals and they're helping me learn way faster. Goals are powerful. On top of that, I do feel like the Lord has increased the amount of help He's giving me as I increase my own work ethic and work load, because I'm growing exponentially faster now than I was even a few weeks ago.

A couple things in no particular order:

Yesterday at dinner we had a cereal eating contest within our zone. I wasn't interested, got myself a chicken fried steak, ate that, then looked over and said, "Hey, I could do that." So when everyone was about five bowls and ten minutes in I jumped into the contest. I was eating way fast to catch up, and because we only had about ten minutes until class started.

 

I downed ten bowls of cereal in 8 minutes, everyone but one person tapped out, and I ended up losing by one bowl because I ran out of time. By the end we had a giant crowd around watching us go. It was way fun. I was eating so fast, though, that the cereal tore up the inside of my mouth and now my mouth hurts.

 

And now I feel like Uncle Rico because I can say "If I'd had two more minutes I coulda won that cereal contest." Coach shoulda put me in sooner. 

We had two great devotionals this week. The first one, by a Brother Holzapfel, a former mission president, about keeping a study journal. He talked about the miracles that come when you write to the Lord's personal revelations to you and learn to recognize a pattern. He said that when that happens, and you are able to know when the Lord is and isn't revealing things to you, then He can trust you with more important revelation, and that's when the big miracles happen.

 

And I don't think that's limited to missionaries. That's a fact that can apply to everyone. So keep a study journal! He ended by reading from D&C 128. That's a wonderful section. If you haven't read it lately go back and do so. The end is beautifully written and comes the closest that I've found to expressing how joyous and how happy the message we're sharing really is.

 

That's something I feel like I've been learning over and over this week. I guess it's something the Lord needs me to know before I get out there. But this message is happy. It's about joy. It's about hope. I wish I could adequately express what that means but my ability is poor. There is so much happiness to be found the in Gospel of Jesus Christ. Gospel. That means good news. That's what we're doing, spreading good news that can change lives. I'm lucky to be a part of it.

I was also lucky to be a part of a very touching experience last night. We did TRC for our final time and we taught a wonderful older woman named Ikeda Shimai. She was great, very enthusiastic about the gospel, very kind, just an all around fantastic woman.

We shared our short lesson about the Book of Mormon (The same that we shared two weeks ago with Miura Kyoudai), talked about our experiences receiving revelation from the Book of Mormon and the scriptures associated with those experiences. We thought it was a good lesson, but nothing particularly special, until the end when she started crying.

She said she has 4 children, only one of whom is active (or a member, I wasn't sure. I still can't speak Japanese). You could tell how much she loved her children, and while she didn't come out and say this, but you could tell she was worried about them. She told us that the scriptures we had shared were what she's been looking for to comfort her and to help her children, and that while we were talking she had received personal revelation on what she could to to help her family. Now obviously this wasn't us.

The only thing we did was provide an atmosphere in which the Spirit could teach her personally, and I'm really grateful, and really lucky, that we were able to do that. I learned that when you get out of the way and let the Spirit teach, people learn a whole whole lot better, and learn better things. The phrase "be an instrument in the Lord's hands" is very very true.

Today we had a birthday party for one of the elders in our district, Mitchell 長老. It was fun, mostly because of the decorations. I'll attach a picture.  

On Friday or Saturday, I think, we went over to the classroom of Japanese missionaries (like from Japan) and hung out with them for a while. they did a dance from a popular kid's show over there, so we did the hokey pokey for them. I have a video but size limits won't let me send it. I have some pictures though which I'll attach below.

One more thing. If anyone would like to send me a letter or a package (unlikely, I know, but bear with me, I have to cover all my bases here) from here on out you should send it to my mission home at:

 

1-304 Iakadai, 

Meito-Ku, 

Nagoya-Shi,

Aichi 465-0028 Japan

 

I'm not sure if the line breaks are right so if you want to know for sure check my blog or my facebook page.

Speaking of that I'd love to hear from everybody. Even a short one sentence note would make make day, even through email. I get curious about what's happening back home even if it's boring. 

Other than that, I think that's just about it for this week. This is my last sign off from the United States of God Bless America. Take care.

Elder Callahan

The nihonjin dance.

Our countdown. The top box is how many days left, second is the countdown to Mitchell choro's birthday, third is days and hours until we leave, and on the bottom is Elder Holland saying "Gariben Jikan." On the right is how many meals we have left here.

Mitchell choro in his birthday suit.