Beloved ones,
This week was fun! The first week in a new area always is. I'm in the
Fukutoku area, in the middle of Nagoya city. Lots of skyscrapers and
stuff but also a lot of suburbs too. The ward is awesome and really
good to missionaries. We got so many Christmas presents from them on
Sunday. Mostly food. Ok all food. They just kept walking up and
handing us cake. I still haven't met a lot of our investigators yet
but it looks like we have one or two people really close to baptism.

Points of note in the week:
Had my last supper in Yokkaichi at the house of the Takamura family,
who are kinda like the missionary parents in the ward. Had a wonderful
time and they gave us handmade gifts that they carved out of blocks of
wood. It was really touching, actually.
Tuesday I arrived in my new area. Good stuff. It's a good place. We've
spent a lot of time getting to know the members and less actives in
the area as well as just talking to people (there are so many people
here).

Thursday a member invited us to the Christmas party she was having for
all the kids she teaches English to. We talked about Christmas and its
meaning and then just spent some time getting to know the kids and
letting them practice English with native speakers. Way way fun.

Saturday was the ward Christmas party! It was the bomb. There was lots
of めちゃ delicious food (including a straight up American ham [thank you
Costco]) and a bunch of members brought friends. In total there were
about 10 or so nonmembers there that we got to talk to. At the end
they asked my companion, Elder Hall, to dress up as Santa and make an
appearance. He happily agreed, and then they ask me to put on this
reindeer mask. I less happily agreed, because when I put it on I
looked like something from the nightmare before Christmas. It was
terrifying. None of the kids believed I was a real reindeer.

Sunday was great, met a lot of less active members who all introduced
us to their friends. It was really cool, plus we got appointments to
come back and eat dinner with them all, so we're excited about that.
Things look really good for this next transfer. Love you all.
Elder Callahan

Boring meeting selfie.

Dinner at the Takamura house!

The most terrifying reindeer in the entire world. Look at this mask. It's awful.

El Companero.

Dear all people: This week was great!! Yokkaichi is the bomb. My new companion's name is Elder Hogan. He's from Draper and is on his last transfer. He's way cool, a missionary beast, and super fun. Some highlights: Met an investigator named Tetsuya for the first time. He always wears a kimono and he's way cool. He basically asked us three questions: why are there so many churches, what's the end goal of this life, and how can I follow Jesus Christ more? We didn't know what to say we were so surprised. So we're probably going to set a baptism date with him next week. We have this investigator named Oma. He's crazy. We taught him for an hour about the gospel and then he taught us for an hour about his life's obsession, battleships. A recommendation for anyone looking to build a battleship: the Yamato class battleship is best. だって. We took an hour train to the middle of nowhere to visit a member who was having a hard time. It was pouring rain. We walked for half an hour in the wrong direction. By the time we got back on the train it was like I jumped into a swimming pool. We have a Nepalese investigator who comes to church every week. He really really really wants to learn about the gospel but the problem is he doesn't speak English, Japanese, or anything other than Nepalese mountain language. He was a legit serpa in Nepal. He also can't read so we can't just give him a Book of Mormon and say go for it. Google translate doesn't work for that reason either. But he's such a good person. We had a lot more great stuff happen but I'm out of time. Have a great week! Elder Callahan Sorry these pictures may be obscenely big, I'm emailing from my iPad today and can't figure out how to fix their sizes.

Dear all,

Weekly highlights:

Tuesday we went way far out into the middle of nowhere into a place called Ina. It used to have its own branch of like 5 people but back in January it got shut down and absorbed into our area. So we went with some members to visit some of the less active members out there. It was way fun. The family we visited was way cool. They're less active but have some of the strongest testimonies ever. They're both RMs and we spent most of the time talking about that. They also made us incredible curry and chicken. The husband works on Sundays, but he can get time off for sacrament meeting. The problem is that the church is so far now that he can't get back in time to make it to work every week. So they come when they can. Tough situation.

We also taught our American investigator, Matt! He's just about the kindest, politest, down to earth guy you'll ever meet. He's interested in our message but he's also really wary of organized religion, so we're working with him on that. 

Thursday we helped one of the members with his garden (Brother Kina, the one playing the weird Chinese instrument in the pictures I sent out last week). And when I say garden I actually mean his farm haha. We moved a lot of dirt to make rows for his crops. Plus we got to wear farmer hats again just like when we planted rice. So that was good.

Then after that we went with one of the members to play futsal with a friend he wanted us to meet. It was super fun. One of the other guys who came to play found out we teach free English and was way excited and is coming this Wednesday. As an aside, this guy was also on the Japanese version of American Ninja Warrior, so if you're into that check him out this next season. He told us we can teach him English and he can teach us muscles. Pretty funny dude.

Saturday I had one of the most bizarre experiences of my mission. On Wednesday we were going up to visit a less active who lives way up in the mountains (the one who's reading the Book of Mormon that I mentioned last week). There's a stoplight up there in the middle of all the mountain farmlands and we were sitting there waiting for it to change and this guy comes up over the hill behind us and starts talking to us. Turns out he speaks completely fluent English because he lived in Boston till he was 10. It's crazy, he sounds 100% American. Anyway, he and his friend were building this little cafe out of a shack on the bottom of the hill. The way it's situated makes it so that unless you climb down the stairs made out of rocks you can only see the roof. It looks like a hobbit hole straight out of Lord of the Rings. We got talking to them and told them we were volunteers and asked if we could help build anything. They said no, but they would need help on Saturday night. They were participating in what they described as a Moroccan Flea Market and wanted help taking down their booth after it was over. We said sure and they gave us directions and we told them we'd be back Saturday. So, we went up there Saturdaynight. They said it was only like 10 minutes past their hobbit hole, and the directions sounded really easy. Well, they weren't. It was up this giant mountain for like another hour. We got completely lost up in the mountains way far from any sort of civilization. Finally after asking a bunch of taxi drivers we finally made our way through the forest to this place. It was bizarre. It was like we biked into Narnia, through Narnia, and came out in Jamaica. Everyone brought their own home made hemp products and weird Jamaican/African instruments and bead necklaces and all sorts of strange stuff to sell. We walked in and asked for our hobbit friend, and they said he was somewhere in the back. We wandered through it, past a bunch of stalls and beer booths, until we got to the back, where there were people smoking cactuses. We didn't find our friend, but at that point I'd had enough so we got out of there pretty quick. I can't really do it justice with my writing but it was straight up one of the weirdest places I've ever been. Just a strange atmosphere. We'll stick to meeting our hobbits at their hobbit hole. 

Other than that not a whole lot to report. The Work is good. We keep plugging along here in Suwa and things are going good. Love you all!

Elder Callahan

One of our English students found this in his house when he was cleaning. He has no idea how or why he has it. Pretty funny.

View from the futsal court

Sushi after District Training Meeting

GUYS DID YOU KNOW MCDONALDS SELLS SOCKS? THEY'RE ONLY LIKE 3 DOLLARS OR SOMETHING! I THINK I ALSO DONATED TO CHARITY BUT I WASN'T REALLY PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT THE LADY WAS SAYING BECAUSE LOOK AT THESE SOCKS

Shout out to Jim and Fumie Moulton, who sent me a package even though they're not responsible for me. Thank you!

Dear all,

It feels like I was just sending this email out. This week we:

-Missed two trains in a row. We were like 1 minute late for one, decided to wait for the next one 30 minutes later, but it came on a different platform than the one we were expecting, we didn't see it, and missed that one too. It was a rough night haha. 

-Had so many dinner appointments with members. It was awesome. The people in Suwa are incredible cooks. Through that it looks like we have 2 or 3 referrals coming our way soon, so that's exciting. 

-Went to our last zone conference with President Yamashita. It was way sad. I couldn't have asked for a better example and leader than he was. I'm excited for the next mission president but President Yamashita is an incredible man. Keep an eye out for him in General Conference this October, it's been a while since he's spoken. 

-Taught a lesson to a new investigator we found last week. He's this 30 year old guy named Miyazawa who runs his own little electronics shop. I saw shop but it's more like a mad scientist lab straight out of an 80's movie, complete with wood panel walls and giant grey-white machines that look like they're made out of plastic. Think Back to the Future. He's way interesting, he loves black people and African stuff. He plays the drums in a reggae band and wears the hat to match. He has questions about the purpose of life though so he likes talking to us.

-There's a less active member, Brother Koike, who I've mentioned before, I think. He was the former branch president here who was baptized by the missionary who visited about a month and a half back. We've been visiting him a lot and he's been slowly progressing. We visited him last week and challenged him to start reading the Book of Mormon every day and he said he would. When we visited this week, he opened the door with the Book of Mormon in his hand already, held it up, and said, in English, "Many thanks!" and started to tell us about how he's been reading every day and how much he likes it. It was so cool! He talked about how he's starting to feel the Spirit again and remember the things he's forgotten about the Gospel. Really cool experience. The Book of Mormon is powerful. 

Other than that, the week's been uneventful. Lots of meetings and stuff ate a huge part of our proselyting time but it's been good. Love you all, have a great week!

Elder Callahan

Member appointments! This food was unreasonably good.

At one point, this was all the money I had in the entire world.

Yakiniku! You cook your meat on that grill in the middle.

We got the leftover meat from the barbeque. Oh yeah.

One of the members, the Kina family, had us over Sunday night. He loves music so much and he has a million cool instruments. I don't know what this one is called but he played Amazing Grace on it.

Things that happened this week:

# 1 Fun Thing: TAUE! An older member couple asked us to come help them plant rice in their rice field and we were more than happy to help. I'll attach a lot of pictures below. We showed up at 12:00, they fed us lunch consisted of rice balls made out of their homemade rice, made us put on old Japanese farmer hats, and then we got to work. You basically just walk around barefoot in a muddy field submerged in water and stick the rice sprouts in the mud. It was super fun and involved a few mud fights and more than a few sunburns. It took about four and a half hours and by the time we were done we were absolutely covered in mud. Super super fun. 

#2 Fun Thing: Barbeque! We had a branch barbeque Saturday morning which was awesome! They bought a bunch of Brazilian meat from a Brazilian import shop the next town over and we grilled and ate all morning. The branch president also wanted to use it as a tool for missionary work so in preparation he printed out 1000 flyers and asked them to put them in the mailboxes of people who lived around the church. It ate a lot of time, but it was worth it because on guy showed up. He walked up to the parking lot and was just kind of standing there not knowing what to do so we went over there and welcomed him and got him some food. The branch members were way awesome and were super friendly and nice to him. We got to talking and we asked him about his experience with religion and God and whatnot and he seemed not really interested. But then we got talking about English, and he said he was interested in that, so we got him a flyer for our 30 minute English/30 minute Gospel program that we do. He was reading it and saw the part that talks about what our church meetings are like, and pointed to a part where it talks about Priesthood Meeting helping people become better husbands, and said he wasreally interested in that, more than English. So he asked if we could meet again and talk about it and we said sure! So that's pretty exciting. 

Other interesting things:

That less active that wanted to meet at the park that I mentioned last week met us on Wednesday. I didn't know what to expect, really, so I was a little unsure. We sit down, and he immediately just goes off. He starts telling us all about this religion that believes in six saviors, the sixth having been born in Japan 25 years ago, and how there are people trying to kill this guy so that all humanity will perish but there are people trying to protect him, and both the protector people and the trying-to-kill people have infiltrated the ranks of this big Japanese TV company and how if you watch reality TV closely you can see them broadcasting out messages about this guy. Pretty fun stuff. He also tried to prove the the church wasn't true because ancient paintings of Jesus look different than the ones the church uses...? And that the church was hindering science because BYU doesn't let you study science. He didn't really know what to say when I told him that wasn't true and that I was going to study science at BYU, so he went back to talking about the painting thing. After a while of this I was done so we just bore our testimonies and walked off. Not much use arguing with people like that haha. So that was a fun experience. It was interesting because as he was talking I had such a strong feeling that what he was saying was so far away from the truth. It was almost a physical reaction. Not sure how people who once had the light of the gospel can ignore those feelings and head down a path so far into left field, but I guess it happens. But it was a good testimony to me, though, that the Spirit always always warns you of spiritual danger. 

We had our branch conference on Sunday which was way awesome and then we had a great Shokujikai afterward (I forget what that is in English but it's when everybody brings food to church and then eats it afterward). It was so good. The best food I've ever eaten in Japan. 

Other than that, kind of an uneventful week. Love you all, have a great week!
Elder Callahan

Taue lunch!

Farmer hats

Farmer clothes

The rice field 

Dear Everyone,

A couple cool things that went down this week:

-We had a lesson with that American we met a while back named Matt. He is way cool and it was way weird to teach someone A) in fluent English and B) who already knows about and has faith in Jesus Christ. He had some really good questions and was really interested. We ended up having a really deep discussion about the Plan of Salvation for two hours. It was great! 

-We met Matt for our lesson at a grocery store, and then walked over to a restaurant that he wanted to take us to. While we were sitting there waiting, an older Japanese man walks up to us and asks us if we're from America. We say yes, we are, talk a little bit about where we're from in America and why we're here, and then he asks us if we understand a little bit of Japanese (mind that this whole conversation was in Japanese). I said yeah, a little I guess, and then he launches into a recitation of an original poem that he wrote. It was way funny! He was standing there in front of the grocery store in the "What light through yonder window breaks" Romeo pose reciting his Japanese poem about spring on a hill. He finished, we told him how good it was, and then he said thanks and started to walk off. We were both kind of stunned and didn't really know how to react to what just happened, but we managed to give him a flyer for our free english class before he walked off. The next day he showed up and was ready to learn haha! He's a taxi driver and we've seen him around town a couple more times and he honks and waves at us. Next week we're going to try to start up a 30 minute english 30 minute gospel program with him.

-We went to visit a less active member about a week back. The record said that a lot of times he'll be home but send his wife to say he's not, but we were in the area so we decided just to stop by. He was leaving for work at the time and he said something along the lines of "yeah yeah, maybe next time, bye" and it felt like he didn't want to talk to us. But, a few days later he called and thanked us for stopping by and asked to meet at a park. So that's cool. No idea why he wants to meet us but I'll take it any day. 

-We went to visit another less active member who lives way up in the mountains. He wasn't home so we left him a note. On Saturday he called the church asking for us, and I talked to him but didn't actually understand anything he was saying, so he said he wanted to meet because he had some questions about some of the branch activities and things that we're doing right now. That was cool too.

Other than that though, there's been some roughness this week too. A couple of our investigators who had so much potential have just dropped off the face of the map, won't answer the phone and won't open the door when we visit, completely out of nowhere. So that's been pretty hard. But, what I'm starting to learn (but obviously I haven't learned it well enough yet) is that when rough patches on your mission hit sometime's it's not because of anything you did, but because of something you have to become or to learn. In times of trial I've drawn closer to the Savior more than any other time in my life and sometimes that's the point of this all, when everything starts going bad and you can't figure out how to fix it on your own. Jesus Christ is always, always there for us, and always here with us, and when we rely on Him everything will be ok. I know that's true. I love you all, have a great week!

Elder Callahan

Member FHEs!

More member FHEs. We taught him "Come at me bro" and this is what happened.

Played basketball with some less active kids. One wanted to play with my iPad instead.

Made this friend one day, just hanging out on the sidewalk.

Dear beloved people,

This week marked the end of the transfer. Kind of a strange week. The first half of it was really dead, missionary activity wise. Monday we went as a district to the lake and hung out and ate there, which was way fun. As we were biking back home just as P-Day was done, my bike got its 7th flat tire in 2 weeks...I finally had to humble myself and take it in to get fixed, rather than patching it myself. Apparently there was something in the frame that kept popping it? I don't know, but it burned our entire evening. 

Tuesday we headed down to Nagoya for a special training since my companion's brand new to the field. It was way fun and it was good to see some old friends. Just after we got to the church a surprise typhoon hit and it was pouring, so we got to go hang out at the mission president's house for a little and then President Yamashita drove us back to the eki haha. Wednesday we saw the Yamashitas again, they came up to Suwa to do some special training with our area. We did some roleplay lessons with them and they helped our teaching skills a lot. 

Friday we had a fun experience when we met an atheist man from Israel who was here visiting family. He spoke super great English (I have no idea what the official language is in Israel) and we talked for a while. Really nice and really funny. He was super respectful of our religion and what we were doing, but absolutely zero interest haha. He talked a lot about how he really disliked Judaism though. Apparently growing up really close to Jerusalem left a bad taste in his mouth (he thinks the Holy Sites are cool though). 

Saturday and Sunday was District Conference, so we were up in Matsumoto, the District Center, for the whole weekend. That was way fun and it was a great conference. Sunday after it was over we were eating our lunch and waiting for our train home when a member came over and said "Hey, let's go eat at the castle." So we jumped in his car with another companionship of Elders from a different branch and all ate our lunches at Matsumoto castle, which was fun. Yesterday we also met a Jehovah's Witness who wants to learn more about what our church believes, and a less active's husband who is way nice and wants to learn more about the gospel. Also, we were visiting with a less active who lives next door to one of our investigators. Our investigator saw our bikes outside and walked into the house and said "I'm ready for a lesson, let's study!" so we taught him an impromptu lesson on prayer haha. It was pretty funny. We've been seeing a lot of great stuff recently. God really does sanctify your best efforts and turns them into something that is actually useful. One of the biggest lessons I've learned as a missionary is that when things start going well it's easy to forget that all of the success you see comes from God and to start to think about how great you are for making all of these things happen but that's when it all goes away and you're left with nothing again haha. Everything comes from God and you just have to be humble and work hard to qualify to help him with it. Love you all, have a great week!
Elder Callahan

The Isrealite name Gaul

Lake Suwa