Very uneventful week. We filled a lot of it with visiting less active members and former investigators. Most everybody we visited either moved or wanted nothing to do with us so that was pretty fun. One former investigator looked through the peephole and locked the door, and one less active told us that she didn't understand anything we were saying because she was completely naked. That's always one of my favorite excuses, haha. On Thursday it rained really hard, so we biked around in the freezing rain doing that for a couple hours, and then we were so cold and so soaked that we decided to just stop at a starbucks and get some hot chocolate and something to eat. I'm sure we were a pretty sorry sight, sitting in that Starbucks dripping wet and shivering like dogs. It was a pretty miserable day up to that point. And then in the Starbucks our phone died, so we had no more GPS to find the rest of the people we were planning on visiting, so we had no idea what to do from that point. After we finished our hot chocolate and warmed up a little, we prayed to figure out what to do. We both felt like we should drop in on one of our investigators, Wataru. He's been reading the Book of Mormon and praying daily, but hasn't felt like he's gotten an answer yet. So we headed over there and said hi. We ended up talking about how to study the scriptures effectively to find answers, and he loved it. He said he'd been wondering about how to do that recently but didn't know how to ask. So it was a really good experience. Then another one of our investigators, Moto, texted us saying he wanted to talk so we met him at the church. He was the one who was supposed to get baptized this Sunday. We had been worried that we were rushing the baptism and he wasn't going to be completely ready, and that's what we ended up talking about that night and he agreed with us so we moved his baptism to this Saturday, a date that the ward, he, and our companionship feel much better about. So the day ended up really well once we gave up on our plan and just relied on the Spirit. That's something I've been trying to do much more recently. I've felt like a lot of our planning lately has been fairly routine and not spiritually guided, and I think our experience on Thursday was a good wake up call to that fact. And once we did start to rely on the Spirit, we started to see miracles. So that was our week. I took zero pictures, and apologize, but I should have a lot next week. Have a good week!

Elder Callahan

Kind of a crazy week this week. Tuesday we saw off Elder Anderson and became a regular two-man companionship. The apartment's kind of lonely without him around, but we manage. We we dropped off Elder Anderson I got to see everyone from my MTC district and Elder Schmeil, which was way fun. 

That day we found a new investigator on the street who told us "There's no way I'm joining your church, but I'm interested in experiencing Christianity" and was super down to meet with us. We'll see if he changes his tune about joining haha. He came to church on Sunday and had a really good time, and was belting out the songs louder than anybody. Turns out he's an actor fairly famous around Nagoya city, because the members knew who he was. He talked to a couple of the members for the whole second hour of church, just asking questions. He's super interested and a way cool guy, so we're excited about him.

On Saturday we had a ward New Year's party. Every New Year's Party in Japan they do a Mochi Tsuki, which basically entails smashing hot rice with a big hammer until it turns into this sticky goo-type substance called mochi which you then eat. Mochi's not necessarily my cup of tea but the hammer part was fun. Moto-san, our investigator with a baptismal date cam to the party and was talking to the members for a good while. He had a good time, but he looked pretty tired and out of it though, so we cancelled our lesson with him and he went home and slept. It turned out good, because the next day he came to church and was the most upbeat and energetic I've ever seen him. Up to this point he'd seemed kind of uncomfortable and insecure in the church, but this Sunday he was totally chill and happy to be there, talked to the members for a long time, and looked like he was finally starting to make some good friends.
One small miracle that we saw was the reappearance of Brother Yu! He's a member from China, and had started coming to the ward when I got here because he was in Nagoya for work. However, he left the same week our Chinese investigator started coming, so we couldn't use his help in our lessons and whatnot. Because of some communication problems we have with Moto-san sometimes (we're both communicating in a second language) we hadn't been able to get a super solid feel of exactly who he is and where he's coming from, but Brother Yu talked to him for a good half hour before sacrament meeting and then another half hour after church. Afterward Brother Yu came up to us and said "You guys are teaching a good man" so that put to rest a lot of the concerns we had. So this week we had two investigators at church at the same time, neither of whom we wanted to bring to the gospel principles class (as much as we wanted to take our brand new investigator to "signs of the second coming," we decided maybe another time) so we had to teach both of them during second hour. This led to crazy random split lessons, both in the chapel. It was weird. I taught Moto-san with the brother of a member in Okazaki (Brother Kawabata's brother, Brother Kawabata. Feels like I'm on a weird episode of Elmo's World sometimes) and Elder Hobdy taught our brand new investigator. It went way well. That's the most tired I've ever gotten from church. It was a good feeling.  Moto-san is on track for baptism, as long as tithing doesn't scare him off, so hopefully you should see some pictures next week!

Those are pretty much the highlights of the week. The Lord is moving his work forward and I've been able to feel His hand guiding us as we do what He wants us to do. It's a really cool feeling to see miracles play out and see the Lord working with you in His vineyard. I love it. I'm really glad I can be out here working with Him. Love you all. Have a good week!

Elder Callahan

That crazy Peruvian family from last week.

Elder Schmeil!!

Doki reunion!

What we run in in the mornings.

Mochi Tsuki!

Don't have a very good picture of Moto-san, but that's him in the back in the suit and white hair.

Found this guy on a random side street guarding an elementary school.

You tried, Japan.

Dear all:

Not a lot of time this week so this will be brief, but it's ok because it was kind of an uneventful week. We've been meeting a lot with our Chinese investigator with a baptismal date, and he's getting less and less sketchy and looking more and more like he'll be ready by the 25th. It's exciting, especially to see him begin to feel and recognize the spirit and realize the truth of this message. On Wednesday we did a church tour with another investigator who has had a really hard time coming to church. He managed to find time on Wednesday though so he came then. We did the tour and he loved the family history center (what?) and the chapel. We asked him what he thought afterward and he told us he loved the way it felt inside the church and that it was a magnificent building. Rock on. 

Most interesting story of the week:

We work a lot with a Peruvian less active woman, Sister Watanabe. Her kids are active and come to church every week but she's less active and her husband is in the hospital (has been for about 8 years now). She asked us to come give her husband a blessing at the hospital yesterday, and we said sure. She told us to get there you have to take the bus from a stop that's on the edge of our area, and it's about four stops over. We figured that it was on the border enough that it would be best for us to go, so we hopped on the bus after church and headed out. We waited for our stop to be called, but it never came. After about 40 minutes on this bus, we decided to get up and check the map, found a stop that we thought was ours, 3 away. Luckily it was our stop, but when we got off we were definitely way out of our area. We saw a sign that said "Kasugai" which is neither in our area, nor our zone. In fact we went through a different zone to get to that zone on our bus ride. We figured we were already there though so we went to give the blessing. After wandering through the streets for a while (the directions we had were super sketch) we finally found the hospital and visited with the husband and wife for a while, then gave the blessing and left. Sister Watanabe decided she was going to go with us, so we left together. We get down to the ground floor, slip off our slippers and into our shoes and she puts on running shoes. She tells us the bus leaves in 7 minutes and that we're going to have to sprint to catch it, and she takes off while screaming at us in Japanese/Spanish to follow her. So that's how we found ourselves chasing a crazy Peruvian woman through the streets of an area two zones away from ours. It was a fun night. What was supposed to be an hour long thing turned into a day long adventure. Good times. On the bright side, we found a really good-smelling Chinese restaurant that we couldn't eat at because it was Sunday, so if we ever accidentally find ourselves in Kasugai chasing Peruvian women through the street, we know where to eat. 

That's about it for my week. We got transfer calls on Saturday, Elder Hobdy and I are staying in Gokiso and Elder Anderson's heading off to Gifu-ken. Our trio was fun while it lasted. Hope everyone has a good week.

Elder Callahan

Gokiso District

Hey all!

So this week was New Year's which in Japan is a big deal. All the stores close down, everyone has work off, and they all spend time with their families. This means a couple of things for us as missionaries:

1) Nobody wants to meet with us during this week

2) Nobody is home

3) Nobody wants to talk to you if you do find somebody on the streets. 

So this week the members (who don't really celebrate New Year's as much as regular Japanese people) invited us over a lot. We had about 7 appointments this week, which isn't necessarily a lot in America, but it's quite a bit in Japan. There were a couple days where we had two appointments right in a row so we just got home feeling so full. On Saturday one of the members took us to an all you can eat American-style buffet (run by an English guy who just yelled stuff at the customers in English and French) where we stuffed ourselves and then had a dinner appointment at another member's house where they made so much food for us which we had to eat. It was delicious but we came home never wanting to eat again. 

On Thursday morning, New Year's Day, we went out early in the morning to find a shrine. On the 1st everyone goes to the shrines and throws coins in the shrine and in has something to do with either Buddhism or Shinto. I would know more, but when we went to the place we were told had one of the biggest shrines in Japan, it was nowhere to be found and the streets were empty. The member who told us about it said there would just be thousands of people on the streets and that we would have no problem finding it, but when we got there it was a ghost town. So we wandered around for a while, bought some donuts and milk at a convenience store and took the train home.

That night, at a member's house, they made us eat the traditional Japanese New Year's food, because they thought it would be funny. Basically it consists of a bunch of raw egg and fish and grossness. There was raw fish molded into this rubbery consistency slice thing, lima beans with fish eggs, what I think was cooked egg molded into like a bacon strip type thing, some just tiny little fish dried up and cooked which you just eat head and bones and all, and some whole shrimp that you had to deshell and take the head off of by yourself. All the food had meaning so it was kind of interesting, but it was all just way gross. But that's pretty much the worst food you have to eat here, and it only happens once a year so I'm pretty lucky on that front. 

We found this new investigator last Saturday that we met on Tuesday. He is super super interested in our message and does basically everything we ask him no problem. We met twice last week and he had been reading the Book of Mormon on his own and learned all about resurrection all by himself. It was kind of funny. We committed him to baptism, but we're kind of unsure about him, because he said he's been baptized a lot of times before, and that lesson he asked if he could be baptized that day, and he definitely doesn't have a testimony yet. He wants to be baptized much more than we want him to, at this point. He's an interesting fella. That's pretty much everything that went down this week. We talked a lot with the members about setting member missionary work for the new year, and committing to a date to find somebody that will listen to (not necessarily accept) the gospel, which went over really well. I would suggest that for everybody, to set goals for their missionary work this year. It works wonders. 

Have a good week everyone!

Elder Callahan

Sadly no burgers.

The King Size Challenge at Sukiya. Definitely didn't finish mine.

The Sasaki family! One of the members we visited. They're super great.