This week was cool! There were no huge incredible moments but the whole week just had a good feeling to it. We met the college student, Takeuchi, that we talked to on the street last week. We went and ate way good ramen and just hung out and talked about how the gospel has blessed us, even at a young age. It was way fun and a good time. He's cool and wants to meet again. Mori san was supposed to get baptized last week but he still doesn't feel like he's gotten his answer and so we pushed it back to the end of May. That will give him more time to quit smoking haha. We had a way good lesson on repentance with him this week and he basically taught us about it. Way way cool.

We also met a man this week who used to study religion a lot and wants to know more about our church. It was way cool because as we talked to him on the street he would ask us questions to understand that basically taught us the doctrine. We're meeting him on Tuesday. 

In other news, this week we got our iPads. It's a pretty fun little tool and it's nice to be able to use more media during lessons, but mostly I'm just scared I'm going to crash my bike and have to replace it. 

In other other news, the river next to our house caught fire on Saturday. I think they were control-burning the banks but we looked outside and there was this huge pillar of flames and smoke and we couldn't figure out why there were no sirens or anyone even slightly concerned by the inferno about to engulf their houses...but no one was worried so we went back inside and kept studying and it all worked out ok. 

That's pretty much it this week. Love all of you. The gospel is very true and I've seen, especially recently how the Lord works in people's lives so individually. It's so cool how he helps move people to where they need to be. He's got a plan for all of us. Have a good week

Elder Callahan

I forgot my camera at home so I only have this picture of the fire taken from our apartment

So we only had like 3 days to actually do missionary work this week. Kind of lame but you know. On Tuesday we headed down to Nagoya to drop off Elder Schuh to head to a new area. I stayed overnight down there and then Wednesday I picked up my new companion from the mission home. His name's Elder Crippen and he's from Elk Ridge, Utah, like 20 minutes from my house. Pretty funny. He's straight out of the MTC so I've been speaking most of the Japanese which has been kind of rough haha but it's been way fun to work with him for the last week. He's an actor and I'm a show off so we're pretty obnoxious together. It's awesome. We rolled back into Suwa just in time for weekly English class. 

The next day we had an awesome day planned. We were going to see a bunch of less actives, visit a lot of members, and teach a lot of lesson. We headed out to meet the first less active, and he wasn't there. Decided to walk down to the post office, talk to people on the way, grab money, and come back. On the way we talked to one guy, who was nice-ish, but then he went and talked to a police officer, who came over and talked to us. We weren't doing anything wrong so he couldn't do anything, but it was definitely kind of a worrying experience haha. Luckily I understood most of what he was saying. Then Elder Crippen's loaner bike broke down and we spent the entire afternoon trying to get it running so we could at least visit somebody. We finally got it working after a lot of repeated failure (the stupid tire was too big for the frame) and had time to visit one investigator. We knocked on his door and he came out to tell us the he was being hospitalized and didn't want to see us anymore. So that was a pretty good end to the day haha. The next day was good though, we saw and taught a lot of people. 

We spent all of Saturday and most of Sunday at the District Center watching conference. It was super super good. I loved the Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning sessions particularly. I always love the spiritual punch in the face that General Conference provides.

 Today the branch president called us up to ask if we wanted to go visit a less active with him. That turned into a five hour adventure in which we visited a less active, three members (including one at work) and a very old woman with Alzheimer's that the branch president works for. That last visit was a super fun experience. She started talking really fast in old person Japanese (which is a completely different language than actual Japanese) and then asked me if I understood two words, "kitchen" and "rude" and when I said I did, she said "wow, you're awesome, you understand everything!" I didn't tell her that those were the only two words I understood out of her whole discourse. Then she randomly asked if either of us could play the accordion. We both responded that we did not, unfortunately, play the accordion, so she went into the back room, got her accordion, and told us that she couldn't either. She then proceeded to play the accordion for like half an hour. It was pretty fun. She was trying to get us to sing these traditional Japanese songs that we definitely did not know so the branch president just ended up singing for her. Pretty funny stuff. Then we came back to the church and I learned, while translating an email for the branch president, that my English is becoming Japanese-ified. Everything I translated my companion had to fix so it sounded like an American wrote it. And now I'm writing this email. 

We taught our investigator with a baptismal date, Mori, once this week about prophets and the restoration this week. It went way well! He basically taught us the Lehi's dream story in simpler terms using prophets as what you have to hold on to stay on the road back to God. He's way smart and understands everything so well. We just have to get him to stop smoking. And stop believing in reincarnation. One step at a time.

Love you all, hope you had a great week and have another good one. 

Elder Callahan

Elder Crippen!

Eating cereal with chopsticks does not work.

An investigator gave me this sweet motorcycle jacket because I looked cold. I gotta look cold more often.

Visiting the first every branch president of Suwa, who's now less active. Way sad, but super nice guy.

Accordion lady

Sakura!

Dear everybody,

This week was pretty good. We had two more lessons with our progressing investigator, Mori. We set a baptism date for him on Wednesdayfor the end of April. It may be a little early but we think he can do it. He just has to quit smoking by then haha. He's such a heavy smoker, my suit smells like tobacco now haha. But it's good. On Sunday after church we went to a member's house with Mori to have lunch and a lesson. Up till now Mori's been pretty good at understanding everything but we hit a snag with the whole "Resurrection" thing. He doesn't understand why we need to have a body after we die, too haha. He's kinda into the whole "reincarnation" philosophy. So we're working on that. But the lunch was really good. We got back to the church at like 4:30, when we got a call from another member family inviting us over for dinner. We had to catch a 5:20 train to get there on time and, once again, we found ourselves without bikes (we'd walked to the church that morning because it was raining really hard) and the station's an hour walk from the church. So we booked it back to our apartment, grabbed our bikes and rode like the wind (which was very strong that day) to the station and barely made it on time. We've got to get better about this bike thing. Thursday we went over to a Brazilian member family's house for family home evening and made pizza. It was way way fun and it was good to finally have real pizza again. Friday we went on a very long journey to visit some less active members that live way south of us, way high up in the mountains. It was an hour and 45 there and the same back, and it was pouring rain, and it was so fun. Elder Schuh crashed on the way back but he's ok. That's all the highlights I got for this week. Last week we got our transfer calls, but were supposed to keep them secret until this week (which I didn't do very well at). Elder Schuh's heading out to Toyota (yeah, the Toyota) and I'm staying here in Suwa. My new companion will be somebody fresh out of the MTC, which will be way fun. He probably won't speak a whole lot of Japanese, so we'll spend our days not speaking a whole lot of Japanese together. It's exciting haha! I love you all, have a great week.

Elder Callahan

View from the apartment

The Japanese police force is 100% not scary.

Making pizza with the Pontes family!

Love this family.

The mosquitoes have come out to play, and they are massive.

The Matsuura family! Way way cool. They had us over for dinner Sunday. The dad loves snowboarding and taught us about it for like 45 minutes. Pretty funny dude. The kids are incredibly cute.