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