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.