Monday, September 24th, 2012

Hello hello Crandall-ke!,

Thank you for the emails and it was awesome that Kelsie found time to write me too :)

Crazy busy week back home it seems like! It's awesome that the wedding is moving forward without hindrance and everything is going according to plan! I'm sad that I can't be there, but this is the way that our family has been built.  I did the math real quick and I'll probably get married while Kyle is on his mission, then Kyle will get married while Connor is on his mission, then at Connor's wedding, one of us will be feuding with Connor and we will be missing someone.... JK :) At his wedding everyone will be there for sure! :) But yea, such is life. But I'm excited for it and I'm slowly but surely working on my speech for the wedding :)

This week was an absolutely great week for us! On Tuesday, we had a 3 zone conference in the neighboring zone, Fujisawa, and Elder Aoyagi from the Quorum of the Seventy, who is the second councilor in the Asian North Presidency, came and he and his wife trained us all day.  It was way good and he talked a lot about desire, faith, and different teaching skills.  He referenced the book of Alma a lot. Before the conference he asked us all to read the whole book before he came, and he drew on his past conversion story and stories from the scriptures to better define what kind of dendo (missionary work) Japan needs right now.  His wife was way cool and did a lot of different mogi (mock lessons) with us.  That day, we helped our zone leader's investigator, who I have had the opportunity of teaching tithing to him before- Hotta San- do his baptismal interview and then we went out to Burger King with him afterwards, haha.  It's not too bad actually. 

Later that week, I went on splits with our district leader, Elder Hosier, and is was way awesome.  We went to his area, Kawasaki, and streeted people all day, "tracted".  He is a way cool guy.  He is from Alamo, Nevada, population 500 or less I think, and he grew up working on a ranch.  But he was the starting quarterback for their school, did basketball and baseball, and is a way big city-ish guy.  You would never guess he is small town.  Anyway, he and I did bike dendo the whole time, just ride on the sidewalk and stop and talk to people and we found a ton of success.  We gave out countless fliers, placed 3 solid pamphlets, and gave out 3 Book of Mormons.  Total, we tried to stop over 100 people, and of those 100, we probably had conversations with 25.  I talked to this white guy from Scotland and he was messed up in the head.  He has been living in Japan for the past 26 years and says that he thinks Japan is the most dangerous country on earth.  He told us that he would feel more comfortable walking down the streets of the Bronx at 3 am with $1000 hanging out of his pockets than living in Japan.  He said he was christian, that he prays every day, and that he loves what we are doing as missionaries.  But he is very, very bitter against God.  He told us that his son was thrown off a building by Japanese Police and they said it was suicide (what was he doing on top of a building being harassed by the police in the first place), but he was bitter at God for taking his son.  He feels as though God owes him, that he has been wronged, much like how the lamented feel.  I shared our message with him, the whole first vision, introduced the BOM and had him read some things, but I didn't give it to him because he would not have read it.  He listened with his ears, but he didn't listen with his heart.  It was too full of bitter and malice and our message couldn't get into it.  He told us that he hates his life, he hates the Japanese people, he has been unhappy for the past 26 years and he is looking forward to death.  We did all we could, but in the end, we told him good luck with his life, told him where the church is and wished him a good day. His name was Ian.

The next day, we had our usual ping pong night from 7-8:30 and both us, the sister missionaries, and the zone leaders all had an investigator come.  It was way chill, we played Jenga with milk cartons and played the guitar and piano and had a good time.  Right now, we are teaching a guy named Kobayashi San and he is very interesting.  He was almost baptized 4 years ago, Clark sensei taught him a few times or so I hear, but he fell through and dropped off the map.  He was "resurrected", if you will, a few months ago and the Zone leaders taught him a few times, but he lives in my area so they transferred him to us.  He loves ping pong and is really good at it and after the activity we taught him a lesson.  He knows all the doctrine, knows all of the lessons, but he doesn't understand it all.  He has a learning disability, is really strange and I can't understand his Japanese, but he has a desire to understand and be baptized.  We went over all of the things you can and can't do as a member with him and then I set a baptismal date with him for the 11th of November!  He is about 35, really quirky and quiet.  But he loves the church and the gospel and we just need to help him understand the BOM and get him a good church friend. 

Then, on Sunday, Hotta San got baptized! They did it right before the neighboring ward started and Elder Checketts baptized him.  It was way good and spiritual, all of the missionaries sang a song with Elder Cook playing the guitar.  Earlier that day, Elder Cook baptized a Vietnamese guy in his old area so both members of the companionship got to baptize someone on the same day!  It was a way good day and Hotta is going to come to FHE tonight with the SA's and we are going to try to hook him up ;)

It's been way good recently and we have seen the Lord's hand in everything we do.  Honestly, we do nothing, we can't do anything as missionaries without the Lord's help.  I have two weeks left with Elder Gallacher most likely and we are going to try to make this the best two weeks of our relationship thus far. 

It's Fall in Japan and it was, I dare say, a little bit chilly yesterday and it has been raining a lot recently.  The people still reject us hard, but I'm getting better at getting them to at least listen to us before they reject us! :)

I have pictures that I want to send you, but I think I'm just going to mail them with the package that I am putting together.  When will I get that off?  I have no idea, haha.  Eventually! :)  But thank you for all of the fun pictures and the package!  I got it on Thursday my time, so 7 days calendar, 6 days in reality for it to send. Thank you sooooooooo much!  The scones are awesome and everything traveled perfectly fine. :)

Tell the Boys that I am proud of them and everything that they do.  I think about them a lot and I can't wait to hear what awesome things they do while I am away. 

Take care and have a great week.  Good luck with the pictures and everything!  I love you guys so much and I can feel your prayers strengthen me daily.  Please pray for me and my companion to strengthen our relationship so that we can see even more miracles. :)

Love,

Elder Crandall

Monday September 17, 2012

I am doing great!  It's not a billion degrees here anymore.  Things are starting to cool down and we are transitioning into Fall.  This past week was the first time that I have been dry, haha. Everyone is always dripping with sweat and if you work outside, you wear a headband, like a legit Asian headband, haha.  And yea, everything is good :)

Thank you for telling me about your guys adventures back home!  I hope the boys are adjusting well to school and it sounds like you guys are having a great time at the Fair and planning the wedding and what not.  Not a ton happened here in Kohoku this past week, but I'll tell you some of the fun things that we did...

I went on splits with my zone leader, Elder Checketts, on Tuesday and it was way cool.  He is from Provo and is a way cool guy, tons of fun to dendo with.  We taught three lessons to investigators that day.  The first lesson was interesting because it was with this 19 year old guy named Ueda San.  He is still in high school, and we found him streeting the other day.  He lives kind of far from the church so when we met up with him we suggested just going to the park and talking there.  But he really wanted to go to the church so we said okay.  But this kids bike was a wreck, completely rusted over, the back tire was all the way flat, the wheel spun in all directions when he peddled, and the chain kept falling off.  So as we were going to the church, we stopped at our apartment and tried to help out his bike in any way we could.  The other elders went and picked up a new tire and a new pump for real cheap and we waited for them outside the apartment.  We ate Nashi and we did a very thorough BOM introduction and reading with him.  We spent like 10 minutes just talking the BOM up while we were going to the apartment, to the point where he was like, "Let me see one! Do you have one?! I want to read it!" Which was cool to see a guy so excited to read a BOM.  After a few hours, haha, we finally fixed his bike and went to the church.  We sang some hymns with him and taught him the whole first lesson and he prayed at the end of it.  He doesn't really believe in God yet, but he really wants to.  His mom is a little hontai (I'm not sure what that is in English, anti?) about religion in general, but other than those things, he is down for the business.  We had a big CES FHE with all of the single adults in the area yesterday and he came to that and had a good time. 

Our next lesson was with a guy named Toshi.  Toshi is like 5-10, 200 pounds of muscle, really big football player kind of guy, and he loves America and English.  Loves the culture and the way of living, his English isn't very good, but he is trying hard, haha.  He wants to be a professional singer, R&B artist, and he has been training his voice to sound like the artist Neo. And he sounds like him too, haha.  He is Christian and kind of reminds me of Uncle Phil actually, haha.  We taught him about the restoration and authority, went over the entire background of the Bible so he could have some knowledge of the prophets the BOM mentions, and then I committed him to pray to be baptized and set a date to work for with baptism.  We have a tentative plan for him to get baptized next month and he will keep working towards that.  He has met with a few other missionaries before, but I think this group of missionaries are the right ones for him.

After him, we taught the zone leader's investigator named Hotta.  Hotta is what we call a kinjin, a golden person.  He met with the missionaries ten years ago, but was too busy to get too involved.  Last month, he thought a lot about the purpose of life and religion and wanted to find answers.  He remembered that he had a BOM so he looked us up on mormon.org and contacted the zone leaders asking for answers.  This kid is awesome.  He read the entire BOM, and then, is reading the teachings of President Kimball and Heber J. Grant and what not.  I taught him the law of tithing, or should I say, he taught me the law of tithing when I asked him if he had heard about it before, haha.  He is going to get baptized next Sunday!

Other than that, we just did a lot of streeting and talking to people.  We got a few numbers but they are kinda bimio (unsure) and maybe won't turn out to be anything.  If you have not watched Elder Holland's CES talk yet, watch it!  It is on lds.org and it is legit.  I've seen it twice, English and Japanese, but it is much much cooler in English than in Japanese.  He is a boss.

Well, I hope you guys have a great week and do lots of fun things! Tell the ward I say "hi".  Who is our ward mission leader these days?  And also, you guys should have the missionaries over for dinner one of these days.  Do it for me :)

Love you guys and will talk to you later!

Elder Crandall .   

Monday, September 10, 2012

Hi Mommy :) and Dad and Kyle and Connor, and everyone!

It's weird to hear all about school and stuff and not starting school myself.  My body tells me that it is time to start school again, like, it's telling me that it is time to start doing home work and studying and stressing out, haha. But it's totally awesome that everyone is adjusting fine and that school is looking to be very fun this year :)

I get more and more exited for Kelsie each week! Let me know when the dates are, like when she goes through the temple, receptions, the wedding, and so forth :) Have fun planning, Mom :) Don't go too crazy over this. When it gets hard and stressful remember that I won't be a part of any of it, but I would gladly do any of the hard and stressful things if I could :)

Kyle and Connor are being great otsukaresama's and working hard in school.  Connor, I was smaller than you when I started Junior High, haha.  I remember how crazy it was and feeling super small.  Just don't be afraid to talk to people and never judge anyone until you get to know them.  I was friends with a lot of people that I wasn't sure if they were cool or not until I actually got to know them, haha.

Kyle, Good luck with choir man.  It's not easy memorizing things, but at least you don't have to memorize Japanese songs.  Japanese songs are so crazy.  They are really hard to understand because they have really long sentences for really short phrases, so they cut out a lot of their grammar.  It's like a string of words without any order to them really.  The hymns are a mess.  "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam" is in the hymn book and literally translated from Japanese it says, "Light, Light, Like Jeeesus, Light, Light, Like Jeeesus", instead of "a Sunbeam, a sunbeam, Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, a sunbeam, a sunbeam, I'll be a sunbeam for him". Sooo work hard, you will do fine :)

This week was very good for us.  We were able to find 3 new investigators and we taught many lessons.  If they start progressing I will tell you more about them, but they are different college students and we ran into them streeting over by our church building.  For the past few weeks I have basically been training my trainer, haha.  I won't go into too much detail, but Elder Gallacher felt as though he has been in a bit of a mission slump so I have taken over a large part of the leadership position and increasing his faith in our missionary work.  So that has been a huge blessing to me but I still have a lot I need to learn before I am 100% trained.  We have been focusing on a lot of streeting(stopping people walking down the street) lately so we have been hanging out by a lot of different train stations and busy china town, I guess you could call them, haha. We are getting really good at teaching mini lessons and figuring out if people have interest in the church right now.  We went on splits with our District Leader and I spent the day streeting with his companion.  He is a very shy kid, but I made him say hi to 300 people and by the end of it, he stopped and talked to 3 people on his own which is a huge improvement.  We have been trying to give out a BOM a day and it is actually pretty hard because Japanese people don't like receiving things for no reason.  They are very humble and receiving gifts just means that they have to do something nice back, haha.

My Japanese is getting better little by little.  I always know what's going on and I have been using the phone and emailing a lot more recently. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time today to detail everything that I have done this week, but I'll give a brief overview...

We have a weekly takyu (ping pong) night every Saturday and I get my butt whooped hard, haha! We found a way cool curry restaurant with a guy we can share the Gospel with a little bit every time we go; weekly eikaiwa is going great; this guy in my ward was baptized in Puyallup in the 70's and I was able to get to know him really well; we visited over 10 ward members and shared little messages with them; had a Zone conference and President Budge taught us about faith; turns out our less active member that we were trying to bring back has a mental disorder so we shouldn't visit him often anymore, haha; one of our Sister Missionaries had a Birthday, but other than that, we hit the streets every day this week for like 4-5 hours a day. We've talked to over 100 people this past week, but 3 of them I think have genuine interest.  The work is slow and can be hard, but it is progressing nonetheless and we see miracles daily :)

I love you guys and I always pray for you and our loved ones back home. Please keep praying for me and please pray for the members in Japan to have more courage to share the Gospel with their loved ones. 

Love,

Elder Crandall 

Monday, September 3rd, 2012

Aosss! (this is what all the teenage guys say, it's basically "whats up"!)

Well hello there, Mommy. Happy Labor Day! Don't labor too hard :)

It sounds like you guys have some fun things planned for this next little while. I am excited to hear what classes the boys are taking so be sure to make them send me an email! I remember when I was starting junior high at Ballou.... it was pretty scarry actually, but you feel so much older and cooler once you get used to it. Is Connor planning on doing choir or anything like that? I think he should, he is pretty good.  He takes after Kyle in that respect.  Is Kyle going to try to do any sports, swimming or running or just musicals and what not? Let me know! Oh, and I would think that scones would do okay in getting here.... I think :) maybe I hope more than anything, haha! Have fun at the fair and also tell the Burdettes I say hi :)

Things are going great in Kohoku.  I'm sending some pictures of cool places that we have been in our area.  And a picture of me with David.  Thank you some much for the peanut butter and the cheese and nachos stuff!  As well as the jacket, of course :)  Peanut butter and cheese are some of the most sought after things in Japan.  They are crazy expensive here, haha.

This week was a great dendo week.  We did a lot of streeting and housing and were able to visit a lot of members and share little messages with them.  We were able to find a few lost less active members that the quorum presidents didn't know about because we went and visited so many members, especially from the ones who have been living here since WWII, haha.   Yesterday, I shared a message with our Bishop's father who is the oldest living baptized person in Japan. He was one of the first people to ever accept the gospel in Japan.  This past weekend, at our ward building, there was a memorial service for the first Japanese missionary ever who passed away recently.  We went to that and it was basically an old people reunion and party, haha.  But one of the Area Presidency, Elder Yamashita, came and I was able to talk with him for a while. He spoke in general conference a year ago about his conversion story, you should re-watch it! 

A guy in our ward just got back
from his mission in Nagoya and he still has his dendo fire and wants to help us out, haha.  He is way funny and cool, but his family is kinda crazy, haha, but we might do splits with him and another young man in our ward.  Also, the stake held an inorikai, prayer party, for the missionaries in our zone and a lot of people came and spoke about the history of missionary work in Japan.  Heber J. Grant gave the dedicatory prayer of Japan back in the day and towards the end of his life he said that that prayer was the
most spiritual prayer he ever offered
in his life, and that is coming from a prophet of God. The members here love missionary work, but they don't know how to do it with the missionaries yet.  They are new members, they do not yet fully know how to bring those around them into the gospel or how to share it with their friends. Once we figure that out, missionary work in Japan will explode. 

Yesterday was Fast Sunday and Gallacker choro and I worked our little butts off, haha.  We walked along the main busy road that runs from the bottom of our area to the top from 2-8 in the middle of the day and stopped at all of the train stations along the way and talked to every single person who passed.  We probably said hello like 500 times, tried to stop and talk to about 100 people, actually had conversations with like 35 people, and met only a hand full of individuals with actual interest.  But, I placed my first BOM streeting yesterday:) and I did it all by myself!  Elder Gallacker was like 20 feet away talking to someone else.  I stopped a college student and told him I am a college student too, but right now I'm on break.  We talked about him and his interests, and then about the Bible which lead into the BOM, to which he had interest and I explained to him what it was and how it has helped my life and I promised him it could help him and he liked it.  We exchanged info and I will call him in a few days to follow up with his reading.  We were fasting and praying to find miracles so that we would have more investigators, and that is what we saw yesterday :)

Today, we just got back from a 100 yen sushi place, kind of like the one we went to before I left, if you remember.  I love eel and cheesy salmon, yummmmm. Those are my two favorites.  So it turns out, Elder Cook, the new guy that is living with us, that I knew his little brother in college and stuff.  It's a crazy small world and now I have friends that live in Europe, China, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, and all over! 

It's completely awesome here, I love it so much and I truly am blessed the most when I am working the hardest. 

Love You! Have a great week!
Elder Crandall