Hello Family,
Wow....... I don't even recognize you people any more, haha! iPhones, MacBook Air, what is going on! I guess I was an anchor to this family and now you're floating away to Mac-land! (Elder Crandall is a die-hard PC guy!)
Suggestion for the "creature" under the house, Dave McMullan, my water polo coach and swim coach, is an exterminator. He might be a good reference for what to do or who to call about the cat stuck under the house. He lives right across the street from Ben's house, the very first house in that neighborhood. You could stop on by or google his company or something.
Man, what a way crazy week in America! I've been hearing a lot about the election from members and random people on the street. Economically, Japan wants Obama to win because Japan and China are profiting off of America's bad economy. They want America to decrease because America's economy is correlated to theirs. I hope Romney wins, I really do. It already is making an impression on Missionary work world wide. People have been just a little bit more open to hearing about our church because of Romney. Their curiosity is increasing little by little.
This past week, we had a few lessons taught to investigators and they went really well. I went on splits with my district leader's companion and we had a great time in Kawasaki. We taught 3 lessons that day to various people and got Dominos Pizza that night. Pizza is incredibly expensive in Japan. Dominos had a buy one get one free deal so that's why we went. It is 2500 yen for one medium size pizza. That's like 30 bucks for a medium pizza. It's absolutely insane.
We had 3 mogis to members this week (visits to members where they pretended to be investigators). We did a lot of teaching this week which was really good. Although they might not have been very interested or even investigators for that matter, teaching is good. It makes us better missionaries. Elder Anderson and I get along great, honestly. It is way way fun living with him and working and serving with him. Our teaching style is progressively getting more and more unified. We have become fairly effective teachers, now we just need to find prepared people to teach. We teach when we find and we find when we teach (PMG) and we are able to teach a lot on the street. But we need to find prepared people, we call them kinjin, which means golden people. People that have interest find they have need. It's hard work, mathematically, 1 / 5000 people we talk to on the streets or in their houses will get baptized. But that is not how the Lord works. We can either talk to people all day and the last person we talk to have interest (which is a test of our faith) or we can show our faith and have the Lord trust us enough to deliver the prepared people quickly. I don't know, either way, we still talk to as many people as possible, haha.
It is really starting to get cold here. Like way, way, way cold. No one ever warned me that Japan is bitterly cold in the winter! I am going to go to a store called Uniclo and buy things called heat tech which are basically these thermal under wear things that are perfect for missionaries in Japan. It will only be like 30 or 40 dollars. Did I mention that I bought an electronic Dictionary, finally?! It has a kanji pad so I can write down words I don't know, which is basically all kanji, and it will pull up definitions. It was only 180 which is a way good deal cause it is usually 300-ish. Japan is crazy expensive. I'm sorry mom and dad, but I'm currently serving in the second most expensive mission in the world. Please do not forget how blessed we are to only have to pay 400 a month. The housing bill every month is at least a few thousand, then we spend another 400 on food and transportation alone. As long as we keep paying tithing and fast offerings, the Lord will bless us for sure.
Today, we had a Zone P-day!!!! It was way fun! We had a giant pancake breakfast at our church, which is the stake center, and then went to a park that is next to it and played football and frisbee for a few hours. But now I'm super sore!! My back is way tight and I can't move my neck, haha. It's a combination of sleeping on the ground and riding hunched over on a bike that's slowly killing me. But my legs are getting way big now, haha. I've put on about 18 pounds since I left home and it's all gone to my legs, haha. My area is probably the most hilly area in the whole mission, and since I've been here in the area the longest, I'm like the most conditioned missionary in the whole mission. ;)
Kobayashi San has a baptismal date for the 11 of November, but he probably is not going to make it. He still is having a hard time understanding the BOM and how to apply things into his life. But he has a desire to get baptized and to follow Christ. Other than him, we do not have very many committal people or progressing people.
I got recruited by NuSkin yesterday. They approached me while I was handing out English class fliers and they started grilling me about my education and what I'm doing in Japan. After a while I told them I was Mormon and they started freaking out since their CEO is a well renown Mormon. They got really excited and wanted me to check out their home office in Shin Yokohama, but I kind of blew them off. But today, they emailed me and are trying to follow up with me. Now, I realized that they did the exact same thing to me that I try to do to people everyday, haha. They approached me on the street, asked about my background, taught me about their company, took my information, and are trying to set up an appointment with me, haha. They are like missionaries for Nuskin. Way weird, but now I know what it feels like to be an investigator. :)
This last Friday, we had a giant surprise birthday party for one of the sister missionaries in our area. We had a lot of members and investigators come and we made homemade pizza and cookies. It was way delicious, like, we were able to make American pizza's with Japanese ingredients! Which reminds me, could you send me the recipes for biscuits and gravy and Chinese Sundaes? That would be awesome!
I hope you guys have a great, great, great week and have lots of fun and maybe do even a little bit of missionary work on your own. I thought of some ideas for you guys...
Dad- Read the Spanish BOM, physical copy, on the days you are not the person driving to work in your car pool. People might ask you why you are reading it in Spanish, you can say cause your fluent!, and then maybe share some mission stories and explain what you did. I know it maybe is a little bit tempting just to sleep during that time, but don't you think that the Lord wold bless you with whatever you stand in need of that day if you were sacrificing sleep for study?
Mom- You are kind of in a very interesting situation, my mother. You don't really have a whole lot of close friends that are not Mormon, but maybe, you could contact some of your old high school and college friends that are not Mormon and just check up on them and see how they are doing. Just find one person on Facebook or something like that and ask them about their life and kids and what not. Then, they will ask you about your kids, and you can talk about me and give a simple explanation about missions. I can guarantee that they will be amazing at exactly what missionaries do. They will think about it, and just a simple testimony about missions can plant great seeds of potential.
Kyle- Date Mormon girls, hahahaha! It sounds like it's been way easier for you to do that than for me. Good job, having a lot of girl friends that are Mormon. High school can totally suck sometimes. I bet, especially now that the church is getting a lot more publicity because of the election, the church is being brought up a lot in school. If there is ever an opportunity where a teacher or a student stands in need of correction of a gospel principle, simply say that you're Mormon and this is what we believe... Especially teachers, they will say a lot of things that are skewed in some way to be against what we believe. Correct them; simply and kindly. I don't know how missionary-ish you are feeling, but if an opportunity arises where you can simply share a basic overview of what we believe with your whole class, do it! You're in mission prep right? You can use the PMG and just give a simple lesson overview. I've heard a lot of stories of students who have born their testimonies to their classes and people have been baptized because of it. Just a thought...
Connor- I can guarantee you, Connor, that there will come a time in your near future where the people that you interact with at school will bring up religion in general and you will be asked what you believe. My challenge to you is to take courage and to declare that you are Mormon. But more importantly, I challenge you to be a good example and live our religion in such a way that the people will not be surprised that you are a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. They will not be surprised, it will seem like a normal thing to them. That is my challenge, to be firm in the faith and to stand as a witness at all times, in all things, in all places. Kinda cliche, but a good principle, desho.
Tuxedo's challenge - to not be stupid and to be around still by the time that I get back.
Kelsie's challenge - to get married and to write me!!!!!
I love you all dearly and I can assure you that I pray for you as much as you do for me :)
Elder Crandall
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