Monday, April 21st, 2014

Dear family,

Happy Easter!! Thank you for sending the awesome birthday and Easter
package, really though, thank you so much for the package.  It made my whole week.  And props to you mom for the Easter egg surprise stuff [I sent him a 12 days of the last days of Christ leading up to His Resurrection egg hunt through the scriptures].  As I was looking through them I told my companion, "man my mom is such a Primary president"!

Easter in Japan is unique.  It wasn't until we saw the Primary
children running around outside looking for Easter eggs that we
realized that it was Easter.  Nobody talked about it in Sacrament
meeting, there were no lessons on it in Sunday school or priesthood,
no one mentioned it or made any announcements about it.  Like for
real, it was just another Sunday, haha.  We were kinda of upset about
that, but it's just another culture difference we work with.
Ironically, the world was celebrating Easter, but the church wasn't,
haha.  The church in Japan is kinda of the polar opposite of the
church in America.  In a good and a bad way.  For example, two of our
good friends, Eimi and Rui Stevenson, the 1st councilor in the mission
presidencies daughters, are in our ward here.  They both are leaving
today for their missions.  Yesterday in church they gave their
farewell testimonies, but it was much different than American style
farewell testimonies.  They each bore a little 5 minute testimony,
said a few words about what a mission means to them and how they were
feeling, and then sat down.  No big final speech, no large family
there supporting, no big farewell party from the ward or anything,
just quiet dignity.  They are honorably leaving to serve their
missions in Kobe and Fukuoka.  Christmas, Easter, all of these big
holidays are almost non existent over here.  However, ward unity, ward
food parties, their love of the missionaries is significantly more
apparent over here than back in America.

We had our last two zone conferences this week.  We were in Fujisawa
and Musashino zones, got to give my final testimony in each of those.
Starting to realize that I'm not going to be seeing some of my
missionary friends again.  Oh well, such is life.

Yesterday, the General Young Woman's President, Sister Oscarson, and
the General Relief Society President, Sister Burton, came and gave a
devotional at our church. We had one of our good friends, Pan Di from
China, come and attend the devotional.  He enjoyed the talks very
much, however he only believes in science, haha.  Sister Burton had
some great stories that really intrigued him, especially this one
story about one of her ancestors. It was a miracle story about some
trials that she was going through to which she received some heaven
sent guidance.  Pan Di said that he would believe the story if the same
thing happened to him.  But he is developing a little bit of faith
little by little.  We will just keep on working with them at sports
night and English class every week.  Nice guy.  Maybe you will get to
meet him one day.  But the Sisters truly had powerful testimonies and
a special spirit about them.  There were many Japanese members that
came from my old wards and I was able to catch up a little bit with
them.

Things are kinda winding up and winding down if you know what I mean.
We weren't able to go to Bible class this week cause we had to take a
missionary to the airport.  He had to go home and take care of
family things, but that helped me get a little midnight Tokyo street
driving time in, holla!!  Yes, it was as fun as it sounds.  I am way
excited for Bible class this next week to reconnect with everyone and
continue to work with Yuichi.  It is a great time to be a missionary
and we have a lot of good things coming up this next week.  We have a
special Japanese missionary training only for native Japanese people.
Also, next week is mission leadership council, and then the week after
that is transfer week! Time is going fast but I am having a ton of fun
for sure.

I love you and hope you have a wonderful festive weekend!

Love,

Elder Crandall

P.S. So here is what I did for my birthday.  I went to a cat cafe down the
street and hung out with a bunch of cool cats! You just pay for an
hour and get some drinks and hang out in a room full of cats! Only in
Japan, right!

Monday, April 14, 2014

Hello Everyone!

I hope you had a great week! We've been a bit busy lately and you may have seen some of our misadventures, so I will do my best to update you for this last week!

We started the fun cycle of Zone Conferences this week! We were able to go to Yokohama and Machida this last week. Both Zone Conferences were very spiritual and were quite enjoyable. Elder Call and I did some training on ways to invite people. Lot's of newer missionaries have a hard time with allowing people to see both sides of the invitation. In Japanese we call it a "Nigemichi" or Escape Route. When we invite people to do something, we need to make sure they realize that it is totally their choice and that we don't mind if they don't want to do what we are asking them. Sometimes Japanese people feel that if they say no to us, or don't agree to take lessons or something that we will no longer be their friends. We want to minimize that because we know that as along as they still interact with the church, they will eventually realize it's truthfulness and come our way. It was pretty fun to do that training! We only have two more Zone Conferences this week and then we're all done for the transfer! Definitely less stressful than President's Interviews. Looking good!

We were able to go on exchanges twice this last week after the Zone Conferences. I stayed here at the "Honbu" with Elder Mitabi on Tuesday/Wednesday and then went to Yokohama with Elder Nuttall on Thursday/Friday. Both were fun to do. When you do an exchange in the Honbu the Zone Leader and Assistant who stay do all of the assistant-y stuff and are super busy. When you go out to the Zone Leaders areas then you get to work with them and do Zone Leader things. Pretty fun! When I was in Yokohama, President and I were able to give a blessing to one of my old investigators, Dakko.  She is really sick with cancer and has a brain tumor. [Mom & 

Dad], I set up a tentative plan to meet with her for lunch or dinner on Saturday night after you get here.  

General Conference was shown this last week in all of the Stake Centers in the mission. It was a good experience to go to the Saturday afternoon and Priesthood Session. It started from 12:00 p.m. here and I may have accidentally set up a lunch appointment with Kazuya, Brother Ito, and Brother Nishio during the 1st session. We had a good time building a strong relationship over some yakiniku (Korean BBQ, the one you do by yourself at a burner in the table) with everyone. Elder Call and I had watched the first session of Conference earlier that week for Personal and Companionship Study together so we didn't miss any messages, but we are planning on watching the other talks with Kazuya soon.

We missed all of Sunday Conference however. You may have seen pictures on Facebook already but we had the opportunity to perform with one of our investigators, Jett Edwards, at a benefit concert on Sunday. We performed with the Musashino Interfaith Gospel Choir that practices inside the Kichijoji Church every other Saturday. We sang a selection of old school Black Spirituals and it was pretty good experience. Then the couple that usually sings backup for Jett's band were in the hospital because the wife was having a baby, so Elder Call, Elder Bradshaw and I sang backup to a few of his songs. My companion was a little stressed out because He is not that confident in the smaller group singing setting and he doesn't quite swagger like we do, but it turned out pretty good!

We were able to talk with his band mates and get to know them as well. I gave a Book of Mormon to the guitarist. It was pretty fun, but I'm still excited to hear the rest of Conference later.

Well, that's it for me this week! Doing pretty good, just trying to keep ahead of all of the things we need to take care up. Transfer planning will start pretty soon and we'll have to figure out who is coming in as the new Assistant to replace me and all the other missionaries new companions as well.... Busy! I hope you all have a great week! I love you and will talk to you soon!

Love,

Elder Crandall

Monday, April 7th, 2014

Dearly Beloved,

The dawn of spring has finally trudged through the barren gloom of
winter and has carried with it a prismatic blooming of Japanese
radiance.  It's Sakura season!!!!  The most beautiful time of the year
in Japan.  Elder Call and I have had quite the adventure this past
week as we have thoroughly embraced this gorgeous time of the year.

In the Japanese culture, they have this thing called Hanami.  It just
simply means to go look at the flowers.  However, the way that they go
look at the flowers is rather unique.  When they go look at the
flowers, they bring with them a large blue tarp, their family,
friends, children, light snacks, and gallons upon gallons of hard
alcohol.  Imagine American style spring break at a large beach on
California, well they do the same thing over here except they cram
into tiny parks and just get hammered while looking at the pretty
cherry blossoms. The trees really are amazing, especially in the part
of Tokyo where we live.

There is this famous park called Inokashira Park right next to where
we live that is famous for the cherry blossoms and we took the time to
go check it out and talk to some of the people going to see the
flowers.  It was going pretty well until we actually got to the park
and experienced the mayhem of Hanami at its climax.  We had some run
ins with crazy drunk old men that thought we were the bees knees cause
we were Christian in Japan.  However, we found some good opportunities
to dendo with a few people that just walked straight up to us and knew
who we were and what not.  I will attach a video of the park that we
went to, although no video can truly capture the scenic wonder of
flowers and beer.  Fun times.

This week we had Mission Leadership Council and that required a lot of
effort in planning and coordinating what we need to focus on as a
mission.  We have gone from 75 to 145 missionaries in the last 7
months which means that the majority of missionaries have only been
out less than half a year. Our focuses have mostly been on finding and
basic teaching skills up till now, but we are starting to emerge into
more advanced teaching skills, like asking inspired questions and
understanding peoples concerns.  We use the analogy of an iceberg and a
submarine.  With some people, the only way to truly understand them is
to jump in the submarine and take a look under the water.  Realizing
that what you see on the surface is just a tiny part of the whole
chunk of ice will benefit us as missionaries every time we go to
invite, teach, and commit people to living the gospel.

We also had the chance to go on splits with some of the zone leaders
and will go on more splits with them starting tomorrow.  I am going to
go on back down to Yokohama for one last time.  We have a zone
conference with them tomorrow and then after that, I will stay down
there for a day and help teach some of the people that I know over
there.  This is my final round of conferences so it is time to go hard
in the paint!

We have been watching general conference during comp study cause we
actually probably won't be able to see most of it at the Japanese
sessions this next weekend.  We have a gospel choir concert in Shibuya
that day with one of our friends, Jett, and his choir that he has put
together of various Japanese ladies in our area.  I will tell you more
about it afterwards, but who would have ever thought that I would end
up in a black spiritual gospel choir in Japan!  It's a service to the
community so it counts for missionary work, but it has also been a
great opportunity to meet a lot of new people.

The pictures on Facebook of us at the BBQ with the s'mores and what
not was an elders quorum activity.  We had 4 of our investigators come
with us and we had a great time eating and talking with them and
introducing them to the ward members here.

I am putting together a plan of things we should do while you are here
with me.  I will get back to you with this details today, but I need
to go right now cause we have an appointment to get to, but it's great
to hear about Kylie's eagle project getting done.  Maybe we can have
our court of honors at the same time cause i haven't had one yet, haha.
Sorry to hear about your toe Connor.  Your can always get a better
one after the resurrection, ha. ;)

I hope Kelsie is doing good, I wouldn't know though cause she don't be
writing me ever...hint hint...

Have a wonderful week and I will see you soon, too soon actually...

Love,

Elder Crandall

Monday, March 31st, 2014

Dear Family and Friends,

I am soooo sorry that I couldn't write an email last week!  I already told you why, but I will explain it more in detail today.  We were super dooper busy so I'll just get going and let you know what happened!

This week was the beginning of a whirlwind of events. Transfer Week.  Monday morning President Wada decided that he wanted to have Transfer Calls over with before the end of study time. Therefore, Elder Call and I had to scramble around to call everyone in the mission and let them know if they were transferring or not.  It was pretty funny because no one thought we were being serious. Transfer Calls were supposed to be on Tuesday, so while I was calling people they thought that I was joking... (For some reason I have a bit of a jokester reputation... I don't know why!)  Plenty of people were really surprised, but we have a lot of new combinations of missionaries that are really looking promising!

After Transfer Calls we had Musashino Zone P-Day!  It was really fun because we were able to go and climb Mount Takao together as a Zone. President and Sister Wada as well as the Office Couple, Elder and Sister Yamashita were able to join us! It felt really good to do some WashIngton style hiking up trails. We took a paved path up and were able to talk to many, many people, as well as see Tokyo laid out before us.  It was really beautiful. There were some people running up the mountain for Fireman training and we were able to work out with them for a bit! Super fun!  There were lots of Shrines on the mountain and lots of wooden boards with names of people who donated to the shrines. 

On Tuesday we spent a long time on a tour bus.  We traveled over to Narita airport to pick up the new missionaries. There were a whopping 24 of them!  That is the biggest group of missionaries we have ever had come in at one time!  Busy, Busy, Busy!  While we rode home on the bus, Elder Call and I were able to answer a lot of questions the new missionaries had, and hopefully calm/create fears as well. :)  We were trying to make sure that everyone got off the bus quickly, which resulted in my companion leaving his iPad on said bus... sad day.  Good thing people in Japan are so honest!  The bus driver mailed it to us later.  Woo!

Thursday we had training with the new missionaries and also with their Trainers. That was a pretty big event.  Seeing as there were 24 missionaries, that meant that there were at least 24 trainers.  We weren't able to get new apartments for some of our areas though so some trainers came in sets of 2 giving us 70 people all together for trainings.  That was CRAZY!  We had a great time though!

After we got everyone sent off to their various areas we had the opportunity to take Returning Missionaries to the airport.  This time around there were only 2 Americans, and 5 Japanese that went home.  The Japanese Missionaries and the American Missionaries flew out of 2 different airports, so Elder Call and I went with the other Elder Call to Narita Airport. (Now there is only 1 Elder Call... It's a bittersweet feeling.)  We rode the Narita Express train there and back which was pretty fun.  It's about $30.00 one way, but you have seats that face forward. You can even turn the seats around if there are four people and have your own little pod.  It was pretty fun to ride, but it wasn't too fun to send him off.  I can't believe that time is coming up for me.  Doesn't seem right, but we're too busy to think about it anyway. 

We had a pretty amazing experience the other day!  I've talked a little bit about Yuichi before.  He's one of the members of our Bible Class.  He has really been enjoying learning from the Bible and the Book of Mormon with us but has basically been in contact with the Church for 30 years or so.  He doesn't believe that he can do what we do, and he always tell us that we are amazing for teaching things so simply and clearly to him, even though we are 20 and he is 75.  He actually doesn't live in our mission.  He lives in the area next door called Nakano.  Yep, the Tokyo Mission's Main Office Area. The Assistants in the Tokyo Mission are Elder Hall and Elder Dunbar.  They too are currently working with Yuichi.  So basically Yuichi has been getting double doses of Assistant Missionary Power. Haha.  Elder Hall called us the other day and told us something interesting though... During a lesson they were having with Yuichi, he said to them, "I want you to recommend me for being baptized!"  We freaked out.  This is a huge miracle!  He wants to get baptized before I leave so he should be prepared and ready for baptism sometime within the next 5 weeks!  We are so excited!  It just shows that really nothing here happens on the missionaries time.  Yuichi has heard the lessons and been challenged to baptism for many, many years, but it is fully his choice to exercise his agency and choose to come closer to God.  We just get to be here and Rejoice when he does choose that!  Happy Day!

This is getting a bit long, so I will just end with something that I read in personal study the other day. 

"But remember that he that persists in his own carnal nature, and goes on in the ways of sin and rebellion against God, remaineth in his fallen state and the devil hath all power over him. Therefore he is as though there was no redemption made, being an enemy to God; and also is the devil an enemy to God." - Mosiah 16:5

I was thinking about this quite a bit.  Not only do those large grotesque sins do this to our souls, but even those small, seemingly trivial sins as well.  Forgetting to Pray, Forgetting to study the Scriptures daily, lying to others and things like this are all sins.  Even those little things hold us back from our Father in Heaven.  He truly does love us and wants us to come back to Him, therefore He provided the power of the Atonement by His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ.  As we remember Him and use that wonderful gift of the Atonement, we too can be made better each day, until eventually we are perfect.

"Teach them that redemption cometh through Christ the Lord, who is the very Eternal Father, Amen." - Mosiah 16:15

I couldn't say it any better myself.

I love you all, I love the work. 

Hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Crandall