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