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 

Monday, March 10th, 2014

Dear Family,

Missionary life is like Star Wars.  Or rather, sometimes as
missionaries we feel like we are Jedi Knights.  This past week, Elder
Call and I have been doing a lot of George Lucas-tioian heroic brigades
around Japan.  Our days have been filled with interviews, trials,
councils, battles, which ultimately led to the baptism of a wonderful
sister.

On Tuesday, I traveled down to my old stomping grounds and did some
training while President was interviewing missionaries at the Kanagawa
church.  It was good to be back in my first area for a day.  It's
crazy seeing all of the new missionaries in the same area that I was
in when I was a new missionary.  Being relate-able is an important
attribute for an assistant, missionaries have to be able to relate to
us to trust us.  I can tell those new missionaries there that I was
once in their shoes, I know exactly what it's like to serve there, and
I know how hard some things are.  But that also means that I can tell
them how worth it it is, how many great blessings they will receive,
how much joy they will have when they serve the people there.

Wednesday turned out to be interesting.  When I woke up, I could taste
in my mouth that I was sick, there was this sick atmosphere in the
air.  But when I climbed down from my bed, I felt totally fine, like
my body was moving fine and I didn't feel sick.  But at the same time
I felt sick.  I don't know how to explain it, but to make a long story
short, I ended up going to the doctors in Tokyo and I had a sinus
infection.  A sister with the same symptoms didn't take care of it
quick enough and she ended up having vertigo because the sinus
pressure was causing her ear balance things to get messed up.  I was
starting to have my jaw lock up on me 'cause the pressure in my
sinuses was building.  Anyway, so he gave me some antibiotics and
painkillers, which kinda put me in a haze for a few days.  But I have
finished taking all of my pills and am better now.  It was just a
weird experience 'cause my body felt totally fine and I didn't feel
sick, but I was starting to get really sick.

On Thursday, we had mission leadership council.  All of the zone
leaders and sister training leaders got together and we spent all day
training each other and strengthening our testimonies.  We talked
about various missionary protocols, reporting methods, teaching
styles, and reviewed conversion stories and our mission performance.
However, probably the biggest thing was we rolled out Facebook access
to mission leaders to start using for dendo.  This is the second big
step to rolling out Facebook completely in our mission.  I guess we
will see how they use it and what kind of obstacles we face before we
give access to all missionaries.  People have both been very hesitant
and overly excited about using Facebook for dendo.  For some people, it
may be a huge distraction, but Elder Call and I have been pretty good
about staying focused on our purpose as we use it.  That is the key to
this whole thing, all we gotta do is just stay focused on our purpose.
Mission leadership council is fun 'cause we all sit kneeling in a
circle on a tatami mat and President Wada stands behind us and reviews
our performance zone by zone and if we don't do well enough he pours
cold water on our heads and strikes us with a sword.  (just kidding,
but for real though, one of our investigators told us that that is
what use to happen to him at his work at the end of the day, crazy
right?)

We spent quite a bit of time doing what we call a kubarikai which is
where we stand in front of a station and hand out fliers.  Well this
last week, we invented an effective way to do this and we have had a
lot of fun doing it.  We stand back to back in a two man or four man
and just as loud and as annoyingly as is possible to do as a
representative of Christ, we do all we can to make them laugh, take
our chirashi, and stop and talk to us.  It gets pretty interesting
when you get 4 big white people stopping people in unison and
finishing each other's sentences.  But from this, we have found quite
a few PI's and have been able to make a lot of great contacts at the
station.

Then on Sunday, the Sisters golden investigator, a self referral from
Mormon.org, got baptized after church.  We had some of our friends and
investigators come to that, including Kazuya who is getting really
close to joining the church now.  We still are not totally sure what
his concerns are, but he is really growing close with us and becoming
our good friend.  We are going to lay off the hard core preaching a
little bit and focus on getting him to warm up and open up a little
more.  In reality, he knows all of the gospel principles and believes
in it, but he just for some reason doesn't have the confidence to
follow the example of the Savior.  But at any rate, I have high hopes
for him and I know that he is going to be a great church member
eventually.

Kichijoji ward is starting to catch the wave.  All we have to do is
keep doing what we can and don't worry about what is outside of our
circle of influence.  That is something that I learned very well this
past week.  Just don't worry about It, just do what I can.  I love you
all very much and hope you have a wonderful week!!

Love

Elder Crandall

Tuesday, March 4th, 2014

Dear Family!

Hello everyone!

Hope you have been having a great week!  We've had a lot of great
experiences this week that should interest (or confuse!) you that I'm going
to talk about!  Let's buckle up and get right down to it!

As Assistants working out of the office here I've been able to see a whole
other side of the world of missionary work.  There is definitely a lot of
administration and other such things that you may not realize when you are
out in the field normally.  We've been working hard together to prepare
things for the upcoming Mission Leadership Council that we have every
month.  For that, Elder Call has been working hard on the agenda and I have
been collecting various statistics and information from around the mission.
It definitely takes a lot of patience and requires me to understand my own
weaknesses when I get a little frustrated with things.  It's been a great
opportunity to find more things to improve in my life!  Loving that
improvement!

The most memorable event from this last week was definitely our Bible Study
English Class.  Let me tell you about the make-up of our class really quick.
There are typically 4 people who come to our Bible Study English Class.
This class is a little bit different from our normal English classes that
we teach for service each week.  These students are basically fluent at
English and therefore want to do something different besides normal English
class.  That spawned the idea to study the Bible in English with them.  There
are 2 men and 2 women that attend our class.  One of the guys is named
Kouzo.  He is an 80 year old super fit man.  He loves to be healthy and works
out at the gym everyday.  It was actually his idea to start studying the
Bible in English with us because he is "almost" a Christian.  He loves the
Bible and Praying and is way funny.  He loves to give me a hug every time we
meet with him!  Then we have Yuichi.  He's about 75 years old and is
interesting because he is fluent in French.  That being said, he translates
in his head from Japanese to French and French to English.  It's pretty cool
because then he speaks English with a French accent!  Then we have Junko.
She is about 69 years old and loves studying about Jesus Christ.  None of
these three are actually Christians however, but are enthralled by the
teachings and really have a high opinion of our church.  The regular fourth
member of our class is Sister Kyo Bien.  She is a recent convert of
Kunitachi ward.  She is an awesome Chinese lady who has lived in Japan for
15 years and speaks Japanese fluently.  She loves the Bible, but the funny
part is, she doesn't speak English hardly at all.  However, she testifies
and the other students really feel the Spirit when she's there.  It's awesome!       You will for sure get to meet all of them when you come to Japan. 
(Elder Crandall's Mom and Dad get to go to Japan to pick him up when his mission time is done!)

So, that's the backdrop of today's story, sorry it's so long!  Last week we
were teaching and reading from the Book of Mormon (they have accepted it as
the word of God, huge achievement!) and reading some of that good ole' Alma
32 about planting the seed of faith.  When we teach we have to use a lot of
examples of everyday items so that our students can relate to what we are
talking about.  We were going along pretty well helping them understand the
scriptures one verse at a time when we reached Alma 32:39.  It talks about
your land being barren and not nourishing the tree of faith.  When we hit
this part Yuichi put up his hands and said, "I don't understand what you
mean by barren ground. We do not have this problem in our everyday lives!".
Elder Call was a little stunned about how to answer that one so he
turned to look to me to answer.  I, having studied this chapter quite
a bit, was ready to answer.  I asked them, so what is lacking in
barren ground?  Nutrients, right?  The ground doesn't have any
nutrients.  So how do we give the ground nutrients?  We fertilize it.
But what is fertilizer exactly?  (here is where I really opened up
and leaned in real close like).  So what is fertilizer exactly right.
It's POOP!!!  Poop!!  We put poop on the ground to make things grow.  
(so at this point Elder Call is just dying laughing, he was so
surprised at what I said) but I was dead serious.  So if we relate
this back to our lives, what is poop?  Poop is the gross yucky-ness of
our lives.  It's the things we don't want to have, the bad parts of
ourselves.  Simply put, it is our mistakes, our weakness, the things
we do wrong and want to get rid of.  The poop of our lives is our
mistakes, and it is from those mistakes that we are able to grow and
develop.  Much like fertilizer, our weakness make our grounds fertile
for our seeds of faith of grow.  Once I had finished saying this, Yuichi spoke up and said, " Elders, I have a lot of poop in my life".  Elder Call was laughing so hard, he could not take it serious.  But everyone in the class loved it and
they were all writing it down in their Book of Mormon and stuff.  It
is a weird analogy but it's true.

Today most of our P-day was absorbed because we went with Sister Wada and
Sister Yamashita to Costco in Kawasaki to buy food for the upcoming
meetings and such in the mission.  It was pretty awesome!  We took the sweet
mission box van and cruised the Tokyo Freeway for a bit.  I was
driving so I got my need for speed Tokyo drift action in.  Then we
bought a ton of food. (As you can see in the picture below)  It was a blast.

I'm really having a great time here.  Kichijoji is just an awesome area and we
have a lot of great investigators that are moving along the path to their
Heavenly Father!  It's the best!  Definitely making memories for the rest of
my life.

Kyle, I am amazed.  Who knew you looked so good in green!!!  Way to go
buddy.  I am so proud of you!  You are all grown up now and are making
a name in the theatre world.  Thank you for being someone worth being
proud of.  In the words of the great people I am trying to serve over
here, you bring great honor to your family.

Mom, you guys should look into some of the Sumo tournaments that are
going on in May.  That is an experience I would die for you guys to
have.  Also, I signed my life away on the contract yesterday. 
(he signed up for his housing for BYU this coming Fall)  
I feel good about it so, nothin' to do but go with it I guess (sorry Kelsie,
for not living with you, but I promise to visit often).

I just want you all to know, God really does love us. He knows each and
every one of us perfectly, and if we choose to accept His love, we will
realize that it's always around us, enveloping us in the biggest hug you
could ever imagine.  We're lucky that we know and can share this to the
world!

Love you all!  Hope you have a great week!

Elder Crandall

The haul from COSTCO!!!