Monday, October 15, 2012

Buenos Dias mis amigos!

 

I've used a lot of Spanish over the past few days, haha.  We have a less active member who is Mexican, a family from Bolivia had us over for dinner a few days ago, and the other elders that we live with have an investigator from Peru.  But I've basically forgotten all of my Spanish, haha.  If I try to speak a different language, I pronounce everything Japanese-ish and I think in the Japanese grammar order, so my Spanish sound like a drunk old mans Spanish, haha. 

 

General Conference as a missionary is awesome!!!! Man, it was like watching the super bowl, haha!  But honestly, it was awesome getting to see the announcement from President Monson and everyone in the room was cheering, haha. My top three favorite talks were Elder Christofferson (I've really taken a liking to him recently, I've read a lot of his stuff over the past few months), then Elder Oaks, and then Elder Holland (he went hard in the paint for sure! it was awesome and we are going to suggest it to some of our less active RM's). It was way fun watching GC with everyone in our zone. We were all huddled in a class room on the second floor of our stake center while the rest of the stake watched it in Japanese downstairs. The translators do not carry over the tone of voice or excitement or any rhetorical devices that make talks powerful and interesting. Thus, in Japanese, it's really boring and they don't really take a whole lot out of it. But man, this was such a great conference and I took a lot out of it. A few weeks ago, our Sister missionaries gave us cards to write a question that we wanted to get answered at conference on.  I was wondering how I could better help the people that I talk to on the streets feel the spirit.  I had forotten that I wrote this question down and stuck it in my white handbook until like the second to last session.  But from the whole GC, I concluded that the key to helping people that you don't know feel the spirit is Love. As cliche as that sounds, honestly, love is the most effective spiritual tool that we have. If we impress upon random people that we love them, they will be drawn to our message becuase they will feel the Love of Christ flowing through us; that love is subsequently carried by the Holy Ghost to their hearts. We pray to find prepared people, we pray that when we meet them, we will know what to say and do, and we DO meet these people. But God will only prepare as many people as we can handle and that number is correlated to our faith.  In missionary work, and in life, we measure our faith by our actions. And if our actions are full of love, then everything that we do is going to be awesome :)

 

This past week, we found two new investigators! One of them was from Ekaiwa (English class) and the other was from streeting in the far corner of our area. We have lessons with them this next Sunday and I will tell you more about them if things go good, haha. One of them is 50ish and the other guy is about 20. I'm way excited about it though :)

 

Elder Anderson and I get along great! We have very similar personalities, we are both very deep people and we have great studies together. He is completely fluent in Japanese, like way way fluent.  It's nice having someone so good at it because we can be more personal with our ward members and investigators, and I think people just like us better when we are more fluent, haha. He is a way hard worker and we see a lot of miralces and things have been working out in our favor more often than not :) We were able to meet with two of our less active members, both very tama tama (by chance) but we shared very good messages with them and were able to more fully descern their needs and figure out why they are not coming to church.  Honestly, both of them have weak testimonies of Christ, He is not their focus and they are getting distracted with other things. Like the prophets always say, if everyone was to build a solid foundation on Christ and always put Him at the center of their lives, there would be no wavering and falling. 

 

This next week, we have a giant fall festival and it's kinda Halloween themed.  Kids get kinda into Halloween in Japan, but I dont think that they go trick or treating or anything.  But we are not allowed to wear costumes of course, kinda, I think, haha.

 

Tell Connor that in seventh grade I took english, science, pre algebra, gym, band, social studies, I think..... I don't remember too well but I remember feeling really scared but really cool for not being in elementary school :) Tell him that he should do leadership and video classes if he gets the opportunity. 

 

I laughed really hard at the "I own a car in Utah" phrase that Dad said to Kelsie, hahahaha. That's what's up. Kelsie getting told off by the parents, haha!

 

I hope you guys have a good week and I am attaching Grandpa Crandall's blessing for Dad.

I Love you guys and tell Kelsie and Tuxedo that I say hi!

 

クランダル長老 (Elder Crandall)