October 9th, 2012

Dear Family,

Hello Hello! Wow, what an exciting week for sure.  A lot of ups and downs on both of our ends. 

Happy Birthday, DAD!!! Wasn't this your 50th or something like that?? Man, over the hill, one foot in the grave or should I say vase (they cremate everyone in Japan).  It's good to hear that he is still young enough to believe that he can still golf ;)

Well, I'm still in Kohoku, but I got a new Companion!!! Elder Gallacher was awesome, but I'm way excited about my followup trainer.  Elder Gallacher was my Dad, and now my new companion is referred to as my Mom, haha.  His name is Elder Anderson and he is half Japanese.  His dad serves in the air force so he has lived all over the place, including Olympia, but most recently he lived in Virginia; actually most recently, he lived in Japan....

He is on transfer 11 and he is a boss.  Man, I'm on transfer 3 now.  I'm almost 1/4 of the way done with my stay in Japan!!!! AHhhhh time is flying by.  Elder Anderson has had mostly Japanese companions his whole mission and he is way way good at Japanese.  He is shorter, wears glasses, looks very Japanese, and is a way cool guy.  He went to BYU for a year as well and he stayed one building over from my building.  He is a great guy, we get along great, and he is way exited to be here in Kohoku. 

One of the Zone leaders that I live with, Elder Cook, finished his mission yesterday.  He was such a cool guy.  His parents came to Japan to pick him up and they are touring the area for two weeks.  He was sad to see it end, but he said it didn't feel like anything was changing.  It hadn't hit him yet that it was over.  I talked to him for a while because we went on splits on Saturday and he told me how weird it is trying to imagine something other than missionary work.  This is his life.  He has become Japanese and missionary work is his Job, his purpose in life, or so it seems.  I am starting to relate to that, haha.  I don't know what else I would do if I wasn't a missionary.  THIS IS MY LIFE!!! This is my job, my hobby, everything that I do in life.  It's way, way crazy cool. 

Here is the thing, I've never really been a fan of the Japanese language.  It's always been way difficult when things are suppose to be easy in English, there are like 100,000 different kanji in the world, and the people talk at like a billion meters an hour.  The grammar is completely backwards from English and all of the vocab sounds the same, but has different kanji meaning to it.  Taihen for sure.  But, ever since I came to Japan, I've been able to immerse myself in the culture and now I think like Japanese people do.  They think differently than the rest of the world, and now that I'm thinking like them, I understand the Japanese and how to speak and read like them.  Elder Cook said that now that his Japanese is like as good as you can get, there is nothing more fun for him than speaking in Japanese, haha.  I'm starting to feel that way a little, but I'm way way far away from fluent.  I'm about as good as the average 5 or 6 transfer missionary at Japanese, a little above the curve at understanding. 

So a few crazy things happened to us this week.  We had two investigators come to church! It was kinda random and we didn't think that they were 100% set on coming, but they did and it was a great week for Elder Gallacher to end on and a great week for the ward to see us working hard and bringing people to church.  We were also able to help Kobayashi get a little bit closer to Baptism, but he is still far away from that point.  He doesn't understand repentance and that is kinda totally key for baptism, haha.  Repentance in Japanese is kuiaratame (koo-e-ar-ah-ta-mae).  Say that 5 times fast!

The guy who bought us the really expensive sushi a few transfers ago moved to the top of Japan a few weeks ago.  We said goodbye to him and wished him luck, it was kinda sad.  Well, this last week, we were dendoing in the middle of a giant city far away from our apartment and we ran into him!! It was crazy, totally by chance, perfect coincidence. Then, later that week, we were in an area at the top of our map, in a random tiny little town, and we ran into him again! He was visiting a friend and we happened to walk into him.  I don't know why we were suppose to run into him so many times, but I'm glad we did cause he is totally awesome and he gave us some great advice and counsel for the ward. 

I haven't been able to watch General Conference yet.  We have to wait a week for it to get translated into Japanese, then we will all watch it together in English and Japanese at the stake center this week end.  I'm way excited though and I love the new missionary age rule!!!!!! It's great that young men don't have to wait around and do nothing for a year if they really want to serve.  And it's great that sisters can serve much younger now too! We need more sister missionaries, honestly, they are much better at missionary work than us guys, haha, especially in Japan! It's a great decision and it will be a great help to all missions world wide!

Well, we are going to go hit the streets hard this week and really try to help the ward become more self dendo sufficient.  If they didn't have missionaries serving in the ward, this ward would probably not have any convert baptisms.  Our ward has had 5 baptisms in the past year and a half and only one of those people still comes to our ward.  That's not real growth, this ward needs a family that lives in the area and that is friends with the ward members to join the church.  That is real growth, families stay in the ward, families grow where they are planted. So wish us luck in helping the ward members convert their friends.  We are having a giant stake party this month and it's going to be a great dendo opportunity!

Have a great week! I love you!

Elder Crandall