Dear Grandpa,
Hello Grandpa :) Thank you so much for your email this morning!! At church yesterday, a lot of members were asking me about you and grandma actually. I showed them my little book of pictures and it has one of you two and they were amazed that even my grandfather was a missionary. It was something that you never really hear about in Japan. Also, there was a couple missionary that was serving in our mission who the Elder served in the Frankfurt Germany Mission back in the 60's and I was wondering if you knew him. His name was Elder Galbraith. Him and his wife returned home a month or so ago. They were way funny and very hard workers. It's not an easy thing to get called to be a couple missionary in Japan when neither of you speak Japanese right? Maybe I'll teach you some Japanese when I get back just in case you go on another mission and get called to Japan, haha. I love you and I love grandma. It gives me courage and strength when I recall on the knowledge that my direct ancestors know what I am going through as a missionary and that they accomplished what the Lord wanted them to accomplish. I feel empowered and ready to accomplish what the Lord wants me to accomplish as well :) Give a hug and a kiss to grandma and great grandma for me :) Also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! I love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dear Mother,
My Asian friends informed me that the wall paper on my blog is Chinese and not Japanese. Thought you ought to know :) Also, I use my picture book like every day right, and every time they get to any picture of you, they rant and rave at how young you look and how you and Kelsie look the same age and they ask how old you are. I usually say you're about 60 and then they freak out and are like really????? Then I'm like, No, she's actually 35 and then they freak out some more. I don't think anyone in Japan actually knows how old you are :)
Man, General Conference. General Conference is so awesome when you are a missionary!!!!! I felt like I was watching the super bowl, I was on the edge of my seat the whole time!! I've only got two more general conferences as a missionary though, that thought is starting to freak me out. I loved the talks by Craig C Cardon, President Eyring, Elder Bednar, and Elder Nelson. I think that those were my favorites for sure. I felt like those talks especially were things that I am focusing on in my teaching and with my investigators. I loved watching Elder Nelson's talk cause I felt like it was exactly what we heard last month when he came here. It was a good wake up call to our ward mission leader, although I'm pretty sure he skipped the Saturday session so we will need to drop a large hint bomb on him to watch that. You would think that people in Japan would be better at catching large waves that come their way, but we will have to give the members a lot of support to hop on it and become proactive. Proactive in Japanese is a really interesting word cause when broken down it means the product is assured. Or like, it is an affirmed result, it's going to get done, kinda feel to it. But, so far, if the missionaries don't do it, it doesn't get done, is what happens in the wards. Little by little though, members will start to fulfill their responsibilities.
This week was very busy, way successful, yet way disappointing at the same time. We had 8 people promise to come to church, but only 2 showed up so we were way bummed. However, we were able to set up a ton of appointments with people this week which means that we will be able to make a lot of commitments and get people progressing (kinda like what Kyle was teaching about in Mission prep). One thing that I started doing recently is in my personal study each day, I do the commitments or homework assignments that I gave people. So that way, when I go to follow up with them about how it went or if they did it or not, I can start out by saying that I did the assignment too and tell them what I learned. It will be way awkward for them to listen to me tell them what I learned and then have to tell me that they didn't do the commitment, right? If for nothing else, next time, to avoid the awkwardness, they will do the commitment. We be serious about the eternal salvation of man.
I had the best Chinese food with one of our investigators on Saturday. He invited us over to his house and he fed us beautiful Chinese chicken and gyoza (post stickers) and weird tofu and fish sausages. He is a total family guy, actually his family will move back to Japan next month and he wants them to start hearing the lessons as well so that they can join the church. He is such a nice guy and is already quitting alcohol and we haven't even taught the word of wisdom yet, he just knows that's not a christian thing. His name is En. En Ka is his full name. We call him En San or En Chan (Chan means like little girl). He is so funny, way American-ish in his humor.
Elder Lee and I are trying really hard to unify our teaching and to figure out how to produce more successful lessons. It seems as though the only people that get baptized in Japan are super miracle story people, like, regular people are not converted and join the church. The reason is, and President Budge is starting to focus on this too, that we are not good enough teachers. And we are not using the members as effective as we should in all of our interactions with the investigators. So we are focusing on being better teachers and focusing on using the members, in some cases training the members, as effective fellow shipping tools. We are especially relying heavily on the 3 big things that help people convert. Personal Prayer, Prayerful Scripture Study, and keeping the Sabbath Day Holy. But even before we can teach those things, we need to figure out what people are interested in so that they can be actively engaged in everything that we teach and actually apply these principles in their life. We probably won't find a ton of golden investigators in Japan, so it is more useful to be a good teacher than a good finder. It has taken about 40 years on missionaries in Japan to finally come to that conclusion, but such is the way it is. President Budge has really sparked a new age of dendo here in Japan, not only in terms of member support and activation, but with our missionary mentality. We are full time teachers, not full time finders. We find as a part time job. Elder lee and I have done a lot of discussing these kinds of things and we both agree that since we are both very young missionaries and we can't speak Japanese well or teach well in Japanese, that we need to focus on our teaching skills. We will probably grow more in this transfer than any other cause we HAVE to become great teachers or else this area will fail. I would appreciate your prayers with our new drive to focus on becoming better teachers. Please pray so that we can receive personal revelation that will help us increase our ability to teach, explain, and discern things pertaining to our investigators, kudasai :)
I wuve YOU!!!! Have a wonderful week! I 'm gonna go get Brazilian food on my birthday at an investigators restaurant! YA!!!
Elder Crandall
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