Monday, April 29th, 2013

Helllo everybody!!!!

Well, as of Thursday here, I will have hit my 1 year mark as a missionary!!!...... dang.... But all it seems to be is just words.  I don't really feel like it's been any more than a year or less than a year, it just feels like I've always been a missionary, haha.  But this next year is going to fly by so crazily fast, I don't even know.  All I can do is ganbaru wherever I may be and live every day to the fullest.  Lets go dendo!!!!

We had a fantastic miracle this last week with one of our investigators named Emi.  She is 52 years old (looks like she is 30, like no joke) and is going back to school for a psychology degree, has a strong belief in God and the church, but has a problem with coffee. :/  She approached us after our English class (which she attends and is way good at English) and said that she had a crazy experience the other day while she was praying and wanted to share it with us. So we set up a time to meet for the next day and met up with her and a wonderful member named Hiroaki (he was the first Japanese member to serve a mission in Russia and he lived in England for 10 years).  At the start of the lesson, she told us that she had gone to one of her psychology classes where it was an open forum discussion and she got in a heated debate with an annoying student on one of the topics.  She felt bad about how the debate had turned out, she got pretty mad, so she went home and offered up the desires of her heart unto the Lord and asked for the ability to have more patience and be more kind to this student.  She said that while she was praying, an indescribable warm feeling came over her and she started crying.  She said that she felt the true love of God and had never experienced that kind of peace and all encompassing love before.  She was very surprised at the whole experience, but knew that it was of God and was way excited to share it with us.  We were able to teach her more fully about the spirit that lesson and showed her that because of her sincere desire to change and grow, God answered her prayer in a beautiful way, through the holy promptings of the spirit.  We then showed her Moroni 10:3-5 and how the spirit will confirm gospel truths to her as well.  We then asked her if she thought the BOM was true.  She said yes.  Then we asked her why she thought is was true.  She said that it was because she thought it was interesting and had a lot of good wisdom and stories in it.  We told her that that is good, but not a real testimony.  She made the connection to praying about the BOM with the promptings of the spirit and how that related to a testimony herself and we then committed her to doing that this weekend.  She is soooooo close to baptism.  She is in every way converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ and is living a member life, except for the word of wisdom, haha.  However, once she is ready to commit to that, she will be baptized post haste!!!!!!   It's really weird teaching a woman who is older than mom, haha.  It's kinda weird being able to say that she is my good friend cause she could totally be mom's good friend too, haha. :)

That was the highlight of the week, but we had many other littler miracles as well.  We met this guy from Santa Barbara last night who had been looking for a church to take his family and had been eyeing our church building a little bit wanting to go inside but didn't have the courage. He is a way cool 50 year old guy who likes long boarding and is  teaching at an international school here.  He is going to come to church next week with his family. 

I made an Indonesia friend at a local Japanese class.  Elder Lee and I every Wednesday at 10 go to this Japanese class that a bunch of retired Japanese people hold in order to help teach the local foreigners Japanese. :)  We pretend like we are not that good at Japanese and so they take pity on us and think we are really cute little foreigners.  Anyway, this Indonesian lady starting coming to our English class as well and is teaching us basic Indonesian for free!!!  Terimakasih! (that means thank you)

Our Holland Bro, Kohji, is doing well and we are working hard with him on true desire and and truly believing in God.  He will get baptized soon-ish, I hope, haha. 

Elder Lee is the man!  He and I just got back from shopping at a giant mall down the line from our house.  I got some black Ferrari cologne for way cheap and now I smell like a racing car I guess, hahaha.  He and I have way too much fun.  But I'm getting the suttle feeling that one of us might transfer out of here.  There is no reason for it, we are having a lot of success and a great time, but I just get that feeling, haha.  I've got a reputation for transferring out of places fast, even though they are way successful areas, haha.  Oh well, we will just have to wait and see :)

Connor, you are the man.  You are doing way better than I ever was at that age.  We all knew you were the best out of all of us :)

Kyle, good luck with life!  お疲れ様 (cheers for good work!)

ブレンヂン (Brendin),  久しぶりだね (I have not seen you for a long time)！!！!！ 2年ははいやいですよね！ Man, two years goes by waaaaay too fast!  It's great to hear from you!  I can remember very well a few of your mission emails home and there are a few stories that have stuck with me and helped me out here in Tokyo.  Thanks for being a good example to me and to Sean.  We got to see each other in the MTC and we told each other that the day would to soon come that all 3 of us would be reunited, home, successful from our service all over the world.  But that is not this day!  I guess it's 1 year from now, but don't be counting days or anything ;)  

    　I love you man! Chou Chou!

Okay, I've got to go dendo now, but I love love love you and hope that you all have another fantastic week!!!

Love,

Elder Crandall 

ps.  HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA!!!!!!!!!!!!