Elder Christopher Crandall: Monday, July 29th, 2013

こんにちは皆さん！！！ (Hello everybody!)

川崎の奇跡わ多いですよ！！！！(Many miracle's in Kawasaki!)

Me and Elder Mitabi baptized Marilyn and Marie this last Friday!!!! In the pictures, Marie is on the left next to me and Marilyn is on the right. We were going for a "raising the bar" picture and I think we look pretty good.

It was a great great, very simple, yet powerful baptism. And then yesterday I confirmed them both in Sacrament Meeting. They were both so happy and they gave great testimonies after the ordinances. I have been utterly impressed with how much they have changed over the past two months and how much faith they have in the healing power of the atonement. It has been a great testimony builder for me and I feel the need to act more like they do. Their son Masaru, who is ten years old, after the baptism he came up to Marilyn and asked her why he couldn't get baptized with her and that he wants to do the same thing that he saw his mom do. We have agreed to meet with him every week for a little while, maybe about 3 weeks, and then he will be prepared for baptism :) I am waaay excited for him!

The trainings have been going well. I hope, haha! I hope they are learning something that is, haha. Not gonna lie, it's required a lot of patience and endurance from all of us. The hardest part is that I have to say everything twice. Elder Mitabi basically only speaks Japanese, Elder Kuniyuki only speaks English, and so I have to translate all of the conversations and everything into either one of the languages. It's great translation practice, like 24/7 language study, but man it is exhausting. I can't tell if my Japanese is getting any better or not, but I for sure have gotten a lot better at toning down what I say in English so that it is always easy to translate in Japanese, haha. I'm like dumbing myself down. But Elder Kuniyuki is a good sport and is tolerating my poor English. And Elder Mitabi is being a good sport and tolerating my bad Japanese, haha. I taught him how to speak English like an American. He kinda has a British accent and I'm doing my best to break that out of him. Like, saying Amuuurika and bro at the end of his sentences. Also, I taught him how to speak a little bit of pidgeon, like "How you stay bro?"

Recently, we have been switching most of our teaching focus to the Book of Mormon and helping people understand what is in the scriptures. Because of that, we in our apartment do daily role plays and practices for teaching out of the BOM and lesson 1. I found something really cool the other day out of 1 Nephi, chapter 1. Most of our investigators struggle with having faith in God. They just don't know what to believe and what to picture for God. So we have found a way to help them gain a better idea for who God is and how we interact with him in chapter 1, verses 8-11. Here we can help them make a personal vision for who God is and what it is like in Heaven. I used this yesterday when teaching our investigator, Nomura, at church. It was going good, but then he ended up falling asleep cause he had stayed up all night playing at game centers here. Poor guy, he was exhausted all day, but he still came to all of church. We hope to set a baptismal date with him this next week.

Things are going great here! The Yokohama Zone right now has very few investigators, not a whole lot of lessons, but basically everyone we are meeting with gets baptized and we are one of the highest baptizing zones in Japan right now! Lets go dendo!!!

I love you all and have to get going! Everyone here is getting out of school for summer break right now and it's weird for me not getting to go tubing or go to any camps or anything. The members rarely feed us at all in Japan. We had an Single Adult activity last night where we got fed by members and our ward mission leader is having us over for dinner cause he is stoked about all of the baptisms and success. It's about time that you guys had the missionaries over for dinner again, right??!! And when you have them over for dinner invite some of our non members friends over as well! And if you don't know any non members, then you need to go outside a little bit more and meet some :)

Have a fantastic week! Kyle, I started working at the golf course when I was 16. Then I quit the start of my senior year, and got a job at Costco at the end of my senior year. Man, whether it's at home or at a job, we gots to work. But it's nice when you are a missionary cause you don't have a job!!! haha, I'm unemployed!! kinda....

Connor, I can still remember the first time we gave you a bath. :)

Dad, just by way of curiosity, how was your experience as a trainer? What were some things that worked for you, or didn't work at all? Any crazy experiences?

Take care, be safe, remember who you are, and make good choices!!!

Love,

Elder Crandall