Monday, Sept. 9th, 2013

Hey hey hey!!!

 

Thanks for the emails, everyone.  I'm sure the talk went great in stake conference, mom.  You always do fantastic :) 

Connor is the luckiest little guy.  Not that his school flooded, but cause he was able to beat kotor2 without my help, haha. 

 

I'll do my best to sum up the role and responsibility of a zone leader. (Connor asked him about his responsibilities as a zone leader)  When you become zone leader, you get put with another boss missionary so that you don't have to worry about whether or not your companion knows how to teach or speak the language.  There are only 4 zones in our mission with about 100 missionaries and 8 zone leaders.  My role is to convey information from the Assistants to Pres.Wada and Wada himself, down to the district leaders who then convey it to the other missionaries.  Zone leaders set the example in effective and correct missionary work.  We go on companion exchanges with all the missionaries in our zone at least once a transfer and help train them and help them improve the status of the area.  We often do zone trainings and train at the district meetings, for example, this next Wednesday we have a zone meeting and Elder Hill and I will be giving like a 2 hour training there on what we learned at Leadership Council and what Pres.Wada wants us to train on.  We report all of the statistics every week for our zone on how many lessons they taught, how many people are getting ready for baptisms, and how many new investigators and referrals missionaries received.  We make lots of phone calls and help people with their living situations and various problems.  Just this last week we helped some sister missionaries move into a new home and got them a new computer and arranged for them to get a new wifi walker and such.  We work our hardest to teach as many people about Christ as we can and we make our area the example area for the zone.  It's a lot of work and a lot of planning.  But it's a lot of fun getting to work with tons of missionaries and seeing all the miracles that go one in the Yokohama Stake. 

 

Elder Hill and I were able to see an amazing miracle the other day through serving someone. The other day we were coming home from a day of "streeting". We were crossing a bridge that went over a very busy 4 lane highway. When we looked down and saw a very old man holding a cane trying to J-Walk across the road. We stood there puzzled wondering what we should do when all of the sudden he fell down. Elder Hill and I sprinted off the bridge and to his side to help him up. We helped him up and he said that he would be okay from there, which he obviously was not going to be okay considering that he was leaning all his weight on me. We helped him cross the road and when we got to the other side he couldn’t stand up anymore so we helped sit him down on the curb. We sat down with him but were very concerned because he could hardly hold himself up. We talked to him for a while while sitting on the curb. We found out that he was on his way home from the hospital. After a few minutes of talking he gained some strength back and wanted to continue on to his home, which he said was close. We escorted him all the way to his home, frequently stopping with him to rest. When we arrived he invited us in. He walked into his living room and just laid down on the floor. He called out to his wife who came and tended to him for a while. After he gained some more strength he sat up and came to the table with us. He was so grateful for our help and just such a kind man. We had the chance then to share the gospel with him. We told him about God, who he believes in 100%. We then told him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and heaven, which he was really interested in. We invited him to hear the lessons and he gladly accepted. To close the lesson we asked if we could pray together, he was so excited to do that and he explained to us that he has no God to believe in right now, and really wants to learn more. We left him with an appointment to come back next Saturday. His son and his family also live with him so hopefully we will be able to share the gospel with them as well. I am so grateful for this gospel. I am so grateful for the service opportunity that we had to help Koike San and that it opened up his heart to hear the gospel.

I'm gonna have to get back to y'all about the contacts next week.  I have to go to a lesson now.  But I did get your package :) Thank you so much です！I love you all so very much and am exerting my best effort to do the Crandall name proud :0)

 

Talk to you next week! 

愛しています！

 

クランダル長老