Monday, September 30th, 2013

Dear Family,

I have never been so happy to be a missionary in Japan.  I am learning and growing in so many different ways.  Last year when I started my mission in generally the same area, I was not so happy to be a missionary in Japan.  The work was very tough and I didn't have the best attitude.  Now a year later, the work is just as tough, but my attitude or rather my perspective on everything has changed.  Maybe that has been one of the biggest changes I have seen in myself so far on my mission, my perspective has totally changed.  Elder Hill and I are working our skinny butts off trying to help out this ward as much as possible, we really are.  It's going slow and steady but it's going for sure.  We have 3 people who are progressing well, and like 30 pi's, it's way easy to get pi's here, but getting them to set up an appointment is the hard part.  People have been really bimio lately. However, we have made great progress this last week with one of our investigators whose parents are against him coming to church, Yaguchi San.  His parents told him that if he gets a good grade on this next test that they will allow him to come to church on Sundays!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Huge progress!!!!!!!!  Just hopefully he gets a good score on his test, haha.  We are praying and fasting with him on that.  

We just got back from another lesson with an older investigator, Mukaiyama San, and we are extremely close to breaking down the final wall that is going to lead to the first steps to conversion.  He has for a long time been struggling with prayer and in today's lesson it finally clicked with him and he is going to start praying to find out if God is there.  We read with him the story of King Lamoni and his conversion and it struck a big cord with him.  He was able to relate the scriptures to himself and grow his tiny little faith seed just a little bit more.  I am really grateful that the BOM IS true cause I just spent an hour pouring my soul out to this man that it is true.  And because it is true, he was able to feel the spirit and experience a change of heart.  I've been doing a study recently on the Lectures on Faith and I see now the importance of having a belief that God is there to developing one's faith.  It is critical.  Once Mukaiyama can have that confirmation, everything will fall into place.  

Got to go, but I love you all and hope you have fun in Florida ;) 

Elder Crandall