Monday, October 22, 2012

Hey Family,

 

Sorry I am emailing a little bit earlier than normal, but today we are going to SKY TREE!!!!!!! If you don't know what it is, google it cause it's gonna be awesome. We are leaving in like a hour or two.  I bet that you guys are writing me and emailing while I'm writing this one. 

 

This week was pretty good, but yesterday was not so great for us. We worked hard all week and got 3 lessons set up for yesterday. One of them was for sure going to come to church, but he didn't and now we can't get ahold of him. The other guy forgot that we had planned a lesson after church so he bailed.  And Kobayashi, never called us back to set up a specific time so he ended up falling through. So 3 lessons fell through. It was a real bummer for sure. So we just dendo-ed for like 3 hours instead, but we didn't find anyone. Not from a lack of conversations though, people were very willing to listen last night. We had like 20 good conversations, but no one had interest in religion. Sometimes it's hard being white in Japan. Sometimes people don't take us seriously. They are like,"ahhhh how cute, they are trying to speak Japanese". Or they are super suprised that we know Japanese, but they can't get over the fact that we are from America so they don't whole-heartedly listen to our message. 

 

But other than those few small things, Life is Good!!! Japan is way awesome! It's starting to get cold here, like 21-25 degress all the time (celcius). And man, it gets cold in Japan! It's very very humid here and so it's like a bone chilling cold kinda feel, ya know. Anyway, this week, we had a giant Fall Festival that the ward put on. We had tons of non members show up to it and we played lots of games, had a way good talent show, and then took everyone on a church tour. It was way good for all of the inestigators to get a very calm and easy feeling about church. Most of them already come to English class and kids English class every week, but they usually are not able to see anything other than the gym. 

 

Okay, so I just read your letter and I was dying laughing! "The District", hahahaha. We are required to watch and study The District in the MTC and out here in the field.  I've seen all of the episodes like 10 times so far, hahaha.  That's so cool that you guys get to watch and study The District just like me! My favorite investigator is Manny. He's way cool and I've met people that have changed their lives very similar to the way he changed his. Have you watched the Law of Chastity one yet?? It's a huge joke among all missionaries world wide, haha. I've met most of the people from The District. They are teachers at the MTC. Actually, funny story, Clark Sensei is pretty good friends with Sister Boils? I think is how you spell it, anyway, he called her in the middle of class one time and put her on speaker phone and we all said hi to her, haha. Have you guys seen The District 1 as well? That's the one that follows the people in Texas. 

 

My email might be pretty short too, kinda low on time and not whole lot happened this week.

 

We usually make our own meals everyday, or we go out a few times a week.  The members just drop off a lot of little things every week in a Fruit Basket of sorts. I love Okonomiaki and Curry Rice and Indian Curry and Sushi and Maborofu and Hayashi and Taco rice and Yakiniku and Yakisoba and tons and tons of food that you have no idea what it is, :) haha! There are no Teriyaki shops in Japan, haha. Only in America do they use the word Teriyaki. Usually restaurants or the food is called Yaki (grilled) then the name of the food like Tori (Bird/chicken), Yakitori or Yakiniku (grilled meat). I'm actually getting pretty good at cooking Japanese food so get ready for a house full odd Asian-ness when I get back! When we eat at members houses, they usually make American-ish food for us. They think it's American, but it's not really, it's just not Japanese food, haha. But for sure we eat rice in just about everything. Always, always rice and it is super expensive to buy rice in Japan! It's insane, like maybe more expensive than America. We have been trying to go to Costco for a few weeks now, but we need a car and a member in order to go. We strated a tradition in our house, 500 yen Fridays! At our local grocery store, they have 500 yen pizza's, Japanese pizzas, so they are really weird and kinda gross, but they are way cheap and we buy them at like 8 at night so they are 30% off. In reality they are like 320 yen so it's a pretty good deal. But everything is smaller in Japan, like a large or extra large pizza in Japan is a medium in America, and Dominos costs like 25-30 dollars here. Way crazy!

 

These past few weeks, we have been trying really hard to find very prepared people to teach.  It's easy for us to get phone numbers and maybe sketchy investigators and appointments, but to find really prepared people who will apply the gospel is very hard.  One of the attributes we look for (and Bishop Doutre mentioned this in his letter to me), is humility. Are they too prideful to listen to a message about church? Are they too guiltful of their sinful consience to want to change their lives or admit that what they do is universally wrong? Will they put us and the gospel on their priority list or are they too busy, too engulfed in the world to make time for us? It's hard filtering for the right people. Sometimes I feel like an old prospecter panning for gold in a dirty river. But luckily, I've got all the right tools, a treasure map, and I personally know the person who hid the gold! All is not well, but all is do-able, fixable. 

"Shall we not go on in so great a cause? Go forward and not backward. Courage, brethern; and on, on to the victory! Let your hearts rejoice and be exceedingly glad."

D&C 128:22  - that is our mission theme!

 

Have a great week! I will for sure! I love you guys and will think about if I need anything and I will get back to you!

 

Love,

Elder Crandall  

 

Monday, October 15, 2012

Buenos Dias mis amigos!

 

I've used a lot of Spanish over the past few days, haha.  We have a less active member who is Mexican, a family from Bolivia had us over for dinner a few days ago, and the other elders that we live with have an investigator from Peru.  But I've basically forgotten all of my Spanish, haha.  If I try to speak a different language, I pronounce everything Japanese-ish and I think in the Japanese grammar order, so my Spanish sound like a drunk old mans Spanish, haha. 

 

General Conference as a missionary is awesome!!!! Man, it was like watching the super bowl, haha!  But honestly, it was awesome getting to see the announcement from President Monson and everyone in the room was cheering, haha. My top three favorite talks were Elder Christofferson (I've really taken a liking to him recently, I've read a lot of his stuff over the past few months), then Elder Oaks, and then Elder Holland (he went hard in the paint for sure! it was awesome and we are going to suggest it to some of our less active RM's). It was way fun watching GC with everyone in our zone. We were all huddled in a class room on the second floor of our stake center while the rest of the stake watched it in Japanese downstairs. The translators do not carry over the tone of voice or excitement or any rhetorical devices that make talks powerful and interesting. Thus, in Japanese, it's really boring and they don't really take a whole lot out of it. But man, this was such a great conference and I took a lot out of it. A few weeks ago, our Sister missionaries gave us cards to write a question that we wanted to get answered at conference on.  I was wondering how I could better help the people that I talk to on the streets feel the spirit.  I had forotten that I wrote this question down and stuck it in my white handbook until like the second to last session.  But from the whole GC, I concluded that the key to helping people that you don't know feel the spirit is Love. As cliche as that sounds, honestly, love is the most effective spiritual tool that we have. If we impress upon random people that we love them, they will be drawn to our message becuase they will feel the Love of Christ flowing through us; that love is subsequently carried by the Holy Ghost to their hearts. We pray to find prepared people, we pray that when we meet them, we will know what to say and do, and we DO meet these people. But God will only prepare as many people as we can handle and that number is correlated to our faith.  In missionary work, and in life, we measure our faith by our actions. And if our actions are full of love, then everything that we do is going to be awesome :)

 

This past week, we found two new investigators! One of them was from Ekaiwa (English class) and the other was from streeting in the far corner of our area. We have lessons with them this next Sunday and I will tell you more about them if things go good, haha. One of them is 50ish and the other guy is about 20. I'm way excited about it though :)

 

Elder Anderson and I get along great! We have very similar personalities, we are both very deep people and we have great studies together. He is completely fluent in Japanese, like way way fluent.  It's nice having someone so good at it because we can be more personal with our ward members and investigators, and I think people just like us better when we are more fluent, haha. He is a way hard worker and we see a lot of miralces and things have been working out in our favor more often than not :) We were able to meet with two of our less active members, both very tama tama (by chance) but we shared very good messages with them and were able to more fully descern their needs and figure out why they are not coming to church.  Honestly, both of them have weak testimonies of Christ, He is not their focus and they are getting distracted with other things. Like the prophets always say, if everyone was to build a solid foundation on Christ and always put Him at the center of their lives, there would be no wavering and falling. 

 

This next week, we have a giant fall festival and it's kinda Halloween themed.  Kids get kinda into Halloween in Japan, but I dont think that they go trick or treating or anything.  But we are not allowed to wear costumes of course, kinda, I think, haha.

 

Tell Connor that in seventh grade I took english, science, pre algebra, gym, band, social studies, I think..... I don't remember too well but I remember feeling really scared but really cool for not being in elementary school :) Tell him that he should do leadership and video classes if he gets the opportunity. 

 

I laughed really hard at the "I own a car in Utah" phrase that Dad said to Kelsie, hahahaha. That's what's up. Kelsie getting told off by the parents, haha!

 

I hope you guys have a good week and I am attaching Grandpa Crandall's blessing for Dad.

I Love you guys and tell Kelsie and Tuxedo that I say hi!

 

クランダル長老 (Elder Crandall)

October 9th, 2012

Dear Family,

Hello Hello! Wow, what an exciting week for sure.  A lot of ups and downs on both of our ends. 

Happy Birthday, DAD!!! Wasn't this your 50th or something like that?? Man, over the hill, one foot in the grave or should I say vase (they cremate everyone in Japan).  It's good to hear that he is still young enough to believe that he can still golf ;)

Well, I'm still in Kohoku, but I got a new Companion!!! Elder Gallacher was awesome, but I'm way excited about my followup trainer.  Elder Gallacher was my Dad, and now my new companion is referred to as my Mom, haha.  His name is Elder Anderson and he is half Japanese.  His dad serves in the air force so he has lived all over the place, including Olympia, but most recently he lived in Virginia; actually most recently, he lived in Japan....

He is on transfer 11 and he is a boss.  Man, I'm on transfer 3 now.  I'm almost 1/4 of the way done with my stay in Japan!!!! AHhhhh time is flying by.  Elder Anderson has had mostly Japanese companions his whole mission and he is way way good at Japanese.  He is shorter, wears glasses, looks very Japanese, and is a way cool guy.  He went to BYU for a year as well and he stayed one building over from my building.  He is a great guy, we get along great, and he is way exited to be here in Kohoku. 

One of the Zone leaders that I live with, Elder Cook, finished his mission yesterday.  He was such a cool guy.  His parents came to Japan to pick him up and they are touring the area for two weeks.  He was sad to see it end, but he said it didn't feel like anything was changing.  It hadn't hit him yet that it was over.  I talked to him for a while because we went on splits on Saturday and he told me how weird it is trying to imagine something other than missionary work.  This is his life.  He has become Japanese and missionary work is his Job, his purpose in life, or so it seems.  I am starting to relate to that, haha.  I don't know what else I would do if I wasn't a missionary.  THIS IS MY LIFE!!! This is my job, my hobby, everything that I do in life.  It's way, way crazy cool. 

Here is the thing, I've never really been a fan of the Japanese language.  It's always been way difficult when things are suppose to be easy in English, there are like 100,000 different kanji in the world, and the people talk at like a billion meters an hour.  The grammar is completely backwards from English and all of the vocab sounds the same, but has different kanji meaning to it.  Taihen for sure.  But, ever since I came to Japan, I've been able to immerse myself in the culture and now I think like Japanese people do.  They think differently than the rest of the world, and now that I'm thinking like them, I understand the Japanese and how to speak and read like them.  Elder Cook said that now that his Japanese is like as good as you can get, there is nothing more fun for him than speaking in Japanese, haha.  I'm starting to feel that way a little, but I'm way way far away from fluent.  I'm about as good as the average 5 or 6 transfer missionary at Japanese, a little above the curve at understanding. 

So a few crazy things happened to us this week.  We had two investigators come to church! It was kinda random and we didn't think that they were 100% set on coming, but they did and it was a great week for Elder Gallacher to end on and a great week for the ward to see us working hard and bringing people to church.  We were also able to help Kobayashi get a little bit closer to Baptism, but he is still far away from that point.  He doesn't understand repentance and that is kinda totally key for baptism, haha.  Repentance in Japanese is kuiaratame (koo-e-ar-ah-ta-mae).  Say that 5 times fast!

The guy who bought us the really expensive sushi a few transfers ago moved to the top of Japan a few weeks ago.  We said goodbye to him and wished him luck, it was kinda sad.  Well, this last week, we were dendoing in the middle of a giant city far away from our apartment and we ran into him!! It was crazy, totally by chance, perfect coincidence. Then, later that week, we were in an area at the top of our map, in a random tiny little town, and we ran into him again! He was visiting a friend and we happened to walk into him.  I don't know why we were suppose to run into him so many times, but I'm glad we did cause he is totally awesome and he gave us some great advice and counsel for the ward. 

I haven't been able to watch General Conference yet.  We have to wait a week for it to get translated into Japanese, then we will all watch it together in English and Japanese at the stake center this week end.  I'm way excited though and I love the new missionary age rule!!!!!! It's great that young men don't have to wait around and do nothing for a year if they really want to serve.  And it's great that sisters can serve much younger now too! We need more sister missionaries, honestly, they are much better at missionary work than us guys, haha, especially in Japan! It's a great decision and it will be a great help to all missions world wide!

Well, we are going to go hit the streets hard this week and really try to help the ward become more self dendo sufficient.  If they didn't have missionaries serving in the ward, this ward would probably not have any convert baptisms.  Our ward has had 5 baptisms in the past year and a half and only one of those people still comes to our ward.  That's not real growth, this ward needs a family that lives in the area and that is friends with the ward members to join the church.  That is real growth, families stay in the ward, families grow where they are planted. So wish us luck in helping the ward members convert their friends.  We are having a giant stake party this month and it's going to be a great dendo opportunity!

Have a great week! I love you!

Elder Crandall

October 2nd, 2012

Hello Everyone!

Well we had another great week in Kohoku.  This upcoming Friday we hear about our transfer calls and odds are that my companion will get transferred and for sure the other Elder we live with will be transferred, well Elder Cook for sure because he is going home, but you never know with transfers, haha. 

This week was a great finding week for us. We found a few new potential investigators and we are trying to set up lessons and what not with them so we can help them learn the gospel! A few university students, a middle aged guy, and then a family! We handed out a total of 4 Book of Mormons this week, we tried to do one a day but some days we had none, and one day we had two.  Japanese people don’t like to take things.  They feel obligated to give back in return.  So it’s definitely a miracle every time we get one out, haha.  But how we found the family was an absolute miracle and a way cool story.  Before I share it though, it’s totally becoming Fall in Japan.  The leaves are starting to change and you can feel it in the air.  It’s becoming Halloween season!  Also, I don’t know if you guys heard or not, but this last Sunday, we had a massive typhoon hit us, haha.  A massive hurricane came from the south and swept up the entire island.  It had winds of about 50m/s which is like 100-110 miles per hour.  Crazy wind storm , but Japan is built to withstand typhoons and it didn’t do any damage. 

So, on Saturday morning, we had a lesson with our progressing investigator, Kobayashi San, and that went really well.  I guess I should mention that the day before I had been praying really hard that we would find a family to teach.  Right before the lesson started, we got a call from some random guy and he said that he wanted to meet up with us and meet his family and take us out to lunch.  His name is Tad Bekku, a Japanese guy who speaks perfect English, completely random, never met him before or anything.  So we agree and set up a time for that afternoon.  We met him at the train station and he asked if we were hungry.  No introductions or anything, just kinda hey, I’m Tad, let’s go eat!  He is about 65 and looks like the most stereotypical Japanese guy.  He took us out to a really fancy American steak restaurant and dropped like 80 bucks on lunch.  We were so confused and amazed at what was going on, it was so random, but such a blessing.  At the restaurant, he told us an amazing story about his family.  Thirty years ago, the wife and their three kids ages,10, 5, 3, moved to Manti, Utah.  At the time, they didn’t know any English, they had no friends in America, and the wife started to attend Snow College in order to learn English and get a teaching degree. It was very hard for them at first, but as soon as they moved into the neighborhood, their Mormon neighbors befriended them and took very good care of them. They would take them to school, to church, various activities, bring food over, and helped them learn English. They were only in Manti for a year and then they moved back to Hiroshima, but they were eternally grateful for the charity that they received from these Latter-day Saints. When they got back to Japan, they hunted down the missionaries in Hiroshima and gave them tons of food and treated them very well. And they have been doing that to missionaries for over 30 years. They have a stack of over 40 missionary cards. They are not members yet, but all of their friends are Mormon. They house many LDS people that come to visit Japan and love everything about us. They had not visited missionaries for over 3 years, but Saturday morning, they woke up and felt like they wanted to give us a call and introduce themselves.  We met up with his wife and they took us to a giant elementary school field day and we watched Japanese children chicken fights.  After that, they took us to their house and fed us like 40 bucks worth of ice cream, haha.  They have a ton of Mormon friends, but they all live in the states and so our plan is to introduce them to the members here.  We are making cookies for them and we are going to try to teach them this week.  They don’t have a lot of gospel interest, but they love Mormons! And heck, that’s good enough for us, haha.  I know that the Lord answered my prayer to find a family to teach, and I’m so grateful that we were able to find them in such a miraculous way! They found us!  

Kobayashi is one step closer to baptism but we need to make sure that he is truly converted to the gospel and that he is having a true change of heart. 

This next week is going to be a good one, and BTW, the mission went to the temple together today and so that is why the emails are a day late, haha.  I finished the BOM all the way through.  I started when I challenged Kyle, where is he at in the BOM?

Have a great next week and I know that the Lord blesses you each day, more than you know :)  I’ve seen it in my mission life and I know it’s the same in real life.

Love you so much Family!

Elder Crandall

Monday, September 24th, 2012

Hello hello Crandall-ke!,

Thank you for the emails and it was awesome that Kelsie found time to write me too :)

Crazy busy week back home it seems like! It's awesome that the wedding is moving forward without hindrance and everything is going according to plan! I'm sad that I can't be there, but this is the way that our family has been built.  I did the math real quick and I'll probably get married while Kyle is on his mission, then Kyle will get married while Connor is on his mission, then at Connor's wedding, one of us will be feuding with Connor and we will be missing someone.... JK :) At his wedding everyone will be there for sure! :) But yea, such is life. But I'm excited for it and I'm slowly but surely working on my speech for the wedding :)

This week was an absolutely great week for us! On Tuesday, we had a 3 zone conference in the neighboring zone, Fujisawa, and Elder Aoyagi from the Quorum of the Seventy, who is the second councilor in the Asian North Presidency, came and he and his wife trained us all day.  It was way good and he talked a lot about desire, faith, and different teaching skills.  He referenced the book of Alma a lot. Before the conference he asked us all to read the whole book before he came, and he drew on his past conversion story and stories from the scriptures to better define what kind of dendo (missionary work) Japan needs right now.  His wife was way cool and did a lot of different mogi (mock lessons) with us.  That day, we helped our zone leader's investigator, who I have had the opportunity of teaching tithing to him before- Hotta San- do his baptismal interview and then we went out to Burger King with him afterwards, haha.  It's not too bad actually. 

Later that week, I went on splits with our district leader, Elder Hosier, and is was way awesome.  We went to his area, Kawasaki, and streeted people all day, "tracted".  He is a way cool guy.  He is from Alamo, Nevada, population 500 or less I think, and he grew up working on a ranch.  But he was the starting quarterback for their school, did basketball and baseball, and is a way big city-ish guy.  You would never guess he is small town.  Anyway, he and I did bike dendo the whole time, just ride on the sidewalk and stop and talk to people and we found a ton of success.  We gave out countless fliers, placed 3 solid pamphlets, and gave out 3 Book of Mormons.  Total, we tried to stop over 100 people, and of those 100, we probably had conversations with 25.  I talked to this white guy from Scotland and he was messed up in the head.  He has been living in Japan for the past 26 years and says that he thinks Japan is the most dangerous country on earth.  He told us that he would feel more comfortable walking down the streets of the Bronx at 3 am with $1000 hanging out of his pockets than living in Japan.  He said he was christian, that he prays every day, and that he loves what we are doing as missionaries.  But he is very, very bitter against God.  He told us that his son was thrown off a building by Japanese Police and they said it was suicide (what was he doing on top of a building being harassed by the police in the first place), but he was bitter at God for taking his son.  He feels as though God owes him, that he has been wronged, much like how the lamented feel.  I shared our message with him, the whole first vision, introduced the BOM and had him read some things, but I didn't give it to him because he would not have read it.  He listened with his ears, but he didn't listen with his heart.  It was too full of bitter and malice and our message couldn't get into it.  He told us that he hates his life, he hates the Japanese people, he has been unhappy for the past 26 years and he is looking forward to death.  We did all we could, but in the end, we told him good luck with his life, told him where the church is and wished him a good day. His name was Ian.

The next day, we had our usual ping pong night from 7-8:30 and both us, the sister missionaries, and the zone leaders all had an investigator come.  It was way chill, we played Jenga with milk cartons and played the guitar and piano and had a good time.  Right now, we are teaching a guy named Kobayashi San and he is very interesting.  He was almost baptized 4 years ago, Clark sensei taught him a few times or so I hear, but he fell through and dropped off the map.  He was "resurrected", if you will, a few months ago and the Zone leaders taught him a few times, but he lives in my area so they transferred him to us.  He loves ping pong and is really good at it and after the activity we taught him a lesson.  He knows all the doctrine, knows all of the lessons, but he doesn't understand it all.  He has a learning disability, is really strange and I can't understand his Japanese, but he has a desire to understand and be baptized.  We went over all of the things you can and can't do as a member with him and then I set a baptismal date with him for the 11th of November!  He is about 35, really quirky and quiet.  But he loves the church and the gospel and we just need to help him understand the BOM and get him a good church friend. 

Then, on Sunday, Hotta San got baptized! They did it right before the neighboring ward started and Elder Checketts baptized him.  It was way good and spiritual, all of the missionaries sang a song with Elder Cook playing the guitar.  Earlier that day, Elder Cook baptized a Vietnamese guy in his old area so both members of the companionship got to baptize someone on the same day!  It was a way good day and Hotta is going to come to FHE tonight with the SA's and we are going to try to hook him up ;)

It's been way good recently and we have seen the Lord's hand in everything we do.  Honestly, we do nothing, we can't do anything as missionaries without the Lord's help.  I have two weeks left with Elder Gallacher most likely and we are going to try to make this the best two weeks of our relationship thus far. 

It's Fall in Japan and it was, I dare say, a little bit chilly yesterday and it has been raining a lot recently.  The people still reject us hard, but I'm getting better at getting them to at least listen to us before they reject us! :)

I have pictures that I want to send you, but I think I'm just going to mail them with the package that I am putting together.  When will I get that off?  I have no idea, haha.  Eventually! :)  But thank you for all of the fun pictures and the package!  I got it on Thursday my time, so 7 days calendar, 6 days in reality for it to send. Thank you sooooooooo much!  The scones are awesome and everything traveled perfectly fine. :)

Tell the Boys that I am proud of them and everything that they do.  I think about them a lot and I can't wait to hear what awesome things they do while I am away. 

Take care and have a great week.  Good luck with the pictures and everything!  I love you guys so much and I can feel your prayers strengthen me daily.  Please pray for me and my companion to strengthen our relationship so that we can see even more miracles. :)

Love,

Elder Crandall

Monday September 17, 2012

I am doing great!  It's not a billion degrees here anymore.  Things are starting to cool down and we are transitioning into Fall.  This past week was the first time that I have been dry, haha. Everyone is always dripping with sweat and if you work outside, you wear a headband, like a legit Asian headband, haha.  And yea, everything is good :)

Thank you for telling me about your guys adventures back home!  I hope the boys are adjusting well to school and it sounds like you guys are having a great time at the Fair and planning the wedding and what not.  Not a ton happened here in Kohoku this past week, but I'll tell you some of the fun things that we did...

I went on splits with my zone leader, Elder Checketts, on Tuesday and it was way cool.  He is from Provo and is a way cool guy, tons of fun to dendo with.  We taught three lessons to investigators that day.  The first lesson was interesting because it was with this 19 year old guy named Ueda San.  He is still in high school, and we found him streeting the other day.  He lives kind of far from the church so when we met up with him we suggested just going to the park and talking there.  But he really wanted to go to the church so we said okay.  But this kids bike was a wreck, completely rusted over, the back tire was all the way flat, the wheel spun in all directions when he peddled, and the chain kept falling off.  So as we were going to the church, we stopped at our apartment and tried to help out his bike in any way we could.  The other elders went and picked up a new tire and a new pump for real cheap and we waited for them outside the apartment.  We ate Nashi and we did a very thorough BOM introduction and reading with him.  We spent like 10 minutes just talking the BOM up while we were going to the apartment, to the point where he was like, "Let me see one! Do you have one?! I want to read it!" Which was cool to see a guy so excited to read a BOM.  After a few hours, haha, we finally fixed his bike and went to the church.  We sang some hymns with him and taught him the whole first lesson and he prayed at the end of it.  He doesn't really believe in God yet, but he really wants to.  His mom is a little hontai (I'm not sure what that is in English, anti?) about religion in general, but other than those things, he is down for the business.  We had a big CES FHE with all of the single adults in the area yesterday and he came to that and had a good time. 

Our next lesson was with a guy named Toshi.  Toshi is like 5-10, 200 pounds of muscle, really big football player kind of guy, and he loves America and English.  Loves the culture and the way of living, his English isn't very good, but he is trying hard, haha.  He wants to be a professional singer, R&B artist, and he has been training his voice to sound like the artist Neo. And he sounds like him too, haha.  He is Christian and kind of reminds me of Uncle Phil actually, haha.  We taught him about the restoration and authority, went over the entire background of the Bible so he could have some knowledge of the prophets the BOM mentions, and then I committed him to pray to be baptized and set a date to work for with baptism.  We have a tentative plan for him to get baptized next month and he will keep working towards that.  He has met with a few other missionaries before, but I think this group of missionaries are the right ones for him.

After him, we taught the zone leader's investigator named Hotta.  Hotta is what we call a kinjin, a golden person.  He met with the missionaries ten years ago, but was too busy to get too involved.  Last month, he thought a lot about the purpose of life and religion and wanted to find answers.  He remembered that he had a BOM so he looked us up on mormon.org and contacted the zone leaders asking for answers.  This kid is awesome.  He read the entire BOM, and then, is reading the teachings of President Kimball and Heber J. Grant and what not.  I taught him the law of tithing, or should I say, he taught me the law of tithing when I asked him if he had heard about it before, haha.  He is going to get baptized next Sunday!

Other than that, we just did a lot of streeting and talking to people.  We got a few numbers but they are kinda bimio (unsure) and maybe won't turn out to be anything.  If you have not watched Elder Holland's CES talk yet, watch it!  It is on lds.org and it is legit.  I've seen it twice, English and Japanese, but it is much much cooler in English than in Japanese.  He is a boss.

Well, I hope you guys have a great week and do lots of fun things! Tell the ward I say "hi".  Who is our ward mission leader these days?  And also, you guys should have the missionaries over for dinner one of these days.  Do it for me :)

Love you guys and will talk to you later!

Elder Crandall .   

Monday, September 10, 2012

Hi Mommy :) and Dad and Kyle and Connor, and everyone!

It's weird to hear all about school and stuff and not starting school myself.  My body tells me that it is time to start school again, like, it's telling me that it is time to start doing home work and studying and stressing out, haha. But it's totally awesome that everyone is adjusting fine and that school is looking to be very fun this year :)

I get more and more exited for Kelsie each week! Let me know when the dates are, like when she goes through the temple, receptions, the wedding, and so forth :) Have fun planning, Mom :) Don't go too crazy over this. When it gets hard and stressful remember that I won't be a part of any of it, but I would gladly do any of the hard and stressful things if I could :)

Kyle and Connor are being great otsukaresama's and working hard in school.  Connor, I was smaller than you when I started Junior High, haha.  I remember how crazy it was and feeling super small.  Just don't be afraid to talk to people and never judge anyone until you get to know them.  I was friends with a lot of people that I wasn't sure if they were cool or not until I actually got to know them, haha.

Kyle, Good luck with choir man.  It's not easy memorizing things, but at least you don't have to memorize Japanese songs.  Japanese songs are so crazy.  They are really hard to understand because they have really long sentences for really short phrases, so they cut out a lot of their grammar.  It's like a string of words without any order to them really.  The hymns are a mess.  "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam" is in the hymn book and literally translated from Japanese it says, "Light, Light, Like Jeeesus, Light, Light, Like Jeeesus", instead of "a Sunbeam, a sunbeam, Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, a sunbeam, a sunbeam, I'll be a sunbeam for him". Sooo work hard, you will do fine :)

This week was very good for us.  We were able to find 3 new investigators and we taught many lessons.  If they start progressing I will tell you more about them, but they are different college students and we ran into them streeting over by our church building.  For the past few weeks I have basically been training my trainer, haha.  I won't go into too much detail, but Elder Gallacher felt as though he has been in a bit of a mission slump so I have taken over a large part of the leadership position and increasing his faith in our missionary work.  So that has been a huge blessing to me but I still have a lot I need to learn before I am 100% trained.  We have been focusing on a lot of streeting(stopping people walking down the street) lately so we have been hanging out by a lot of different train stations and busy china town, I guess you could call them, haha. We are getting really good at teaching mini lessons and figuring out if people have interest in the church right now.  We went on splits with our District Leader and I spent the day streeting with his companion.  He is a very shy kid, but I made him say hi to 300 people and by the end of it, he stopped and talked to 3 people on his own which is a huge improvement.  We have been trying to give out a BOM a day and it is actually pretty hard because Japanese people don't like receiving things for no reason.  They are very humble and receiving gifts just means that they have to do something nice back, haha.

My Japanese is getting better little by little.  I always know what's going on and I have been using the phone and emailing a lot more recently. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time today to detail everything that I have done this week, but I'll give a brief overview...

We have a weekly takyu (ping pong) night every Saturday and I get my butt whooped hard, haha! We found a way cool curry restaurant with a guy we can share the Gospel with a little bit every time we go; weekly eikaiwa is going great; this guy in my ward was baptized in Puyallup in the 70's and I was able to get to know him really well; we visited over 10 ward members and shared little messages with them; had a Zone conference and President Budge taught us about faith; turns out our less active member that we were trying to bring back has a mental disorder so we shouldn't visit him often anymore, haha; one of our Sister Missionaries had a Birthday, but other than that, we hit the streets every day this week for like 4-5 hours a day. We've talked to over 100 people this past week, but 3 of them I think have genuine interest.  The work is slow and can be hard, but it is progressing nonetheless and we see miracles daily :)

I love you guys and I always pray for you and our loved ones back home. Please keep praying for me and please pray for the members in Japan to have more courage to share the Gospel with their loved ones. 

Love,

Elder Crandall