I got hit......‏too!

Well hello family,

It has been a very interesting week that's for sure...I don't really know where to start.. 

Well this Tuesday we had a specialized training in Oakdale that's when President comes and gives a special training to us. It was really good we talked about how the Book of Mormon gives us more of the doctrine of the atonement that the Bible does not have, so it was really great and I learned allot! It was cool because President started talking about some deep doctrine ha ha so were were all amused by that! 

This week I went on exchanges with Elder Hardy, the one Markel got to know pretty good in the MTC, so I went to Minneapolis with him and we had a great time. We are like brothers I swear! We are the same.... we do the same things and it just reminded me of all my friends back home! We had a great time though we taught allot of people and had allot of success and WE EVEN ATE CHICKEN and WAFFLES! It was my first time! :) We ate it at a park in Minneapolis on a big hill and you could see the skyline of Minneapolis it was really cool! So I was with him for three days but we had a great time. I really love being District Leader! I get to have close relationships with all the Elders and I just love serving them and helping them become better missionaries and men!

Having a little fun!

We found this park with an AMAZING view!

So I got back to my area and my first full day was Friday. Friday was the craziest day of my mission by far! So we were teaching our last appointment that night and we just heard huge thunder and rain like crazy! We were like "oh man! we're 3 miles away from the apartment...dang!" but we got out and it stopped raining but the power was out everywhere! Trees fallen over.... it was just a crazy storm. Right before we got home I GOT HIT BY A CAR on my bike. So yeah I was crossing an intersection and the street light wasn't working, so I looked both ways and the car had stopped. So I was like "okay lets go, he stopped" so I started to go and he just started going and drilled me and I went flying off my bike like 10 feet and my helmet flew off. I did a helicopter spin in the air and landed on my stomach and I was just laying there like...."oh man my wrist kills!" and then I heard the guy freaking out, cussing, and he was so scared! So I thought to myself like "man this guy is freaking out"! so I just jumped up and went and gave him a hug and said "don't worry man, it's all good!" He was still freaking out and I was like "don't worry!! I'm good!" so we walked the rest of the way home and I was just like...."holy crap I just got hit by a car!" but we got home and I checked myself out and I got scraped up and bruises everywhere...my knee is pretty bad but I made it alive....so its all good! 

When we got home some people in the apartment were like "the garage is flooded from all the rain" and so we went down and it was like 3 feet deep everywhere, it was insane how much rain we got in just 2 hours.

That's my week for you all. Hope you had a good one and also I would like to give a shout out to Amy Huhtala for writing us!! It's great to read how the ward is doing! Thanks for everything. 

Oh and the Missionary Broadcast was crazy good!! Cool how the new rules are enhancements to missionary work!! We are excited and waiting to get the go ahead and apply those in the future!

           Love,

  Elder Crandall

I'm on Cloud 9!

Hey family!

Wow this week went so well!! It was full of spiritual experiences and full of excitement! I don't really know where to begin but I will try and find a place! 

So Tuesday all we really did was tract and go back to former investigators all day. We were talking to this former and right next door to their house is a member and she has 6 boys and they are crazy kids!!! I'm telling you! but the littlest boy is so funny and cute, I love him to death! His name is Kendrick and he is about 2 and he climbs on everything! He was climbing over the fence and his brothers are ruthless as well! His brother that is just older than him came up and punched him in the face and he didn't even cry it was crazy! But we stopped and played tag with them and some games. They always say "Goodbye my favorite Elder!" and then the little one always gives us a hug. It's funny! I will send pictures of our experience.

These 2 are so cute!

My little buddy Kendrick

My crazy friends!

So the next part of my week, I went on exchanges with Elder Abbott. It is always a great time with him. We are like brothers and so it's really fun. We taught allot of people and had a great time! We always stay up and we get talking about deep doctrine and things like that! So I was really tired the next day but oh well!

  

So the week progressed and we taught our friends that we teach in the halfway home. They just got out of prison but one of them is so set upon grace and he does not understand Justice and Mercy. We tried to relay it to him and explain it to him, but he just can't understand that concept! So we kinda bashed a little bit... but he is still doing good! He just needs to understand Justice and Mercy! He believes there should be no punishment if we break the laws of the land because there always has to be mercy just like Christ showed and if we are punished then that means Christ died for nothing.... so he has a different concept of it all.

Saturday........ the big day Elder Holland, Elder Callister, Bishop Stevenson and Elder Dube came. It was such a cool experience to meet them and have them speak to us. Elder Holland sat down with us and said that he never ever wants to see a return missionary less active!! He was yelling at the pulpit for about 5 min about that. It was crazy but he trained us on a really good principal he said, we have the same power as him. We ARE apostles...he just is an Apostle with a uppercase A! 

He said that we don't use our authority and we need to use it!  We have power to do anything, we have the same power that Moses had to split the Red Sea, all we need is to make sure that we our righteous. He wants us to be like the angel that came to Alma the Younger. When we read about it, it says that the angles voice was the sound of thunder and that it caused the earth to quake and as we teach our investigators we need them to have the earth quake when we speak to them! and that comes through the Spirit of the Lord and our authority. We need to give them their personal earthquakes.... it was cool! 

It was so amazing and an experience I will never forget in my life! I probably will never be instructed so personal by General Authority like I just was ever in my life again.

Grandpa Hunt..... Elder Holland says hello to you.. I told him you were my grandfather as I shook his hand and he gave me a hug and said, "you tell Burnell hello for me!"...... so yeah it was cool experience!

   

I'm still recovering from my personal earth quake from hearing them all speak!  Elder Holland is our Latter day Paul! He is bold in declaring the gospel. 

The MMM (minus the 4 Elders serving in Canada) and the visiting  General Authorities!

I love you all and hope you have had a great week and always remember you have power!

            Love,

                   Elder Crandall 

Our new Native Hmong Elder...he is from Milwaukee Wisconsin and is currently serving in Eau Clair Wisconsin. We met him for the first time at the conference. He is cool and we can't wait until he comes to the branch!

 

zoo siab kawg (so happy)‏

Nyob zoo,

Hello family and friends, wow its been a crazy week with responsibilities and just a million things going on all the time! It is crazy but I always find peace in the work and in the Savior. 

This past week has been really weird... but great, it started out with p day and then on Tuesday we had a Leadership meeting in Bloomington and the Mission Home. It was so great!! All the Zone Leaders and District Leaders in the mission attend them. It is a all day training about how to be a better leader and what we need to do and the responsibilities we have, and a way to gauge how the mission is doing. It  was very helpful and I received alot of personal revelation there. It lasted pretty much that whole day from 8:40 to 6 in the evening. That night I had a conference call with the District to prepare themselves for District Meeting which was the following day. We do a thing before every District Meeting where the night before, on the call each area gives 2 investigators and tells us about there concerns and then 1 person in the District will study for that person and the following morning we discuss as a District how to help those individuals. So everyone will study for someone else's investigator. It's a very effective thing we have implemented in the district! On Wednesday was my first District Meeting as District Leader, it went well. I trained them on how to teach people and not lessons and I compared it to the story of Ammon and King Lamoni.  It was a great meeting. I hope helpful for the other Elders. After District meeting I went on exchanges to Minneapolis with Elder Ly, it was good being back in Minneapolis so I could see all the members there and the people there! We had a great exchange and a powerful interview at the end so it was very great! I wasn't in my area this week for like 3 days! We exchanged back on Thursday night at Coordination meeting with the Ward Mission Leader and the Branch President.  After that the week settled down and we had some crazy experiences!

We were riding our bikes on a bike trail and in the middle of the trail was a guy, drunk and passed out! So we went over to help him and he was fine, he got up and started walking and almost fell over a couple of times. Later on in the day we saw the same guy and he talked to us and he looked at me and was like I will remember you.... you have really nice eyes! I was like uhh are you hitting on me man?... that's weird.. but anyway that day we were tracking a bit and we were talking to a girl and all of a sudden a little hmong kid come running out of their house and he was butt naked and just sat there while we talked to her for like 5 min it was so funny!

 

Well we are all excited for our Mission Conference this week it will be so awesome and so great!! I'm excited for it! 

I wanted to say how much I appreciate my mom in all she does for us. She is a women of so much strength and I am amazed at her and how she over comes trials in her life. I know we have had some hard times with the family over the course of my mission but I just want to let her know that I will always love her more than anyone else and I will stand up and be by her side! My mom is my hero and I love her so much! love you mom!! 

          

Love you all! 

Elder Crandall

Love (kev Hlub)‏‏

Hello my dearest family and friends,

Well this week has been great I'm sure you're all wondering who my new companion is. His name is Elder Moss,

He is a great Elder! We are the same age he just went to college before his mission. He is from Surprise, Arizona, he went To ASU for a year before his mission. We are doing great everyone we talked to this week thought we were brothers for some reason ha ha! 

Its been a bit overwhelming being District Leader.... you're just thrown into it and expected to perform highly. but I'm getting the hang of it and I love it. I love serving the Elders in the District they're really great Elders. All the numbers though on Sunday night are a handful its like now my Sunday night are over! I'm always on the phone now and figuring everything out but it's good preparation to starting a business.

  

So this Sunday we found out who is going to be coming to our mission on June 15th. It will be..... ELDER HOLLAND, ELDER CALLISTER OF THE 70's, ELDER DUBE, AND BISHOP STEVENSON. I'm am really excited to meet Elder Holland again! I will make sure to tell him hi for you Grandpa and Grandma! I can't wait though to be trained by all those great men and power houses in the leadership of the church!

This week we met some really cool people! We set Precious's baptismal date this week. She is preparing for June 29th so we are getting her ready hopefully everything goes well. it been a great week although it has rained every day this week and so on the good ole bike its super fun even though we get super wet! Everything is all green and beautiful! I wished you all were here to see the beauty of it!

This week I restarted the Book of Mormon again and this time as I go through, I am marking all the scriptures having to do with grace and mercy. It's been so awesome to see how merciful the Lord is to the people in the Book of Mormon and to us in our own lives. Its been a really cool Book of Mormon study so far! I'm so grateful for my mission! I have come to enjoy studying the scriptures and its such an amazing tool God gives to us all. I encourage you all to read from the Book of Mormon each day and study with real intent and expect revelation! I have found has you expect revelation like the prophet Samuel in the Old Testament did he said" speak Lord for thy servant heareth"  he expected revelation and look at what Samuel became! So I want you all to have the same attitude as Samuel "speak Lord for thy servant heareth"  it will bless and bring you great joy in your heart as feel the Saviors love for you!

 

Last story.... this week I got a flat tire as well and so we walked the rest of the day and we were walking around and this guy walks out of an apartment and he said "hey what you two doing?"  and I was like, " umm just walking, he was like come help me clean out my truck!" it was random but we started talking and this guy is at the bottom of his life.... he is contemplating suicide and he ran into us..... we shared spiritual uplifting thoughts to him and boldly committed him to repent. We found that he smoke and gambles so we told him to quit that right then and there and it was just so amazing to be there at the right time! He committed to be baptized and this was all while we were cleaning his truck out. The thing I felt was, that I am an instrument in the hands of the Lord as it talks about in Alma 26:15. That is how I know I am a successful missionary! Not my baptismal count... it is knowing that I'm being an instrument in the hand of the Lord to carry on this great work! i have learned so much but most of all I have become a son of God who knows his potential and who loves feeling the Holy Ghost each day! I have become someone who loves the Lord and will do anything for him and that is our purpose here in life, to love the Lord and do the things he asks! 

I love you all have a great week! 

Love,

Elder Crandall