Nyob zoo cov phooj ywg

Hello family!

Well this week has been a very great week.  We started off with p-day last week, we didn't do anything really just went to the hmong market and hung out. So it was a pretty boring p-day but anyway the rest of the week was great! We had allot of success this week, we met some new people they are really awesome and amazing! One is a single mom with 4 daughters and they came to church this past Sunday and loved it. We are so excited to be working with them and getting them in the water! :) They are currently going to a different church but that's okay!

 

This Saturday the Minneapolis Elder's had a baptism. It was a single mom with her 3 daughters. It was a great day to see them all get baptized as well. They are a funny group of people. 

It was exhausting to do all their baptismal interviews....I did about 6 of them in one week so it was a crazy week haha! I just can't believe how much trust God puts in us missionaries.... interviewing people to enter into his fold and to make sure they are worthy, that's allot of trust to a 20 year old kid. But it is amazing to feel the Spirit work through you and to lead and guide you through that process!

That has been the best thing and the thing I love most about my mission.....feeling the Spirit or Gods power work through me. It has brought me so much joy even when I have the worst of worst days the thing that keeps me going is feeling the Spirit and knowing I'm doing the will of my Father in Heaven.

I have often thought, how we know the will of the Father? I always asked to know it but I always felt like it wasn't clear to me or that God just didn't want me to know, but I have come to know now that it is living the gospel of Jesus Christ that is what our Father in Heaven wants for us, it's why we are here....to live his will. The greatest peace and joy is when the Spirit directs our paths because that is God telling us we are doing his will. I know that as we lay hold of every good thing and as we take every prompting of the Holy Spirit and act upon them, then we have accomplished our purpose here in life.

 

I also have thought a great deal about the prophet Mormon, as we read in Moroni we hear about a couple letters that he sends to his son Moroni, he says that he is yet alive and he writes these letters to Moroni which are prolific and inspiring. I often thought of that phrase that he says "i am yet Alive"   I am so grateful to be alive and doing the will of my Father, I often time forget in my morning prayers to thank God for giving me another day to do his work. But most important to partake of the blessing of the atonement of Jesus Christ. I relate the phrase "I am yet alive" from Mormon to what the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15: 22 " For as in ^aAdam all ^bdie, even so in ^cChrist shall all be made ^dalive."

 It is through our Savior Jesus Christ we are made alive. We shall overcome everything through him. I'm grateful for these words and for Mormon to endure to the end by writing one last thing for his son. It must have been hard seeing his people parish but he endured and wrote one last Epistle which has impacted my life!  I encourage you all to be gratful that you are yet alive! and to partake of those blessing that come from the Saviors suffering.

 

I love you all and wish you a very Fantastic week!

      Love always,

                       Elder Kelby Crandall

peace out!

Ambercrombie pose....

How many missionaries does it take to change a light bulb?

Being cool while away from school!

I loved his subject line this week!! Gpa Hunt always signs his letters to the kids...."Be cool while your away from school"....I just thought it was cute that it has become part of his vocabulary now! :)

Hello Family and Friends,

Well its been a pretty good week.... last Monday we went downtown St. Paul walked around the Mississippi River and took like 100 pictures that day, we also went to the Catholic Cathedral which is huge here and went in with our shirts, ties, and with the black name tags..... which probably wasn't the best idea ha ha! We first walked in and actually the priest was walking in with us and we started talking to him while he did something with the holy water. We thought he was going to  scolded us because there wer 4 Mormon kids in the Catholic Cathedral but he was really nice and I really liked the guy. He was a really nice guy! We just talked to him about missionaries and what we were doing, he knows about Mormons and stuff but he was amazed we could speak Hmong haha!! As we were in there, this lady came up to us and just started talking to us and just started freaking out at us! She said all this stuff about the Mother Mary and stuff like that and we were just like, "what heck is she talking about?!" and then she started scolding us and saying, "you are in my church now and you guys are wrong you need to step out of the fire and come to the light!!" we tried to tell her she was wrong but we didn't want to start a huge bash in the Catholic Church and prove her wrong :) but anyway thats, that! really exciting haha! We ate at a famous restaurant in downtown St.Paul.... it was good! Its in a train car so it was really cool!

Over looking the mighty Mississippi River

This is my face while being scolded by the crazy lady in the Cathedral! :)

This week I went on exchanges with Elder Meyer he was just in Lacrosse WI, and he returned back to the Branch this past transfer, it was good to hear how he did down there but did not have much success. I guess everyone in the mission hates Hmong Elders because we stay in the cities our whole mission and pretty much the cities is where everyone wants to be! So I'm counting my blessing. I think I will be the first Hmong Elder to stay in the Hmong branch their whole mission so it's pretty crazy..... but i love it!!! I have gained such strong relationships with the people here. That is one thing I realized this week. My time is winding down and it just finally hit me and I almost started to cry because I don't want to leave these people. I love them so much, it feels like home. I don't know what I'm going to do without these people? The Hmong culture and people are like part of me now.... so I just want to let you all know that I'm Asian and English is my second language! :)  So sorry for poor my poor English ha!

This week we have been working with allot of people. We have found some great people and it is never a boring day in the twin cities, we always have fun and excitement, we started to talk to this Cambodian lady and she would just not answer our questions... my companion asked the same question 20 times and she said the same thing back that made no sense to what his question was so he kept asking her and I just started to bust out laughing.... I couldn't take it anymore, it was really awkward though because then Elder Hardy started to laugh too! So we finally just had to leave.

I am so grateful for my faith in Jesus Christ, I know that whatever I am going through even though it may not be as bad as others, I can rely upon him to pull me through what ever it is. District leader is stressful but as you look at what you are doing as a leader it brings fulfilling happiness, I want everyone out there who is suffering to rely on Jesus Christ and to humbly submit to him and let him help you through his atonement. It is the only way to happiness and the only way to healing our spirits or our emotions. I know that I have come to know my Savior personally on my mission and know one can take that away from me, it is mine forever and it is my most prized possession, I know as we live the gospel of Jesus Christ we access the blessings of the atonement, family and friends please accept the atonement and use it. 

I love you all!

      -Elder Crandall 

Satan is working hard!!

 

HELLO! family,

 Well this week was a bitter sweet one that's for sure....I swear at the end of your mission Satan is just trying to get you, he is always trying to destroy you or get you discouraged. 

So the reason why is say this is because Friday our bikes were stolen. We came out of the place we were at and look and our bikes were gone. We were like "what the heck??" We just thought it was a joke that other missionaries did but we look down and our lock was cut and the bikes were gone. We were like "what the heck man??".. I mean it was on a busy street where allot of people are and we just don't understand how they did it without anyone seeing because it was in mid daylight. But we moved on and had a good week. On Saturday we had to walk around for a while because President Clements gave us a car to use for the transfer until we figure out how we are going to get bikes to use. So on Saturday we had an appointment at noon and so we had to leave our apartment at 10:30 just to get there on time. We walked there and got there and they were not home!! We were like "ahh man!!!" so we walked around to other investigators until 3 o'clock. We ended up walking about 7 miles in those hours.. but then we went to Bloomington and picked up our car. We got a brand new 2013 corolla, it's pretty nice....it has touch screen in it so that's one of the sweet parts about the week ha ha!!

These past 2 months have been so crazy getting hit by a car and getting my bike stolen. I just see how hard Satan is trying to discourage me, but its not working I'm still happy as ever and love doing the work even if I have to walk everywhere. Being a missionary means so much to me, it has changed me and I will faithfully serve my Heavenly Father no matter what comes my way.

  

This week also brought great news as well, on Thursday we got back in contact with a former investigator from a couple of years ago and he was so awesome! We taught him the restoration and we invited him to be baptized and he was like "yeah, when can I be baptized and what day so I can put it in my phone". He is really prepared and as we were leaving he was like, "alright, I will see you Elders at church!" but unfortunately on Sunday morning his little brother passed away and it was a really random thing! but we thought this will be the perfect time for us to teach the family about the Plan of Salvation.

Another great thing this week was that Elder Abbott had called me and was like "guess what?" I was like, "what?" and he said that Charlie was getting baptized on the 17th of August....I was like, "what?? no way that is so cool!!" I was so happy and excited for that news. I had been teaching her when I was in Minneapolis for about 9 months. She is such an amazing person and when I was teaching her I just had the strongest desire for her to be baptized and feel the happiness that God gives us....but it never happened when I was there, but now she is being baptized!! So even though I am not the missionary that is baptizing her, I am just filled with joy she is being baptized! That was THE best part of the week!

Something I have come to know this week is that Satan is working so hard on all of us.. but we can overcome him as we have positive attitudes and like Elder Holland said a few conferences ago "we should not be asking why other people are being blessed and I'm not".... as I look back at all the blessing I do have and who I am, I feel happy and the other hard or bad things in life tend to go away and all I end up doing is focusing on God and how I can make my life better through the gospel. 

Well I love you all and keep it real! 

 Love,

              Elder Crandall

Just a cool picture!

Me and Elder Hardy

The biking gang!! We had a trio for one day. Me, Elder Hardy, and my last companion Elder Moss.

Sam...this ones for you! Hope you don't miss St. Paul too much! Love ya buddy!!

During the training program they make us watch alot of video segments
for new missionaries....so we had a marathon! :)
Thanks for the treats Dad!!

Reunion!

Hello family and friends.. 

Well this week has been great. It was the 4th of July obviously, and we had a great time.. Elder  Lor  (well I guess now it's Sam)... he came back for the big hmong sports festival they have here.. Him and all his family came and it was really good to see him again! He was the companion I had just a few month ago... and he is already back ha ha! but it was really weird seeing him as not a missionary. We spent the day with him playing sports and then some people came to the church and played volleyball with us, we also went to the hmong flee market and bought some boba tea's... they're really good. The sports festival wasn't  until Saturday, so we had a good week of work! We are working allot with less active and recent converts as well, we want to get them back to church and teach their non member family members. The work is progressing slowly but surely.

The return of Sam.....Elder Lor

 

"Playing" Basketball on the 4th

So I guess for me the highlight of the week was the sports tournament. I'll tell you a little bit about it... so it's a annual sports tournament they host in Minnesota every year. It is a hmong tournament so every hmong person in the Twin cities is there pretty much ha ha!! And then there are allot that come from Wisconsin, California, Oklahoma, Colorado, and everywhere else. There are literally hundreds of Hmong people! I met a man that just came over from Laos for it so that was cool talking to him. He didn't know a lick of English but he was really good at Hmong that's for sure ha ha! I bought some stuff from him and he took a little off the price because I could speak hmong and he liked that ha ha.. so there are blessing in speaking Hmong that's for sure. :)

  

Well my companion is white as well and so it was funny because we got allot of weird looks by people like.. "what are these two white guys doing here in shirts and ties?" ha ha but we were very popular because most people know that we can speak Hmong so allot of people just wanted to talk to us.. it was really funny that's for sure. I had a cool testimony builder there about the gift of tongues... we met a white person there and he asked us if we speak hmong and I was like "yeah, I do" and he was like "oh really how long have you been studying it?" I said, "about 1 year and 1/2"  and he said, "do you understand what they say and can you speak fluently?" I was like "yeah I guess you could say that.. i mean there are still things I don't understand, but for the most part I can!" and he told me he had been studying for about 8 months and all he could do is read it and write it. I mean, Elder Hardy knew more than him and he has only studied it for 4 months, if that.. so God does help us with the language or whatever it may be. Just look at how much you know of the language and compare it to someone who is just learning by themselves without God...... its crazy.

 

So about the reunion part of the letter Elder Lor came back and Elder Thao... two of my companions who I was really close to and it was just like a missionary reunion!! It was so awesome to see them. It really helps me... that's for sure because now I'm one of the oldest and I will be the oldest hmong missionary who is fluent in hmong really for my last two transfers so its a big burden and translating allot in church because the other Elders are not capable of it yet so it's hard sometimes. Well it was a great week I hope you all have a great next week as well I love you all!

         Elder Crandall 

Elder Thao and I

Elder Lor and I

Can you say change???

Hello all my Family and friends,

It sounds like its been pretty hot in your neck of the woods. Well here its about mid 80s so not to bad yet. We had a late winter and pretty much skipped spring and went to summer! But not to bad here just massive flooding I guess up north in Minnesota! But the weather is not to bad here!

Well this past week has been great! I was on exchanges again with Elder Washburn he is a New Elder that came out 6 weeks ago about but he is really a good missionary. He is quiet and to himself and reminded me of myself at the start of my mission but now I just talk and am annoying! ha ha.... but he came to Frogtown we had a great exchange. I love getting to work with all the Elders in the District but sometime I feel like I'm always gone or I never have a consistent companion but its okay I love doing it.

 

This week we helped a member move it was good to do some service and help her out! she insisted on taking us to dinner and so she took us to a buffet and I was so not hungry and I felt like puking after the buffet.... i felt so sick. 

Its been a great week we met this kid his name is Micheal he is about 21 and we taught him on his front door step and invited him to be baptized right there! he has no Christian background but before we left we gave him a Chapter to read in the Book of Mormon and he turned around and started reading it as he went inside. Then like 10 min later he texted us and asked if there was anything else that he could read in the Book so it was really awesome.

 

So something really cool is that we are getting inactive members that haven't been to church in like 6 or 7 years to come back it's so cool to see them come back! It is as much joy as a baptism that's for sure! I have so much joy as I see them coming back to church and be involved.

On Saturday President Hawton the Branch President called me and said they need 4 Elders to go help and do confirmations because the branch had a baptisms for the dead activity at the Temple on Saturday. So we got to go, it was really cool and I loved doing Temple work..... it was really cool, then we went and ate breakfast with the Branch President and his family.. They remind me allot of our family.... they're really cool and I have developed a great relationship with them. His oldest son is going on his mission in August to Salt Lake City East mission so I was like hey  I'll take you out to lunch when I get home! so its cool!

 

Well the change is this past Friday President Clements called me and Elder Moss and was like I'm going to interrupt the fun you two are having because I know your doing a great job together. He said that Elder Hardy was getting ET (emergency transferred) to Frogtown with Me and Elder Moss was going to Minneapolis because Elder Ly is going home a transfer early on July 10th.... we don't know why but it was approved by President and he has served an honorable full mission but we will miss him dearly as well!! So it's so crazy how fast things change. Elder Hardy is now with  me.... it's crazy. I'm finishing the second half of his training as well. One thing I have come to love on my mission is change.... its the best. President Clements always says when your comfortable you stop progressing and it's so true....I'm just gonna have to figure out a way to keep changing the rest of my life! Well I love you all and hope you have a great week.... stay cool! 

Oh also, we are all excited for the big Hmong tournament this Saturday. Its the j-4 tournament, its a Hmong sports tournament that allot of people go to from around the country. We are excited.... this will be my second time to that and I will send pictures of it next week.

 love you all.

       love,

               Elder Crandall