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