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