Nyob zoo kuv tsev neeg!!

Nyob zoo kuv tsev neeg, (hello family)
Well this week has been very interesting and very great as well! This week we had Zone Conference and interviews with President Clements which is always great getting some one on one time to talk with him. 

Well First things first...I will start out with the exciting news. So this week as we had interviews I was talking with President Clements and we had a really great talk and stuff about the new missionaries coming in and he asked me this question. "How do you feel as a missionary?" I told him, "I'm doing great! I am here to do whatever God wants me to do President", and he responded saying:"okay good cause you will be training next transfer, so prepare to do that" I was like "oh man!!" I was scared at first but now I'm really excited to do it! I was the only one out of the Hmong Elders he told. In 8 days is transfers so we're all trying to predict transfers and now I know I'm at least training so that's nice but that's the exciting news!!! I will have my first son!!! (for all of you that know missionary term..ha)

As you probably all see on the news how cold it is up here!!!! We got a text from President yesterday saying to be careful because the temperature is supposed to be  -30 to -40 this week.  Yesterday it was -25 and it was so cold, you would spit on the ground and it would be frozen in like 3 seconds! So it was really interesting because I never knew what cold was like until now! ha ha. It's always a great experience though.

So this week was a little nerve racking as well! Our investigator who has a date set right now... we didn't teach him once this week. We stopped by his house and tried calling him but we could not get in contact with him. We were really worried about that and we went to church and asked our lead member friend if he had contact with him and he said he had talked to him and told us that Fong our investigator had got in a snowboarding accident and got knocked out and broke some ribs. We were a little bit happier that he had a good excuse for not being in contact with us, :) the cool thing was though that on Sunday we asked our lead member friend if he was willing to call Fong and see if he wanted to come to the fireside in which Keith Hamilton spoke. He came out from Utah and is a convert and also a good friend of Pres. Clements. Fong said he would because he felt bad he hadn't contacted us this whole week, and we were like its okay if your sore and don't feel like it.....  but he insisted on coming so he came he really enjoyed it and loved it! He is a great guy, full of love and he is really sincere. I'm so excited to keep teaching him.

We also had a really cool miracle this week as well. We have been teaching this young lady she is 18 and her dad is really really strict on letting her do things, so it's hard for her to get to church and come to activities but we decided to fast with her, us (missionaries) and some members, and so we fasted Saturday night to Sunday lunch and we fasted for God to open a way or path for her to come to church and to follow her desires. We ended the fast with a prayer all together on a conference call and right after we hung up she called us back and said that her sister was selling egg rolls and wanted to know if we wanted to buy some? We said "sure" and so we went over to her sisters house and we started talking and she asked us a few questions about missionaries because she is currently attending a different church and she was really interested in what we teach. We wanted to share a message with her then, but she was busy and so we have an appointment to teach our investigator and her older sister! We believe that this is the way that God has given to us to help her and her sister come unto him in the fullest. I was truly a miracle by fasting and prayer.

This zone conference President told us all we need to repent and become better missionaries and we talked allot about conversion as well, I know that daily repentance and mighty prayer to our God is what gains the trust of our Heavenly Father, and after we do that and endure the trials of our faith.... that is when the miracles will happen in our lives. 

This week has been great, I hope you all enjoy these stories.

I also got a email from a good friend K.J Hall he is a great kid and someone who I look up to as well, as he is someone who follows the Savior and is a great example for others! I'm so blessed to have a wonderful family and friends.  

I love you all and hope you all have a great week.

Love always,
                -Elder Crandall
           

Hey Family!

Hello family!
How are you all doing? Minnesota is going great. I hope you are all staying warm now that it seems like winter is actually here!! Here in Minnesota its been -10 degrees for the past 3 or 4 days.... it has been bitter cold out tracking but its been a great experience!

One trait I have learned from my mission is your attitude matters!! President Clements trained us on this about 3 months ago.... he said our mission is where we will learn how to be successful in life, if we have a positive attitude we will be successful in life. There is a cool thing that I have learned that I want to share with you all it's the word PACE.
Positive 
Attitude 
Changes
Everything
As we pace ourself in life and apply this to us then we will never have a bad moment. It has been great as I have applied this in my life now and how my views change on everything and how I conduct myself. My favorite talk is the talk President Uchtdorf gave this General Conference "Of Regrets and Resolutions" 
Here in life it's short and we need to cherish every moment. He talks about how we always look at the end of our journey's or whatever we go and we end up missing out on the experience of the journey because we are so focused on the end of it.
 
Anyway just some thoughts I have been thinking about lately. I hope you all live life without regrets. As my uncle's always say "NO REGRETS"!! I really have applied that and I feel like there is no reason for us to regret if we always have a positive attitude and look at the happy moments in life!


The work here is going great. We are finding allot of new people that seem committed and have real potential. I found that as I look at the person as what they can become rather than what they are now, it changes the whole lesson or whatever it may be. We should all take that upon ourselves as Pres. Monson has instructed us to do! I'm so grateful for my mission and the growth and the happiness it brings to me and to other people. I love sharing my testimony about our Savior Jesus Christ and growing closer to him every day.  As we share our testimonies with others our conversion deepens and it's our conversion that sustains us in life's trials. I encourage all of you to deepen your testimony and share it with someone this week, I promise it will help them out and your faith will grow!

We are teaching a man, he is 21.  He is so devoted to Christ. He is currently attending a different church but he is an active seeker.... he came to church yesterday and he loved it. He is the youngest son and he is worried his family won't understand. We compared his circumstance to Nephi and that he will be the tool that will bring his family to the gospel and it solved his concern and he is doing so great! I get along with him really well.... he loves basketball and sports so we talk a little about that! 


It is really funny... we are teaching all YSA aged young women so about in there 20's and all the other missionaries make fun of us and our Branch President..... but it's so weird every house we knock on it is always a young women we meet..... it so weird I don't know why. The work is picking up and we are really excited we have had a great week.

So the 21 year old kid, we shared the Plan of Salvation with him and he just told us "I never have learned about this, nobody at my church teaches anything like this". He has word of wisdom problem but we committed him to live the word of wisdom and he said yes without hesitation he was like, "I know this will help me." i just have really felt so blessed to teach such awesome people and to know such great people I really love the mission and the work that is going on right now. We teach a scriptures study class every Sunday and it has been great. I love teaching to them and teaching in general. I feel I learn so much as I teach. 

I'm grateful for all of you and I really love you all and thank you for the support you have given me so far!

Have a great week and love ya!
                    -Elder Crandall

Hello Family!

Well its been a cold week here but its been really great I had allot of spiritual uplifting experiences this week. The only downfall is I'm catching a cold, so hopefully I get over that quickly!
 
Well first things first.... We went ice fishing on Tuesday and it was really fun... but so bitter cold!! We didn't really catch anything but we played football on the ice though and it was really fun.... the ice was super thick! People had there trucks and stuff out in the middle of the lake. That was a fun part of the week.

We went on two exchanges this week. The first one was on Wednesday with Elder Abbott. He came over here to Minneapolis and we had a great time together! We had a great talk and we stayed up until 12 30 and just talked.... it was fun but I never want to do it again.  I was so tired ha ha but we just talked about how we know that we were called to be hmong missionaries for a reason....because we are usually with the same missionaries all the time, we don't move around much and we create a really special bond with the other hmong missionaries and that we believe that these bonds will last though out our lives and not just the mission. We see the English missionaries always moving around and don't really get allot of time to create that bond so it has been a blessing and we just talked about how we will all be there for each other even after the mission and still have that bond.
 
The next exchange was with our zone leaders. I went with Elder Checketts from Bountiful Utah. He is a really great guy.... we have gone on 2 or 3 exchanges before so it was fun working with him again, he showed me allot of great and useful tips. It was so much fun and I always receive so much revelation when I go with him, its awesome. He taught me a perfect definition for joy....  Joy is knowing that you and God are in an acceptable relationship.....it was a great exchange.


We have recently found this young man he is about 24 and is really awesome! He has such a great desire! When we shared the restoration, the spirit hit him so hard and after we had shared the first vision with him he was just like, "as you where saying that I prayed in my heart to know if it was true, and I believe what you guys are saying is true." So we invited him to baptism and he said yes. We also taught his dad and he said yes to baptism as well! It was awesome they go to a different church and they're like we don't understand what our pastor teaches us but when you guys teach us it makes sense. It was truly a miracle that we taught them this week.
 
Overall great week.... I hope you are all doing well and I hope you enjoy the pictures of ice fishing. 

Have a great week, I love you all!!

-Elder Crandall

Happy New Year!

Hello family and friends,
Well its been a while since ya'll heard from me, since I didn't write a letter last week. There is allot that has happened but I don't have time to write about everything so I will give you the highlights.

So first things first... we had our branch Christmas party it was really good we as missionary's sang Silent Night in Hmong it was scary ha ha!! I'm not a good singer and there were allot of people there, but it was really good. President Hugh was there. It was really good to see him and talk to him he told me to tell grandpa hi.... so yea.

i think the second thing was Christmas and Christmas eve: so for Christmas Eve we did missionary work... we went and caroled for some members and it was really fun! We went to a members house and had dinner. He is the only member in his family but it was really fun. He has a big family and we played some games with them. His sisters gave me and Elder Ly a tie for Christmas so it was a great Christmas Eve. On Christmas day we woke up opened our presents and then we went to the institute building on the campus of the University of Minnesota and played ping pong and pool with our zone leaders. It was fun! We also had two dinners that night and I though I was going to explode! I couldn't eat anymore!! The highlight was obviously talking to the family we skyped and it was a great experience! I got to see them all!!  We had fun talking and catching up on everything.

Well I have about 11 months counting January left! Time seems to go by so fast and its just not fair but I have enjoyed my mission so far and am ready for another adventure this year 2013. I think right now all the hmong Elders are just excited for the end of January because we will be receiving 3 new hmong missionary so we are all excited and looking forward to some change ha ha I have been in the Minneapolis area for 4 transfers now and I was in St. Paul for 4 transfers as well....I love the branch I am in and I'm glad i get to stay in it a long time and really get to know the members. I think it would be harder to keep moving around to different wards.I have really enjoyed staying in the same branch my whole mission.

I am now starting to feel comfortable in the language it takes a while but its now going great. I can express my deepest feelings and communicate with them really well now so it's going great.

Tomorrow is our p-day we just get to email today but tomorrow we are going ice fishing with the branch so I'm excited to go ice fishing and ready to freeze! I think tomorrow its only supposed to be 10 degrees for a high and -5 or so for the low so it will be a cold one!

I hope you all had a great Christmas and a great New Years! It's the time to set goals for ourselves and make ourselves progress in life!

Here are some recent pictures. enjoy
Love always,
                 Elder Crandall

Elder Abbott, Elder Thao, Cindy Her (member), Elder Ly, and  Me

One of the many Minnesota lakes frozen over for the winter!

Just a little modeling on the lake!

Hello!

Hello family,

How is everyone doing this fabulous time of the year and day!!
 Well not much happened here this week.  Today was transfer calls and nothing is happening to us Hmong Elders so we are staying the same. This will be my 4th transfer in Minneapolis and its been great, I love the area and the people.... so its good to stay another one!

 
 This past week two recent converts who I believe all the missionary grew really close to moved to North Carolina.... I believed that has been one of the hardest moments on my mission to see them go. I had such love and charity towards these two young girls and I just want the best for them they have brought light and joy into my life and I just hope they do well where ever they are. I never thought it would be so hard to say goodbye to people but it's super hard! I don't even want to know what the last day of the mission is like but I still have a bit....so no worries!

 Lets see.... this week we taught a young man who is about 22. He had an uncle in the church so he has been to our meetings before but he is now attending the CMA church which is probably the biggest struggle I have found on my mission is the other church they go to. There are more Hmong people that go to church I believe than do the shamanism. We taught him the restoration and focused on authority at the end he was like, "I got a question?" he said, "so what you guys are saying is my baptism didn't count or it is not valid right?".
I was like oh no we can't lose him! but we testified and taught authority again and talked about how Jesus walked 60 miles to John the baptist to be baptized. He is doing good and we are going back to teach him the Plan of Salvation because he had questions about how the way we believe in the after life!!

So this coming Saturday is our branch Christmas party! We are excited for that and we have been preparing for it and inviting allot of people too. It is going to be from 4 to 8....long for a Christmas party but we are ready and excited for that!
 I did receive the Christmas letter Clayci, thank you for writing that! it was really good and I enjoyed it so much. You do have a sense of humor don't you...I wonder where you get that from? (Grandpa Hunt) 

This past Wednesday was also our Christmas conference it was so good!! I learned allot about goals and goal setting and how to make our lives successful and how it all is learned on the mission it really hit me at that training from President Clements! 
I believe the best part of the Christmas conference was President let us watch October Sky.... oh man how I love that movie!! I totally forgot about that movie then watched it and man such a great movie!! One of my all time favorites. We also found out that the actor who plays Homer Hello family,

How is everyone doing this fabulous time of the year and day!!

 Well not much happened here this week.  Today was transfer calls and nothing is happening to us Hmong Elders so we are staying the same. This will be my 4th transfer in Minneapolis and its been great, I love the area and the people.... so its good to stay another one!

 

 This past week two recent converts who I believe all the missionary grew really close to moved to North Carolina.... I believed that has been one of the hardest moments on my mission to see them go. I had such love and charity towards these two young girls and I just want the best for them they have brought light and joy into my life and I just hope they do well where ever they are. I never thought it would be so hard to say goodbye to people but its super hard! I don't even want to know what the last day of the mission is like but I still have a bit.... so no worries!

 Lets see.... this week we taught a young man who is about 22. He had an uncle in the church so he has been to our meetings before but he is now attending the CMA church which is probably the biggest struggle I have found on my mission is the other church they go to. There are more Hmong people that go to church I believe than do the shamanism. We taught him the restoration and focused on authority at the end he was like, "I got a question?" he said, "so what you guys are saying is my baptism didn't count or it is not valid right?".

I was like oh no we cant lose him! but we testified and taught authority again and talked about how Jesus walked 60 miles to John the baptist to be baptized. He is doing good and we are going back to teach him the plan of salvation because he had questions about how the way we believe in the after life!!

So this coming Saturday is our branch Christmas party! We are excited for that and we have been preparing for it and inviting allot of people too. It is going to be from 4 to 8....long for a Christmas party but we are ready and excited for that!

 I did receive the Christmas letter Clayci, thank you for writing that! it was really good and I enjoyed it so much. You do have a sense of humor don't you...I wonder where you get that from? (Grandpa Hunt) 

This past Wednesday was also our Christmas conference it was so good!! I learned allot about goals and goal setting and how to make our lives successful and how it all is learned on the mission it really hit me at that training from President Clements! 

I believe the best part of the Christmas conference was President let us watch October Sky.... oh man how I love that movie!! I totally forgot about that movie then watched it and man such a great movie!! one of my all time favorites. We also found out that the actor who plays Homer Hickem lives by the Mission Home.... kinda cool.

From the shootings in Connecticut and the Myan calendar thing we have been getting allot of questions of the end of the wold and all that!! Members asking us about the Second Coming too. Other than that this week has been pretty normal and fun, allot of weird questions that we have been asked week ha ha!!

That's about it from Minnesota talk to you all later (SIB NTSIB DUA)

love 

Elder Crandall

Can you believe all this snow?

Elder Ly and I taking a break

Oh shoot....this is not good!

Ice skating!

December 10, 2012

Hello everyone!
Well I have finally got my taste of winter here! If you all haven't seen on the news well we have about 2 feet of snow that we got all in one day and today it was 4 degrees and tonight its supposed to be -19 so here we go into the cold for about 4 months ha ha!

 This week was a great week for me and Elder Ly. We had allot of success and taught allot of people. We set a date with a girl so we are excited for that now and hopefully we don't get transferred ha ha! Some of you may wonder how many Hmong areas there are in the mission, well right now there are only two Minneapolis and St. Paul but there are 2 areas in Wisconsin but no Hmong missionaries are there. President is giving it a rest for a while. Hopefully sometime during my mission i will get to go outside of the twin cities but I like the cities, it's fun and exciting.

Lets see I'm sure all of you by now saw our singing we did.... Well it was pretty cool! I think ha ha!! but you all probably got a good laugh out of it and that's what it was intended for!!
  
For our Christmas gift that we are giving to President this year, every missionary had to record them reading a chapter of the Book of Mormon then the AP's are putting it on a cd and giving it to them. Its a cool gift. I had to read 2 Nephi chapter 15... its an Isaiah chapter so it was fun!! 
This week is our Christmas training and party thing. We are excited to here from President Clements and be with all the other missionaries.
 
Well let me tell you all about our experience with the snow.. so here when the road are bad we aren't allowed to drive. We have to keep the gas half full at least all the time to prevent the gas line freezing and we have to wash the car 2 times a month. So it's allot and I have to drive until the end of December because President said the person who has had the most experience driving in snow needs to drive until the end of the month and my companion is from California.... so yeah I won by default!! :)  but anyways.. yesterday we got about 2 feet of snow and it was insane we had to walk every where. We just went out and helped people shovel. We walked for about 3 or 4 miles and it took us from 2 to 7 to do just that! It was so exhausting but fun! It was a big storm that's for sure!! Walking in snow up to my knees but we had fun!! 


Well i hope all of you are staying warm and are having a great Christmas season! Love you all!! 
Love,
Elder Crandall

December 3, 2012

Hola Familia (Nyob Zoo kuv tsev neeg)‏

Well let see here.... this coming week is my year mark and it doesn't seem real!!
First of all I always thought that day would never come and look.... now it's right around the corner.  Lately I keep saying to myself that missionary life is normal life and I don't remember what the other life is like, and I'm really scared to go back and worry about a job and all that stuff. But all I can say is when you serve a mission live every moment because time goes by so fast and you want to live every moment to the fullest!!

So this past week we had a good time. Me and Elder Ly set up a movie night for the YSA and youth. We got our investigators there and Less actives and we watched 17 miracles. It was so good! I love that movie. It is so inspirational and it really humbles yourself knowing that we will never have to go through those trials or struggles. Our investigators really liked it.
 
So President Clements challenged the whole mission to start reading the Book of Mormon again so we are all reading it. We read 6 pages a day and mark all the scriptures that talk about the doctrine of Christ. It's been such a awesome experience so far and so many new things pop out to you when your looking for them and studying them!

This week I also went on exchanges with Elder Abbott. It was a great time! I love working with him, he is a great missionary and we have had allot of great experiences together.
 
Since it's December and the Christmas season, when we are finding, we are sharing a Christmas message in which we read the nativity scene out of Luke to the people. Its been a great success because most hmong people don't know why everyone celebrates Christmas they just think it's another holiday but don't recognize the meaning behind it. 
i really love sharing it too its such a spiritual message that the people can feel and feel the holy spirit. So right now its going good sharing to the people about Christmas and all that fun stuff!

The work is picking up here in Minneapolis and we are getting more and more people to teach we have some people who we are trying to figure out when to baptize them. We are so grateful and excited everything is picking up. We are using our faith and really relying on the Lord to direct our paths each day in which I know for a fact that if I try doing it by myself it won't turn out as well. We always need to rely on the Lord and ask for his help. He is always willing to give it to us!! i really like the scripture in Mathew 7 about asking our father for things we need!! It's also in 3 Nephi 14 I believe.
 
Well I hope you all have a great time and stay warm!  love you!

Love always, 
Elder Crandall