Hello Family!

 Well this week has definitely been a good one. We have had a great week and have had a ton of fun this week as well. 

this past week we have been working really hard... we recently picked up an older man who has allot of good questions. First we taught him the Plan of Salvation because he wanted to know where we went after death, because he currently goes to a different church and his church doesn't tell him anything like that. The pastor just goes up and starts talking and that's it so it was really cool. He is really concerned about his salvation and at the end of that lesson he came up with the concern of how does he know which church is the true church? He was confused why there are many churches these days, so it was really cool and we are really excited for him.

Wowwwwwwwwwww!!! looks like the farewell's went really well and it looks like allot of people showed up! It's great to see some pictures of everyone back home and it looks like your all doing really well. I just wished I could have been there to see them but that's okay i'll be there for their homecomings. I feel so blessed to have such a great family and great siblings to look up to and to support me. Also great friends which always support and help me each time I have a trial or challenged placed before me. 
I can't believe they're already going out on there missions.... that means time is winding down for me:(  it has been the best experience I have ever had and I wouldn't trade my mission for anything. I have truly grown to love the hmong people and am so blessed to know them. They are amazing people who I just stand in awe of when I hear their stories and the things that they have gone through.

Pictures of Markel and Hunter's Farewell

 
I think the most important thing I have obtained on my mission is charity and to have Christ like love for everyone. I know before I was a missionary I didn't have charity. I was selfish and it was all about me... but now that my conversion has deepened and that my views have changed in life and I have become a spiritual son of God and I have experience joy everyday of my mission and it is because of charity and because I continue to press forward and serve the Lord. Here is a really cool quote I like and I will leave it with you it is by Elder Worthlin:
"There is one word that frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is LOVE" 
I hope we all will have Christ like love/charity and help each other out through service or whatever it may be.

Love you all, 
        Elder Crandall

Hi family!

Well another week has passed by. I bet all of you are experiencing some warmer weather.. Last week wasn't to bad we were at about 35 degrees one day which was nice and the snow started to melt but we woke up today and it was snowing so we still got winter here ha ha.
 
This week we went on exchange blitz and I got to work with Elder Meyer and Elder Lor. It was super good to work with Elder Lor again. We are finding new people and there are allot of people who we realize are in the middle of religion.... they except everything as truth so they take a little from Buddhism and some Christianity and some from shamanism so it's difficult to tell them that there is only one way and it is through Christ and through this church. I have realized that other religions are good, they just don't have the full truth. I was talking to a Buddhist priest and he was explaining more to me about their religion and stuff and I really like how they meditate and things like that. You know I find some truth in them but it's sad that they don't see that there is a place where they can experience the fullness of the truth which is through this church....so that's some of the struggles, getting people to recognize that.

This week I have had a really cool experience.. so the beginning of this starts out when I was back in the MTC and there were two sisters there that me and my companion were really close to because one of them was native Hmong and she was dating a member in the branch here. She would help us with Hmong and tell me about Minnesota...through the MTC we became really close and great friends.. and just this past week her father passed away which is a terrible thing to have happen while on a mission in Taiwan so she came home early and the funeral was actually up in Wisconsin, in a city about 1 hr from the Twin Cities. She got released actually by the one of the Stake Presidents here in St. Paul and on Sunday she came to the Stake Conference we had and it was the weirdest but coolest feeling in the world. it is weird because when I knew her, I didn't know hmong ha ha and now my hmong isn't to bad ha ha!! I just really loved seeing her and it was great!! 


On Saturday me and Elder Angeles had to translate the Saturday night session of Stake Conference and he doesn't know much hmong... I let him try but I pretty much translated for 2 hours straight.. afterwards.... oh man I was drained and my head hurt so bad from translating all those big words that hmong doesn't have in their language but it was good.... well the work is picking up here. President has challenged us all since its March Madness to have 55 baptisms in the month of March and if our mission get 55 baptisms then he said we could soak him in Gatorade. We are all zealously working hard for that.. oh and also today was transfers and nothing happened so we will all be the same after this transfer. This will be 9 months straight in Minneapolis so here we go!!!!! Well we also found out we will be getting two more hmong Elders in May as well so I possibly might be training again which I'm excited to do. I really like training, its been an awesome experience and love doing it!!   


Well that's the week for me. Hope you all have a great week and are a little warmer than here.... love ya!

Love always,
          Elder Crandall

Hello

Wow what a crazy week it sounds like back home..... I mean first off Courtnie had her baby which is so awesome! I will have a new buddy to play with when I get back!! So congrats to you Courtnie and Dillon. Also my two siblings are getting all ready to head out to be amazing missionaries!! I have thought alot about my best friend Connor too this week. He has really been an example to me and always been a brother and someone there for me! I'm grateful for his example and for the love/charity he has for me... 

Lets see for me, I have had a great week it started off really good. We had Zone Conference which I always love!! It was a long one... from 8:30 in the morning until 5, so it was nice and long.... for some reason after those I'm like drained spiritually, mentally, physically you name it. But it's also where I feel like I receive so much revelation for me and for the area! So it was a great start to the week. This conference we have been focused on baptism. Our mission seemed to be focusing to much on good numbers rather than baptisms, so we refocused our purpose as missionaries and are seeing a dramatic change in the mission. Last week we had 29 date sets in the mission this week President told us it has jumped to 52 dates sets in just one week.... so we are all repenting and being better at our purpose as missionaries.

This week me and my companion found some new people who we are excited to teach. the first one is a single mother who is 24 or so and has one kid. She comes from a Shaman family and knows absolutely nothing about God or Jesus Christ. So it's a long and slow process but it has been good it has taught me how to teach simple..... I mean really simple!!! ha ha but it has been a great experience. She came to church this Sunday as well so we were excited for that and are ready to baptize her!!!!!!

We also found an older couple who is in there 50 or 60 they go to a different church right now, but they are having a hard time there because every Sunday they have to pay 50 dollars each just to go to church. Its pretty crazy!! So we taught them about our church and shared the Restoration with them. Its a bit hard and its all in hmong and I pretty much have to give the whole lesson because my companion is still new to the language.... but he is learning fast!! He is really quiet so I do all the talking...I feel like a girl because I talk so much!!! ha ha jk.

Well the highlight of my week was.....I had to give a talk in Church I'm sure most of you have heard the recording but if not you probably will soon haha.. thanks mom!! :) Anyway, the second counselor of our branch called me Saturday morning and asked if I could give a talk on Sunday about enduring to the end...I mean it's an easy subject but it was in Hmong and I was the concluding speaker so I was a bit nervous!! but as I got up there I only had my note card and my notes to tell me what to talk about and I just started "flappin" my jaw.... kinda like my dad does at the store when he talks to people!!! ha ha but it was about a 20 min talk! I was quite surprised I could talk that long in Hmong ha ha but it was a testimony builder and awesome experience. I think I'm finally feeling fluent in Hmong.... soo for those that are going to be learning a new language don't get discouraged because you can't speak or understand.... because I'm now almost 15 months out and starting to feel fluent so no worries it takes allot of time, practice, work, and faith so keep pressing forward. 

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

Love always,

Elder Crandall 

Hello Family!

Well this week has been pretty good. We were not in our area for two day again this week because on Wednesday we went to the new missionary training meeting in Bloomington. It's where we all go back and President gives a training to the new missionaries. It was really good, I remember when I went to mine... it was virtually the same but it was really good.... it lasted all day, it went from 8:45 in the morning till 5 in the afternoon! Man, meetings that long are killer!! I was so tired from that though.

 
Right after that we went on exchanges, I went with Elder Abbott and my companion went with Elder Abbott's companion. It was really good to have someone who could speak Hmong too instead of just me! ha ha but we just blitzed St. Paul so we weren't even in our area but it was good! We helped out the Frogtown Elders area allot so it was fun. 
This week we met some new people...we met this older lady who has a daughter who is 20 and she was like whooooa you guys speak Hmong really good and she told my companion that he should marry her! It was super funny to see my companions facial expression because I forgot to tell him that Hmong people do that allot because we can speak Hmong so well!! It was really funny because I just remembered my first experience like that!

 
We have allot of good experiences out here but on Sunday it was the Mission Presidents fireside. We took Yer's two twin nieces they're both 18  and are really awesome!  but right now as far as the work is going we are just finding new people we are trying to focusing on families. We have found a couple of families, we just need to go back and teach them.

 
This week was really weird, just because we weren't in our area for a 2 days but it was all good and I really like being with Elder Abbott! Me and him get along really well and it was really nice to work with him again. 
We were talking about how us Hmong missionaries are so lucky because there is no other mission that you stay around the same few Elders for as long as we do. We are like brothers and we know that we have all been called here for a reason and that our friendships will last after our mission as well! 

So its been a good week had allot of great times except for my camera broke so y'all wont be getting pictures for a little while.... while I get it all fixed... sorry about that but I hope you all have a great week this week.

Love,

Elder Crandall

Hi there!

Well week two down of training.... its been a good experience so far but I am going to have to say, I have never been so tired in my life until now!! ha ha it takes everything out of you physically, spiritually and mentally but its been a great time and we have had some good times already!

 
It looks like they had a great time at the temple this week as well, just wished I could have been there but i'm very grateful to see pictures and to hear about the experience they both looked really good, and hunter had a nice tie on.  ha ha!! 

     

This week was kinda weird, we didn't work in our area for 2 full day but we had a great week! Thursday we had district meeting and it was really good and after that we just stayed in St. Paul and did an exchange blitz with Elder Abbott and his companion Elder Meyer. I went with Elder Meyer, he is a good missionary....actually he is really good! We had a good time we had allot of miracles together, we met allot of new people for them! It's fun to work with different missionaries.

On Friday we went to the AP's area and did an exchange biltz and stayed the night there. I went with Elder Johnson, he is a great Elder, I have never worked around him before but we got along really well and it was a great experience. We had some fun times and we taught some cool people. We were teaching this African American guy he had a strong accent so I asked him where he was from and he was like I'm from Accra, Ghana! I was like, "ahh no way that's sweet my brother is going to be a missionary there!" he was pretty excited too and started talking about Ghana, he was really nice! I think Hunter will really like the People of Ghana! 
But that was that experience...we had a really good time bonding with other missionaries!

This week we saw Yer a member of the branch open her mission call, it was really exciting! She is going to the Philippines and she is really excited. she is the only member of her family and her mom was mad at her and was kinda giving her a lecture about it....I felt really bad I tried to talked to her mom and help calm her and comfort her, but I just felt really bad and had such compassion for Yer and such respect for her as she has to deal with allot of opposition in her family. I just wished I could help more!! 

We had a fun experience!!! We gave Johnny a hair cut....well Yer did and we supervised ha ha!!! Johnny is the young man me and my trainer found and was baptized last year. He is a really funny kid who wants to serve a mission.... he sat by me in sacrament meeting and was like "what do I need to do to be an Elder like you?" I told him "you need a hair cut man!" and he was determined to get one that day! So we gave him one after church it was really funny!!.. 

That's about it for me I hope you all have a great week I love you all!! 

Elder Crandall
  p.s here are some pictures! enjoy!

Nyob Zoo Tsev Neeg‏‏

Hello Everyone.. 

I hope you all enjoyed the super bowl without me ha ha!! I had a fantastic week!    

Well first things first, at the start of the week we got the transfer calls as you all know and then Tuesday it was mine and Elder Ly's last day together which is always a bummer to say goodbye to a companion.  We had to wake up the next morning and get straight to the Mission Home for transfers. The people who were training had a training meeting before transfers took place. Elder Thao left as well and man I'm really going to miss him! We were so close and had a great friendship, and this is his last transfer so I won't see him until probably after my mission. So after everyone got their companions, all the Trainers had to stay in Bloomington and go work around the mission home for about 4 hours while President went and got the new missionaries from the Airport. We had to be back at the Mission Home at 5 and that's when they told us who we were training. 

During the meeting it went like this......they set the chairs up facing each other and all the new missionaries sit on one side and the trainers on the other side... so we were looking at each other... then they introduce the new missionaries and they gave a little explanation about themselves and then they announce who will be training who! so it's really intense ha ha.......

My new companion is Elder Angeles, he is from Las Vegas, Nevada and is 24. He has a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science so he is really smart!! He is also half Filipino! He is really quiet and reminds me of myself before my mission, but because I think I have changed.... we are complete opposites.... but we get along well!! 

The first night right after we picked them up we went straight to an appointment to an older Hmong couple.. I think he thought we would go home and unpack but we just went straight to an appointment. The next day it was about -18 outside and I was like "ready to go tracking Elder?" I think he was a little surprised we were going tracking in -18 degrees.... but I'm trying to work our hardest so that he will know how to work for the rest of his mission. I think this experience of training a new missionary has been really good for me, it is going to teach me how to be a better dad in raising my kids, for example by letting them fail and learning from it and help then help them correct it.

This week has been so exhausting because the new missionaries come out and are unsure of what to do, so you're the one doing most of the stuff, but it shows the new missionary what kind of missionary you are. I think the biggest thing that I could do for him is for me to always have a great attitude toward everything! It really hit me how that can be such an impact on them....last night all our plans fell through and I was kinda having a rough night because my pen exploded in my shirt pocket. and he said to me "your not having a good day are you?" and I said "no, but that's okay because that just means tomorrow will be better!" and later that night when we got home, he asked me why I have such a positive attitude when things are hard and it's just not your day? I told him,"if we have faith in Christ, there is never bad moments in life because the next moments will always be better and we will always get through our trials". So it was a testimony builder to me that our attitude in life is so important for us all and if we all have faith in our Savior there is no need to get down in life when he has suffered everything for us. 

Well I love you all! I think this is the happiest time on my mission so far!! 

Love you all, have a great week.
Love always,
Elder Crandall    

P.s. sorry for not sending pictures but I will next week... we haven't had enough time to take any!! love yall

Well this was a good week.... we didn't have anything new really but there is some exciting news because today was transfers...this morning we were super excited to get the call!! President told me that I will be staying in Minneapolis and be training a new missionary and I'm so excited for this opportunity! I feel real growth will come from this time of my mission and it is going to be great as we learn together. I am also scared to train....it is allot of responsibility as it sets that missionary up for the rest of his mission, and perhaps the rest of his life. 
I am reminded of something that Joseph smith said. He said: " the Lord calls us in our weaknesses but he does qualify us for his work". I am going to be relying on my Heavenly Father every step of the way.
 
Well I'm sure you all heard the news about dad and his broken ankle. I think this will give him time to catch up on basketball and all that good stuff....even his History channel he likes to watch.
 
We were also excited to hear that President is opening up two new hmong areas in Wisconsin that will be half hmong work and half english work, so Elder Ly, my companion is going to Wisconsin and another Elder will be going there as well and all the new missionaries will be trained here in the Twin cities. 

We had a huge ice/ snow storm this week and we couldn't drive that day so we walked about 7 miles helping people.... I was so exhausted after that but it was a great opportunity to do service for others.

There isn't much this week to talk about but next week starts a whole new adventure and a whole new journey as a missionary. I just can't believe how fast time is going by and why is it going so fast?? I want time to slow down so I can stay here longer!!!!
 
The work is going well though and we are picking up new people and are really excited for them. We have many oportunities to find and get new people which is great. I'm excited too as we have a great week planned for the new missionaries and are getting so excited for them.

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


Love,
Elder Crandall