Email: Week#15 in Paraguay

Hi,

Things are super well here. I am just now thinking that is it crazy that June is almost here! It is crazy that Lindsay graduated from everything, but too bad I wasn't able to make it.  

Well, so for this week was pretty interesting. The beginning started out pretty well. We placed out two fechas (dates for baptism) on two families. First, with Maria Echague. She is the mom of two kids who already baptized. We are working with her to get animated for her baptism. She said she has more time and works less now so she is thinking about baptism. We put it as June 7th, so we will see what happens with her. Next, there is Maria Ortiz. Remember we put a fecha with them a long time ago? Well now they are finally attending church so they can progress towards baptism. She also told us her kids are wanting to be baptized too, so that is super awesome. We are going to visit them again a few times this week so that she feels ready and knows everything necessary. 

Our other progressing investigator is Moises. He is only here in Piquete on the weekends so we can't  see him very often, but he is the best investigator ever. We really need to get working with him on the weekends. We want to help him progress and take the step as fast as we can get it done. We also are teaching the son of Hermana Bogado, she has a son that is 8 so we are working to get him baptized, just need to reactive the family first because they are a bit inactive! Ah, so also we are still teaching Raquel. She is starting to walk more, but can't attend church yet. She can't take a bus and is afraid to ake a motorcycle because she was in an accident with one. No one has cars, but she wants to attend. That really is the only way she can progress, so we hope we can find a way to accomidate her. So that is really everyone who is at the top of our list. We are contacting and teaching a lot more, but not much has come out of anyone else yet. But all is well. We have been pretty blessed already!

Today for Pday we played a soccer game with all the missionaries and we all hung out at the church together. It was super fun to be with them all. Ah, so yesterday was my companions birthday. He turned 21. We don't have any money right now to celebrate haha, so we didn't do much, but once we get money this weekend we will totally party it out. Yesterday, it rained a lot. The paraguayans have fear of rain and cold, so because of that, no one came to church yesterday. Last week we had an attendance of 84, yesterday only 29 people came! It was crazy. We don't joke when we say that they don't like the rain haha. It is starting to be super cold. We are freezing at night, it is strange like we are in another country haha. I am so used to sweating like crazy all day.

Ah, so what happened that was interesting thsi week that I forgot to say... that on Friday I went to immigrations to sign to be legal for a longer time... I ended up waiting 6 hours in the office and took a bus for 3 hours total only to find out that they messed up the papers and I have to come back another day, so I basically just wasted a whole day doing nothing, so that kinda stunk a lot.

Well... I hope all is well over there and I sent some pictures out today.

Elder Crandall

Email: Week#14 in Paraguay

 Hi,

So this week we were able to visit a lot of people and contact a lot more. We have been working a lot this week with Raquel. She has a bit of a hard time coming to church and all because she is in a wheelchair,
but she told us she wants to go and that her sister would come with her and take her. So that is pretty awesome. It was great last time because she started to pray more! It was great.

So we also worked with Moises. He is the boyfriend of a member in our ward. He lives here on the weekends. So we were able to teach him and he is pretty awesome. He already has a testimony of the church, so it was pretty cool. Also, we have been visiting Hermana Echague. Her two kids are baptized and are super awesome. We have been working on reactivating them and now we are teaching the mom and helping her get ready to take the steps to baptism.

Also we were able to do divisions with the assistents of the mission this week!! There are two missionaries who are basically the President's helpers. So I was a bit afraid at first that things would be super hard with them, but I really enjoyed it. They are super awesome. One of the assistents, Elder Day, is also from Mesa, Arizona. He went out to Higley High School, that was pretty cool.

When we are out on the street, we usually teach out the principles of faith, repentance, baptism, the holy ghost, and persevering. We try to talk and gain their confidence. The only other American place I have been to is McDonalds. The food servings are a lot smaller. And something different is that they only serve Coke for a soda, nothing else.

Love you guys!

Elder Crandall

Elder Crandall with Hermana Owen who went to the same high school as him.

Email: Week#13 in Paraguay

Hi!

I was super happy yesterday because I was able to talk with all you guys. It was super awesome. I am just thinking of how much time will pass when we talk again. I will have a year in the mission. It is crazy. But I am excited already to do it haha. But hearing those things made me happy and I am glad that you are happy with what I am doing, it makes me want to work harder. But I really want to give you thanks for everything because you do a lot and I never really give you enough appreciation, but you are awesome and I am super happy to hear that you had a great Mother's Day.

So I am out here with my new companion, Elder Sanchez, from Peru, as I told you guys yesterday. He knows like no English at all but he told me he wants me to teach him, so every once in a while when we do Language Study that's what we can work on haha. he is super awesome, I love that he has a lots of desires to work hard. It helps me a lot. I have already learned a lot from him. We work almost the whole day. It is a bit harder to work now because it gets pitch black at 6pm now, so not a lot of people are out.

So on Wednesday, we found a family, the Bogado family. They have a son who they want to get baptized, we went and taught them and all went well. However, we found out that the grandma died just recently, so we will have to wait a bit because she is super sad about her loss and doesn't want to talk to anyone. 

Also, we found a new investigator that is super awesome. His name is Adrianne. He is a friend of Yenifer Del Puerto. One day we were contacting and we asked if they knew anyone who we could teach. They told us the Del Puerto family. I laughed after and told my companion that they were super active. So we just visited them anyway, but we found Yenifer who was with her friend from school who was interested in the missionary discussions, so we taught him about the Plan of Salvation. He told us he enjoyed it, so that was super awesome. I will have to update you guys on him later when we visit him tomorrow.

We also were contacting and found someone named Raquel Gonsalez. She just moved there, but she was in an accident with a motorcycle while standing around, she was hit. It really messed up her leg and she is in a wheelchair recovering now. She is really receptive to our messages and a really nice person. We visited her twice so far this week.

Hmm... we also did another service project for Hermana Viana, but I already told you guys about that haha. It is pretty fun to use my matchete around. I will have to keep it and take it home with me if I can hahaha. It is pretty cool.

But yeah, we are contacting a lot and more and coming out with more lessons to people we find in the street. It is helping me out a lot with teaching and making contact with other people on the street. I am enjoying the time I have to learn more and be out in the mission field.

Chao, les amo!

Elder Crandall

Elder Crandall with his new companion Elder Sanchez from Peru

I asked Elder Crandall about the name tags in this picture he sent us and he said, " I made it haha. I also made the Papi Correa one.Some young-in in my ward gave me the idea to do it. So one day my comp Elder Correa and I went into a meeting with our nametags like that and everyone laughed hahaha." Elder Mago was a nickname, Elder Crandall's ward gave him and Elder Papi Correa was a nickname the ward gave his companion.

Skype Call with Elder Crandall on Mother's Day!

On Mother's Day, Elder Crandall got to Skype with his family for exactly an hour and 4 minutes! What a joy it was to see Elder Crandall so happy. Elder Crandall showed off his amazing Spanish skills, said two phrases in Guarani, and was very smiley and happy! We couldn't be more proud of our sweet missionary! 

Email: Week#12 in Paraguay

Hi,

So the big news is that Elder Correa is getting transferred! He is heading off to the area Concepcion. I will be staying for another change (6 weeks) with a new companion. I will be in Piquete Cue again with an Elder Sanchez, who is from Peru. I have heard some pretty good things about him. So I will have to lead him and do everything because he will be new to the area and not know where anyone lives or anything. He has either 6 or 7 months in the mission now. But I get another latin companion! 

This week was pretty interesting. We started out pretty bad because both my companion and I were super sick. So the first of the week was pretty bad, so we didn't work too much. But later that week, we had the fireside that we were preparing so long for. We, as a ward, rented out a bus and went to the fireside. The bus was so super packed, we could barely move! It was super awesome that we were able to get so many people to come out with us. The members brought a lot of investigators, it made us happy. The fireside was pretty good, it was Elder Wilhelm. So the next day, it was crazy. We left about 6.30 in the morning to Luque (our stake center) and there we waited until Elder Wilhelm came. Then, we listened to them speak... for 5 hours! It was super crazy we had to wait sooo long for them to finish talking. Once it was finally over, we went back to our areas. Then, this saturday, we had honestly one of the best baptisms ever. So there is someone in the ward next to mine, who there is someone named Fran Torres. He is on a mission and his companion is the son of the mission presidents! So Fran's mom and brother got baptized, there the President came too. He brought over his laptop to skype so Fran could see the baptism! It was awesome. The best part was when Fran bore his testimony to them, everyone was crying because it was such a special moment, and the spirit was something so strong. I really loved that baptism.

Well, that is all. I will let you know how my next comp is next week!

Love, Elder Crandall