The importance of Family Home Evening 29 de Dezembro 2014

Good morning!

     I hope all of you are happy and satisfied with your Christmas holiday this last week. I know I am! It was so good to see, talk, and laugh with my family again. All the missionaries had to be home at 7, so we spent the rest of the night playing scum, which got to be pretty funny. There were a few rounds where I went from scum to king then back to scum in just 3 or 4 plays. I guess it was just luck... or lack of it.

     This week, it was a challenge because everybody is travelling or on vacation for the Holidays, so knocking doors didn´t reap much success for us. We did, however, meet a lady who had received the missionaries at her house many many years ago, and told us that she wanted us to stop by her mom´s house to visit (because she lives really far away, but spends most days at her mom´s). We managed to stop by on Christmas eve and talk about the gospel over some delicious home made bread. She agreed to stop by the church on Saturday to attend the Christmas activity, but Sunday, unfortunately, she had another commitment. She actually made it to the activity and watched a baptismal service with her boyfriend, who is also receiving the missionaries in another area. 

     We also held a family home evening with a less active family this week. We showed the movie: ``Only A Stonecutter´´ and discussed the importance of enduring to the end no matter what the circumstances. It was really neat to see the home be filled with the spirit, and to see the understanding light up in the eyes of the children and parents. On Sunday, every member of the family made it to church! It was so good to see them all there, smiling and happy to be in attendance. Family Home Evening gives us strength during the week that will help us make better decisions and unite us as a family!

     Other than that, the work continues on. I hope you all have a great New Years. I love you, and see you soon!

Elder Crapo

Telefone Tony 22 de Dezembro 2104

Family and Friends! Merry Christmas!

     There is so much to say and so little time to say it! I´ve been transferred to another state entirely! I´m now in the city of Teófilo Otoni in the state of Minas Gerais. The name is really weird and hard to pronounce, so when the greenies try to say it, it just comes out something like ``Telefone Tony´´, which I find hilarious. It´s found in the interior of the state, north of Espirito Santo, which means that if you thought it was hot in my other area...welcome to the devil´s oven. And we´re not at all close to the ocean, so there´s no breeze, and there are lots and lots of hills.  It´s weight losing time!!! What saves us from wasting away is the food. Mineiro seasoning is so so so good! We end up eating quite a bit.The area is actually really beautiful with all the green hills, too. There´s a ton of German and Italian influence here,  so it´s like a blend of the three cultures: Brazilian, German, and Italian.  I love it!

 

     I´m with a new companion, Elder Barroso! He´s from Manaus, which is a really developed city located in the middle of the Amazons! How cool is that? I really like working with him, he´s a great missionary and helps me out so much! In short, I´m incredibly blessed and happy with how transfers turned out.

  

     We have an investigator named Ibis who has a baptismal date marked for Sunday, so wish us luck. Or just wish us the spirit. That´s much more effective. Love you all, and see you soon!

Elder Crapo

Rainy days and Mondays...15 de Dezembro 2014

Good Morning!

    ``Iiiiiiits thaaaaaaaat time of year, when the world falls in...´´

...puddles of mud, because it´s the rainy season here in Brazil.

 I think I remember sending a similar e-mail exactly one year ago, which said something like, ``Either it´s blazing hot, or it´s raining it´s guts out.´´ Some things never change.

     I hope you all had a great week full of happy christmas preparations! This week, we had our branch christmas dinner, and they asked me to choose a song to sing a few days before. I decided to use Josh Groban´s version of ``I´ll be home for christmas´´, and in the parts where the soldiers give shout-outs to their family and friends, I read selections from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland´s talk: Christmas Within You. Go read it, it´s good! https://www.lds.org/liahona/2012/12/christmas-within-you?lang=eng

     So, I guess I left out some important information in the last e-mail. I didn´t put the date I would be going home! I only realized this after we finished e-mailing, but when I remembered, I thought, ``My family is going to go crazy.´´ Sorry! I´ll be leaving from Vitória on March 17, and probably won´t arrive in Salt Lake until the 18th. The exact times, I don´t know yet, but I´ll probably receive all the itty-bitty info here in a few weeks. I´ll keep y´all posted. Now to go hunting for a green tie...

     In other news...I´ll be transferred tomorrow! This transfer was only 5 weeks because the church doesn´t buy plane tickets within a week of christmas, so they cut this transfer short, and the next transfer will be 7 weeks long. So...I have no idea where I´ll be spending my christmas.

     That´s it for this week, folks! Love you all, and see you real soon!

Elder Crapo

Regrets and Decisions: 8 de Dezembro 2014

Feliz Natal!

     Since beginning my misssion, I´ve been impressed several times with how serving a mission is like living another mini ``life´´. Everything that applies to life applies to the mission. The day you enter the field, you are born. For those who serve in foreign countries and different cultures, ``Birth´´ is very much like starting again from actual birth. You have to learn how to speak, how to talk, how to work, etc. Then you continue through the ups and downs of life, learning as you go, until the day you return home, which is ``death´´. As you start to arrive near the end of your ``life´´, you start to thinl about everything you´ve gone through, everything you´ve done, all your mistakes, and your moments of triumph.

     This past week, I received ``The Call´´ from the mission secretary confirming the date and airport to which I´ll be going home. To other missionaries, when you get ``The Call´´, you are really really old in the mission. It´s like turning 70 years old in a life span of 80 years (or 88 years in a span of 100, to help those who have already turned 70 feel better).

     In language study recently, I´ve been studying conference talks in Portuguese from the November 2012 issue of ``The Liahona´´. Interestingly enough, I came upon President Uchtdorf´s talk entitled ``Regrets and Decisions´´ (all this will be a rough translation from portuguese to english, so bear with me) in which he talks about three common regrets that people have in life. I won´t give a complete and extensive review of the discourse, but I encourage you all to go and look it up yourselves and read it because it´s really good and ... I´ve forgotten the word in english...uhhh...it´s...enlightening? I wanted to say something like that. Just go with it. It´s great.

 

     The universal regrets are:

1. ``I would like to have spent more time witht the people I love.´´

2. ``I would like to have lived to my highest potential.´´

3. ``I would like to have allowed myself to be happier.´´

     Just as these regrets apply so well to each of us in our mortal lives, these regrets are also very real in mission life. I know I´ve come a long way, and that I have just a few short months left to take advantage of my missionary experience. I´ve already felt each one of these regrets at one point or another during my mission, but I want to be ble to ``die´´ knowing I lived this last part of my ``life´´ with no regrets!

     I know that Christ lives! I know we are cared for by a loving Father in Heaven. I know that the Book of Mormon is not just a book full of fairy tales, fables, and war stories. These people actually lived and their words are true. I love the gospel, and I love my mission. I love all of you and thank you for all your love, support and prayers. I´ll see y´all soon!

Elder Crapo

1 de Dezembro, 2014

Hello!

     I wanted to change the way I start these e-mails, but I´m lacking creativity today, so the ``hello´´ will have to do for now. :)

     This week was full of surprises! President Young showed up at our door one morning to interview my companion, and then asked to speak with me for a bit after. He asked me how everything´s going at home, with my companion, in the work, etc. It was good to just sit and talk and learn for a few minutes. President Young is really a great teacher.

     Thankfully, we got a break from the sun this week and got a little rain intead. A blessing and a curse, as it cooled everything down, but hurt our church attendance big time. Brazilians hate doing anything but sleep when it rains. Me, too, but you know...missionary life.

     It was also Elder F. Lima´s birthday on Friday, but we got surprise cakes on Wednesday, Friday, two on Saturday, and one more yesterday. I´ve had enough cake to last me a long while.

     We found a man named Paulo the other day, who recognized us as ``The Mormons´´, but admited that he doesn´t know anything about our religeon. We taught him about the restoration, and he said he liked it and agrees with a lot that we taught. He told us that he´d pray, and we´ll see what happens.

     Love you all so much, and I´ll see you soon!

Elder Crapo

24 de Novembro 2014

Family and Friends!

     Now I know why this area is called ``Terra Vermelha´´. Terra (which means earth or dirt) because of all the dirt roads, and Vermelha (which is red) because of the color you turn after one day´s work here. The sun is HOT!!! Y´all are receiving an e-mail from a human tomato today. Okay, let´s get going on our week:

     The people in our area are really receptive. Really, though. One day we managed to get in 10 visits! That was just one day, and we got tons of addresses, too! Even if it´s just for a few minutes, we´re getting more ´yes´s than ´no´s these days. We found one 13 year old (who seems 17 years old. Seriously, the kids here grow so fast!) named Jenilson at his house, and his friend who was there is a member of our church. He let us in, and has been receiving the lessons really well, and his parents are really receptive, too. He couldn´t make it to church yesterday because they had family over from São Paulo, and they don´t get to see each other very often, but next Sunday the whole family wants to make a visit.

 

      As for Scarlet, she still doesn´t want to be baptized yet. She´s been reading and praying, but there´s still something holding her back. We also found another 14 year old boy named Gabriel who´s mom received the missionaries a long time ago, and even made it to church a few times, but wasn´t baptized. We haven´t met her yet, but Gabriel really liked learning more about the Restoration. It made him think about a lot of things he´d never thought about before.

 

     Just plugging along as usual. We had zone meeting this week, and the zone leaders asked me to pull a Crapo and sing a solo the day of. It went well. I´ll send you the zone picture. We´ll see if y´all can manage to recognize me. Love you tons, and see you soon!

Elder Crapo

Terra Vermelha 17 de Novembro 2014

Family and Friends,

     The first week in a new area always seems longer, and it seems like forever since I´ve heared from home.

     I´ve been transfered to the Vila Velha zone (everyone´s favorite zone in the mission, and I don´t mean that sarcastically.) serving with Elder F. Lima (I know, another Elder Lima. I think I´ll give my first son the middle name Lima.) in Terra Vermelha. It´s a growing branch right next to the ocean. But really, you can see the ocean from our balcony. Any time we have to catch the bus we get to see some pretty incredible views. The branch members are really animated, and I can tell it´s going to be a great transfer! Yestrday, we managed to bring 17 year old Scarlet to church, and we found a man named Marcos who was contacted by the missionaries 15 years ago in Vitória, but disappeared. 

     My studies have ended up on the topic of humility a lot these days. I always thought the first step to spiritual development was faith, but in studying this week, I learned that the first element for spiritual growth is actually humility, and to have something as basic and simple as even faith, we have to first humble ourselves to beleive and act in Christ, accept the words of the prophets, repent, and so on and so forth. It´s through humility that God prepares the hearts of men to receive His word and be converted. Whether men will humble themselves or be compelled by God to be humble is up to the individual. Alma teaches us, ``...Blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble; or rather, in other words, blessed is he that believeth in the word of God (...) without being brought to know the word, or even compelled to know, before they will believe.´´ [Alma 32:16]

     I´ve been compelled many many times on my mission to be humble. and I know it´s because the Lord loves me and wants me to have humility that I might grow. However, I know it would have been better to learn from others and humble myself instead of waiting for the Lord to compel me. That´s what I´m trying to apply in my work now. I invite you all to apply it, too! Love you all and see you soon!

love,

Elder Crapo