October 25, 2010 The Wild Mouse????

This week we had a lot happen. They opened up Xepón, which is part of my district, so we were helping with that, and then we had divisions all over the place to accomplish everything that needed to happen. Saturday we had a wedding, and we worked most of the time we had, running errands for them to make sure it all worked out. I didn´t take any pictures, because they had elder Robinson do it. His camera is better anyway. I found out today, unfortunately, that my screen is all messed up on mine and I have no idea how that happened. I still can kind of see half of what´s going on... enough to take a picture still. We had a fun experience riding in a "microbus", except it was on top of it, where they throw all the luggage. That was on Friday with Elder McKell. That was fun, dodging branches and holding on tight. It felt kind of like the wild mouse ride at Lagoon... only with out the walls of the car or a safety bar. :) I´m just kidding. It wasn´t quite that bad, but it does kind of paint a good picture. They had 40 people in this thing when it only holds 10. It was crazy. Other than that, not much at all has happened.

The picture with the one family, is the family of the Branch President. They are a really cool family and have helped us a lot. The other one, of the girl in the fence, was just a random girl who decided to play with us.

(When asked about Christmas ideas....)

I´ll come up with a little list of things I might want next week. My maleta broke, the smaller one, so I need to buy a duffel bag or something to fit all of my stuff in now. I´m thinking of buying a dvd player so that I can show movies to investigators and activities and stuff, but I need one that can read usb and stuff too. I´m going to be looking around for one of those. If you could maybe send me some church movies, like the one on Gordon B Hinkley and the one on Thomas S. Monson. The long Joseph Smith movie would be good too. I´d ask for The Testament too, but almost everyone has it and I don´t think I´ll ever need it. The Mountain of the Lord would be good too. I also need to buy new speakers now that I think of it... Sorry. They broke in the CCM and they finally stopped working all together. For now I´m just looking for a portable dvd player. I also found out that the rule has changed on the music. Now the rule is "anything that invites the spirit". So I´m going to want a lot of piano music and stuff. You could probably ask Nikki what she likes and you´d probably get a good idea of what I´d want. That´s all I can think of right now. Thanks for everything.

Love,

Elder Crapo.

October 18, 2010

Thanks for all the letters and love for my birthday. This week was really interesting. I made the banana bread with the cream cheese frosting for the whole zone, for my birthday, and then we had divisions on Tuesday and Wednesday. I had Elder Dority with me, while my comp was with Elder McKell. It was kind of interesting. We practically dropped all our investigators, or better put, they dropped us. It was interesting though. I learned a lot from Elder Dority. We finished that, and then the rest of the week, my comp and I have just been doing service, like always. We´ve just kind of accepted the fact that we can´t really focus on finding and baptizing. Yesterday, we spent the afternoon helping one of the nicest members we have, understand a sheet on keeping record of what you´ve read in the Book of Mormon, and explaining Lehi´s vision. It was really cool. At this time, I feel very calm about the work. I get the chance to help so many of the members, in so many ways, and I can kind of see the branch growing a little closer to each other. There has been a lot of correcting to do, so that people can stop offending one another, and it´s been interesting to see it all play out. I kind of want to stay for the end of the year, and see how things end up going here, but I doubt that will happen.

Thanks for everything. I´m attaching a picture of my notes that I took for Lehi´s vision. I love you all and will write you next week. I look forward to hearing how the Book of Mormon weekend went.

Love,

-Elder Crapo





After receiving my letter asking for more details....I got this!


I´m sorry I don´t give too many details. The truth is, I´m just REALLY slow with everything. I think a lot, and my typing isn´t very fast compared to everyone elses. Yes, this place it kind of like home in the mountains, but you find things like banana trees and the biggest variety of bugs you´ll ever see. That, and then corn fields everywhere. That´s what they live on here. It´s sad because some people say that their corn didn´t grow too well, and that they don´t know exactly how they´re going to do, during the dry season. I think I already said this but, we do live in the chapel. Our shower is dumping a bucket of cold water on your head, outside in the open, from a cement box. There are a ton of hills and mountains and there are waterfalls and streams all over the place. Our every day is usually spent helping people make tortillas or desgranando or degraining corn. Occasionally we chop wood or work in the field. My companion really wants to just teach lessons, but there aren´t investigators to teach that much. Every day is just like going on a hiking trip. We get home at 6 because there are no lights out here, and it´s dangerous. Most of that extra time is spent studying or sleeping because we're so tired from the walk. The hikes are worth it though. The place is very beautiful and I never get tired of helping people in any way I can. It´s when I feel like I´m not helping anyone, when I have problems living with myself. Every Monday and Tuesday morning, we get up at 4:30 to go to Momostenango. We ride in the back of a pickup truck with a cage to hold us in. This morning there were almost 20 people on the truck. They ride like 60 mph on dirt road. It´s freezing cold in the morning and that wind is almost too hard to bear sometimes. When we get there, we have to pry our hands off the bars and try to thaw them.

There have been a couple of times when we do our language study in the sun on some rocks near the stream. It´s very peaceful and quiet, I love it. I´ve lived off eggs and oatmeal for the past month now, with an occasional banana bread when I need it.

I´ve been changing a lot lately. In the mission, I can´t be my white (referring to personality color) little self and distance myself from any problem that comes up. I have to be actively in peoples lives and progress. I have to put my views out there and hope that I don´t cause a conflict. I have to do more than be the quiet servant in the corner, like I´m used to being. People rely on me to be outgoing, and so I´ve been doing my best to change, to be able to do that. It´s difficult though. I hope some day I can be someone who is firm, strong, uplifting, active, loving, all those things that you expect from a missionary.




Quite the bug collection....he was told NOT to bring any of these home!!!






Pictures!!!! I love pictures!!!







Branch President and Family




Little girl who wanted to play.

October 11, 2010

Well, his letter is VERY short and sweet this week. I sent a lot of extras this week since his birthday is tomorrow, but I ran into some gliches with my computer, so things were late sending and by the time he got it, time was up so this is all we get this week. I have sent a note to his companions mom, to see if I can get some details of the week from her side of things. If so, I will pass it on. If not, we will all have to wait another week. Thanks for all your love and support.


Thank you so much! I can´t say much now, because we´re over the time limit right now, but I want to say thank you to all of you and I´ll be able to respond to you next week, after I read everything. Things have been going well this week. We´ve had a lot of work to do.

October 4, 2010 He's a trainer!

So, we had changes and I´m actually not surprised at all. I saw it coming from a mile away. I´m still here and I´m training. My new comp´s name is Elder Robinson. He´s very excited and it´s always refreshing to have that fresh excitement around. He´s from Colorado and he likes to Ski. That´s about as much as I know. We haven´t really gotten to work together yet, because of the conferences we´ve had. (We had one Friday with president.) This week was basically awesome with conference and everything. It surprised me how many talks and things were about, or mentioned, missionary work. It was kind of comforting. I had a whole range of emotions during it. With elder Hollands talk, I could only think of you and dad and how much you take care of, for me, and feel a little guilty that I never earned anything for myself. I also felt really good about a lot of those talks. There was one part of one talk that pains my heart though. The one where he says something like, give me a young man who is and eagle scout, has his duty to god, and had a burning testimony of the book of Mormon, and he will be a successful missionary... I think my slacking will haunt me for the rest of my life. But, I understand that I can´t change the past, and I just need to repent and try harder from now on.

Ya, It´s really easy to pull out money from my card and buy stuff with it. I always see or find little tiny things that I think I could use, so a little extra money that´s actually mine would actually be kind of nice. So go ahead and do that if you want. I´d like it. (this was in response to the question if he wanted some extra cash in his account as part of his Christmas present)


Hunter,

I can´t believe you are getting baptized next week. You are so big now! You´re going to be so tall when I get back I won´t even recognize you. I remember when I got baptized, I wondered why we did it so early. I felt like I could never be perfect for even one day after that. But, I have learned something. Being baptized isn´t just becoming clean and free of sin. Hunter, when you become baptized, you show to Heavenly Father that you are ready to try to be like Jesus a little bit more every day; That you will do your best to do the things that he wants you to do. You will learn to do this even when it´s hard, or doesn´t seem fun, because you will learn to believe his promises that he gives you, if you follow what he says. He promises that if you try to be more like Jesus, you will be happier and have more blessings. You also get to have a friend to help tell you what Heavenly Father wants. He is the Holy Ghost. He talks to you through your heart and tells you through feelings, what you should do. If there is something you don´t want to do, ask yourself or mom or dad, why Heavenly Father wants you to do it. With every commandment, He promises special blessings. One example is, that He promises that if you read the scriptures and follow what they say, you will feel the love He has for you. Even though you will make mistakes, Heavenly Father has given you the chance to erase them every Sunday. When you take the bread and water at church, you say to Heavenly Father, "I´m still trying to be like Jesus. Please forgive me for the mistakes I made." I love you and I know you will be happy and blessed for this choice to be baptized.

Thanks for everything.

Love,

-Elder Landon Crapo

I love this beautiful message given to his little brother. Hunter hasn't seen this yet. We have decided to read it to him at his baptism as a surprise. Dad will have to read it....Mom won't make it through.