The Office

Dear Family,

Three Brazilians and and Columbian walk into the Peru Lima South Mission Office.... sounds like the start to a bad joke but thats what we got Monday morning which we were not expecting. But at the end it was fun, we bought Little Ceasar's and then they were super tired and our room was a mess so I took them back to our house so they could sleep and I cleaned, I felt like a housekeeping because they were all speaking Portuguese and I was the minority who was didn't understand a thing.

This week was pretty tiring waking up in the middle of the night to take missionaries to the airport, waking up at 5 to get to the office and set everything up the works. It was really refreshing Wednesday to get out and proselyte.

Other than that not too much has changed. We have been helping out the new office elders because they do not know their area at all. But it is good, gives us a new start to put down some good goals.

My notes from this week are from a talk called To Be and Not to Seem. and President Oaks' talk

To be and not to seem.

Vanity it is, to wish to live long, and to be careless to live well.

There is no easy formula for that contest of priorities. However, I have never known of a man who looked back on his working life and said, “I just didn’t spend enough time with my job.”

Temple Trip a couple of weeks ago

Love all you guys,

Elder Craythorne

The Office and Bye-Bye Elder Usevitch and Bravo

Dear Family,

We had another amazing week. Thank you all for the birthday wishes and a huge shout out to my parents and siblings for the cards that had all the reasons why they love me (awwww) if anyone asks that was definitely the highlight.

I hope you all enjoyed general conference as much as I did.

Mainly this week was so good because of the people we taught. Tuesday night we were out proselyting and out of nowhere a man walks up and asks when he can meet with us to which we responded “tomorrow works” and we told him we would be at the chapel because that's where the mission office is. And we really didn’t think too much of it. But wouldn’t you guess it, we get to the office at 8:30 and he showed up at 9. Inocente Garcia, Ino for short. He brought a bag with him with all the stuff he attempted to prove to us he had been baptized in Chile, we readily believed him. He had a Book of Mormon, pictures from his baptism, liahonas, teachings of the prophet and his baptismal certificate. He then explained his life and how the gospel blessed him but he moved back to Peru met with his family and stopped going to church. He told us how he was hopeless and all we did was listen we figured that was what this man needed. It was a really good experience and he got teary on several occasions in that one hour. At the end of it all I am not sure who needed it most, him or us. A real tender blessing from the Lord.

Later that day we finally had a return appointment with Vanessa, an investigator we taught 2 Sundays ago. Turns out she is really interested. We also found her grandma who has quite the hyperactive personality super funny and we quickly hit it off. In the lesson we focused mostly on the Book of Mormon and at the end we extended the baptismal invitation to which the grandma abruptly said no but Vanessa was super excited. Eventually we had to be fairly direct and we asked “Even if God himself told you this is true, you wouldn’t be baptized?” she thought about that for awhile and you could tell she was just wrestling with the idea of being in a church for about 70 years and just decide to go to another church. A really good lesson.

Something I have been really working against as a financial secretary would be just the fact that as I am punching in rent or reimbursements it isn´t the most spiritual experience ever. And from 10 to 5 and sometimes later I am just zoned in on my computer grinding away, in comparison with other moments in my mission where all my attention was on my investigators. But I cannot lie, we have a lot of privileges I wouldn’t have otherwise, namely: working this close to the mission president, sometimes getting taken out to eat, the office computers to write and skype home. So in a nutshell it could be described as “you can´t win ‘em all”

Anyone who accidentally missed a couple of general conference sessions I would definitely recommend Becky Craven’s talk from Saturday morning, Dallin H Oaks and President Nelson’s from the Priesthood Session, David P Homers and well maybe just all of them.

I love you all so much, thanks for praying for me I can truly feel your support.

Elder Craythorne

Squad pics