Las Lomas

Dear Family,

This week went by really fast and we worked really hard, all that work will pay off in a couple weeks with some baptisms and this week we will be able to go to the temple again. Always a good experience.

For those who may have forgotten I am still district leader and this week we had exchanges with the elders from Floresta, those are always fun. We have really good companionship's in our district nothing to worry me too much. I also got the idea to minister a little bit so I bought stuff to make pancakes and we woke up at 5:30 to go wake them up early and make pancakes.

I will probably have another overload of pictures next week from the trip to the temple on Thursday. 

This week I listened to the BYU Speech from Liz Wizeman called "The Power of Not Knowing" and it is so good. I have noticed that people with a lot of knowledge are not necessarily wise. Actually in most cases if someone has a lot of knowledge and they don't know how to use it they just end up sounding arrogant. Don't forget to pray and read the scriptures.

Love you all,

Elder Craythorne

Las Lomas and Long Walks on the Beach

Dear Family,

Today we went and ran on the beach, so I'm hating myself right about now.

To start off let me tell you about the nightmare we had on Thursday morning. We had to be in the Office in Surco at 8, without traffic it takes 40 minutes to get there with traffic don't even try. We planned on leaving here at 6.30 to beat the traffic. I told the bus driver "puente benavides" which is a huge "puente" which is a bridge. And it is easy to know when to get off because the walls are all yellow. So at about 7.30 we hit traffic but we were still going to be able to make it because we were close. I was waiting, and waiting and waiting. We never passed the bridge. And all of a sudden we passed exit that takes us to the temple.. after mumbling some bad words between Spanish and Kechua we decided now would be a good time to get off the bus. So now we were stuck in the middle of Lima in the middle of rush hour and wayyy late to our meeting. Lets just say it took us 45 minute to get a taxi, and that was the best thing that happened to us. We then waited in immense traffic until we got to the office. I was not an happy elder.

I did get good news though, I found out that 3 of the people we started teaching in Pamplona got baptized. Remember Luis? The 13 year old whose parents wouldn't give permission for his baptism yeah he got baptized WITH his mom! I'm going to have to write him a letter.

An outstanding highlight this week, I listened to a BYU speech from Brad Wilcox called "His Grace is Sufficient" it isn't really recent and some of you may have already listened to it but holy it was soo good. I loved every analogy he used, I cannot explain how good it is. If you have listened to it, listen to it again and then maybe once more just incase you forgot a part.

With my old companion, Elder Streber, we found Juan. We taught a really good lesson about the Restoration and he was really interested in the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. But much to our surprise at the end of the lesson he asked what we thought about families as he very quietly explained that his wife had passed away 2 and a half years ago. Obviously we were aching to be able to teach him about the Plan of Salvation but we never found him until yesterday. We talked about agency and trials and finally eternal progression which is centered on families.

The only picture I have this week is of our exchanges we had with the elders from the ward Pachacamac and we played Risk. No the gringo didn't win.

I love all you guys, thanks for the prayers and the support.

Elder Craythorne

Las Lomas and I should have enjoyed hot showers more when I had them

Family,

So our water heater stopped working yesterday.

Just in case anyone was wondering we had another really really good week. The Family Home Evening with the youth was a success. In total 22 kids came! I want to do another one but I am not sure if that family wants us to do it at their house again haha 22 kids is a lot to keep under control. After we played Hot Potato and the loser had to search for a tiny M / M in a bowl of flour, I was the first loser. Kevin also lost but he didn't really understand what he was supposed to do so he just launched his head into the bowl and quickly regretted it, it didn't help that he was super sweaty because more flour stuck to his face.

I am writing a little later because we just barely got done going to the beach which is always a party. It isn't usually a temptation to swim because we can only go to the beach in the winter when its cold and we are the only ones out there. But today the sun came out and it started heating up a little bit..

Other than that it was a pretty normal week. We had exchanges with the Elders from Floresta and it was pretty fun. Yesterday I was contacting with my companion and while I was talking to a sister who was relating to us her problems a drunk guy sees us from like 4 blocks away and he starts yelling "ELDERS" anyway he came over and starting talking to my comp and I think he was trying to kiss my companion's hand but he wouldn't let him. He kind of looked like that one judge from America's Got Talent not Howie but the other one.

In my District Meeting I just did something really simple that turned out to be really good and spiritual. I gave them 3 minutes to draw a self portrait which was immediately followed by complaints a groans saying "but I can't draw". So after that it was pretty funny to see the pictures and then I asked them to draw a picture of Christ. I noticed that the attitude changed and they focused a little harder. Although the quality of the pictures didn't improve that much I told them that the same way we see Christ should not differ from how we see ourselves.

I love you all so much. Thanks for all the support and extra love for those of you who have stuck this long.

Elder Craythorne

Las Lomas and the Best Time Of My Life

Dear Family,

I can't tell you how good I feel about this week. It was so good. If you can believe it not only did we reach our goals but we (I can't think of the right word) overcame? our goals for chapel and new investigators. I feel on fire right now.  The ward has changed a ton since I got here, for the better. It actually feels like a ward now. When I first got here I think I complained about the low attendance but yesterday we had over 100. Wish I could take credit for it but I don't know what changed. I also used to complain about how all my recent converts were all young men and young women, then I realized that these are the future missionaries.

You know you are going to have a good companionship when you ask your companion what he likes to do and he says "clean" (fist pump) its incredible how much he can find to clean. So I am proud to announce that we have passed our first week together without any fights. "Chill" feels like an informal word that a missionary probably shouldn't use too much but my companion is just really chill. But not everything is all rainbows and butterflies turns out he doesn't like pizza... and even worse Star Wars. Pray for me.

This week we had a really good district meeting, don't tell the Elders but it was a repeat from a district meeting I lead in Pamplona. I wanted to explain the difficulty of teaching how to recognize the spirit. To jog your memory I gave a sweet snack to the elders and asked them to describe how it tasted without using the word "sweet". It turned out better than the first time as we made the connection to feeling and describing the spirit without using words "well its the spirit" and tasting an Oreo without saying "its sweet".

I don't know how many times I have mentioned that I have wanted to a Family Home Evening with the youth in the ward or maybe this is the first time but this Wednesday that dream will become a reality. I really wanted to focus really hard on the significance and worth of a testimony. I figured that if there was an age that was more prone to hearing negative comments about the church it would be the youth, and most of them are recent converts of a year or so. One thing our Elder's Quorum President always says when he accompanies us to visit the youth is "make sure that whatever doubt you have right now, just ask one of your leaders or the elders just to get it out of the way so it doesn't fester or canker into a cause for inactivity and give yourself more time to feel the love that comes from pure true doctrine." Roughly translated and adding some of my own words ha ha. I will let you know how it goes I think it'll be a good turn out.

Again, Ï am super happy and super content about what we were able to do this week. But I am afraid we might not be able to keep it up. We found 7 new investigators last week and most were just miracle references we got from members.

I have a strong testimony and a love for the truthfulness of this gospel. I am so humbled to be out here and so grateful God has given me this time.

Love you all,

Que tengan una buena semana.

Elder Kreyton

Transfers

Dear Family,

TRANSFERS

I am writing on Tuesday so that means that we are at the start of a new transfer. My companion Elder Streber went to Brillantes in the stake from my last area, San Gabriel and my new companion is Elder Bustillo from Honduras. Again, this is our second day together so I can't say too much. He is 23 years old, a convert to the church for 4 years. Other than that not a lot of news as far as transfers go. I'm still district leader. A lot of good elders that I knew ended their missions but that also means a lot of new ones came. In some ways the mission feels different than it was 3 months ago but in a lot of ways it is the same.

BAPTISM

This Saturday Angely got baptized, it was up in the air whether or not it would be this week because we had yet to talk about when her parents could come. On Wednesday we went and talked with her mom and we decided to do it early at 10 in the morning. 10.40 the parents never showed up which was rough for Angely but she had a lot of support from the young men and young women so it turned out to be a good experience. She decided that her friend's dad, the second counselor in the bishopric, would baptize her.

FAMILY HOME EVENING

Yesterday was the FHE again and my companion and I taught the Atonement. My companion used a visual aid that was pretty cool and super simple. He put water on a plate and said it represented sin then he ripped a little piece of a banana in the middle of it and said it was us then he explained that we need the 5 principles of the gospel and put 5 matches in the banana and then lit them. He then said that as we live the gospel we accept the Savior and put a glass cup over it which represented Jesus. The lack of oxygen for the fire caused the cup to suck all the water from the plate. Maybe I wasn't too goo at explaining it but it was simple. Then we had everyone share their testimonies about the 5 principles faith, repentance, baptism, Holy Ghost and endure to the end.

I love my mission and every opportunity I have to learn and adapt and be better. It is so fun and it is the best decision of my life.

I know this church is true. Read your Book of Mormon.

Love you all,

Elder Craythorne

Los Lomas

Dear Family,

We had a good week this week. Finally got to have our first interviews with President Richey and his wife. One thing I noticed is that they are trying super hard to learn the language. One thing president is focusing on right now is the principle of refining. So we talked a little bit about me as a district leader or as a missionary in general, he asked how I feel about the mission right now and I said "well, there are always things we can work on" to which he responded "I know what you mean by that. I've only been here 4 weeks and I already have a big stack of 'wish I had done that better's but that is the idea". I think we get caught up a lot of the time in trying to do everything perfect the first time when in reality it would take 2 or 3 or 4 or 20 tries.

We also did a TON of service this week. Helped the elder's quorum president move and re did the roof on a sister's house.

I love my mission, I know I always say that and it might sound redundant but I really do. I know every day I can wake up and work for the Lord.

Love you all,

Elder Craythorne

Los Lomas and the one with the monkey

Dear Family and Friends,

To quickly explain my subject there is a recent convert here and she found a monkey and was keeping it as a pet but then she returned it to its owner..

To celebrate the 24th of July a little bit I went outside and cleaned the windows of our apartment. Only a few of you will understand that reference.

I mentioned a while ago about Angely who is the sister of a recent convert. It is basically like teaching a member she is super good and already has a really good testimony. We are going to try and get her baptized the next week, it was going to be this week but there is a huge ward activity so we had to push it back.  

Something changed this week. You probably won't understand because it was so small but I think it changed the whole course of my mission maybe even my life. I said in my group email last week that now we have to have 10 names in the back of our planner at the end of every day. I can say that 5 days in a row I have completed it but holy cow is it difficult. I think we have talked to 60 or 70 people maybe 80. I can feel I am on the brink of something big here in this area, I think this was the change we needed, but certainly one that I needed personally. I can't say we found an extraordinary number of new people this week because when you plant a tree the fruits don't come immediately but I feel really good. I found a new definition to "giving it my all" this week.

This week I got sun burnt! For the first time in months where I have seen the sun and it just so happens that it happened on the day to do service. Every other day is cold and cloudy. I have only got one picture today and it is nothing special but it is a good representation of the average street here in Peru, well at least where I am serving and have served.

I am learning a lot out here and I can't believe time has gone by as fast as it actually has. I still have a lot to learn before I become the missionary I know I can be. In a lot of ways I am improving but mainly my testimony is one that has been solidified and pounded into what it is now.

I love being a missionary, you have no idea how happy it makes me nor how blessed it makes me feel neither how humbled I am by my calling. I feel like I have a lot of expectations for myself that still are unattended but I like feeling like I can be better.

I love all you guys and I can assure you I am happy.

Elder Craythorne

The outside world

Ceviche de Pollo