The Office and Prophet

Family and Friends,

Since last week I wrote on Thursday a lot has happened since then, let me recap.

BAPTISMS

That's right plural. On Friday we baptized Doris and Spencer and it was such a good experience. Doris started listening to the missionaries 3 weeks before her baptism, 3 weeks! She was so prepared, she was giddy with excitement on her baptism it was so cool to see her face light up. Elders Thompson, Putt, and Marcucci sang a really good song for the baptism and that brought in the spirit super well. They each take a part like the melody, harmony and bass and it sounds so good those guys are legends. I will attach pictures of those. I really didn't do much for their conversions but I was able to teach them quite a bit.

PRESIDENT NELSON

On Saturday, like I mentioned we were blessed to be able to hear the prophet not once but twice. In the afternoon with all the missionaries and at night with all the members. So cool.

Before it started while we were waiting Elder Sanchez asked me what my favorite chapter in the Book of Mormon was and I said Chapters 11-29 in 3rd Nephi and then when the prophet stood up he started speaking about the chapters one after another talking about the importance of this being Joseph's land of inheritance.

At night he surprised the country when he dismissed his translator and spoke in Spanish about the importance of keeping the commandments, going to the temple, and paying your tithing.

If you haven't seen the picture yet I will just explain that I had a very unfortunate seat where I could not see the prophet at all while he was speaking I could only hear him, which I could not have been bummed about but I was just thinking "who cares, I am in the same room as the prophet" and then it was so cool to see him standing 10 feet in front of me as he was exiting the building. It was only for a short minute but boy was I on cloud 9. 

We also gave a ticket to Doris so she could go see him that Saturday night, that was a blessing in its self.

HISTORICAL MISSION NEWS

Because I am in the office I get to know exciting things sooner than I would otherwise. So, president walked out of his office and announced that this next transfer (next week) we are going to open up a new zone! The cool part is, Elder Thompson and Elder Marcucci (both of my really good friends) are going to open it and be the zone leaders.

I am so blessed to be a missionary.

I pray for all you guys every day.

Talks to listen/read this week "it is not good that man be alone" BYU speech.

Love you all,

Elder Craythorne

La Angostura and General Conference

Family,

GOOD NEWS last week I said that President Nelson is coming to Lima on the 20th of this month but sadly we were not going to be able to go, well that changed!! For this conference with the prophet there will be 5 missions in total, if your mission says the word "Lima" you're invited. North, East, South, West and Central. Needless to say we were ecstatic to receive the news. Also, this means I will be in the same room as the prophet and Elder Sprehn! Whether I will be able to talk to either of those 2 men is another story that we will yet to find out.

OTHER GOOD NEWS I also mentioned that we would not be able to watch all of general conference if any, that also changed and we watched the 2 general sessions on Saturday. I am sure everyone is anxiously waiting for January 2019 for 2 hour church. I really like the principle emphasized about the gospel being centered on living it in the home and backed up by the resources and classes in the church buildings and organizations. Both the Saturday sessions were amazing. If there were any other changes on Sunday, I am just know figuring out in this time to email.

But no matter how cool general conference is as a missionary I will never be able to adequately explain to my investigators how amazing of an experience it really is. This whole week we really wanted to focus on the importance of living day prophets explaining principles like "if we lived at the time of Moses and he was going to give a talk, surely we would all do everything in our part to go listen. We testify that today there is someone who holds the same office that Moses held" stuff like that. Yet, I still don't even know how many of our investigators saw it because we won't be able to verify until we have a lesson.

That German Shepherd joke was a classic.

Another setback to watching general conference was that this weekend was elections here in Peru. That wasn't too fun. Yesterday we spent all day in our house, we couldn't leave.

NEWS As far as the work goes we had a pretty good week this week. A few weeks ago we found a girl named Carolina, she is 20 years old and her dad just barely died a week before we had taught her so she was really sad. She has basically no family or friends here in Ica so our first priority was to get her connected with the YSA. Here in Ica I am noticing we have the difficulty of finding a lot of news but very rarely do they ever progress or do we ever have a second lesson with them. Carolina on the other hand has been a little more receptive and she even brought her 10 year old niece to listen to our message. I'll keep you posted next week on if we are able to get her to go to church. That and this month there are a lot of different conferences like general conference, this week is stake conference, next week they are going to retransmit the Sunday session of general conference. So in total, we will have one sacrament meeting in all of October.

MORE GOOD NEWS We have a lot of fun Elder Jennings and I, we are always laughing about something. I'm not gonna lie gringos are pretty cool.

I still have yet to find the way of working efficiently in this huge area. We have an investigator (well I have never met her) but she lives 45 minutes away so we would have to set aside like 2 hours alone just to go teach her. I had the idea of maybe choosing specific days that we can go proselyte and teach in each of our zones.

GREAT NEWS One of the highlights this week was that Familia Leon way back from Pamplona sent me letters, it was super fun to hear from them not gonna lie made me tear up a little bit ha ha. Nikson is still a beast going to church all the time, Ericka is also going every now and then but the others were brutally honest saying that have deactivated I think they mean gone inactive but whatever ha ha.

I hope you all understand and cherish how blessed we are to be in such a time where we can listen to such classy men like a prophet. I have no doubt he is called of God. And hey, who can complain about 2 hour church.

Next week sí o sí I will send pictures. I have seen a lot of things picture worthy but I never have my camera. I'll make the effort this week.

CON MUCHO AMOR

Elder Kreyton

La Angostura and the one with the monkey

Dear Family,

I don't know how but I have always forgotten to mention two major things that will take place in the month of October. As everyone knows this week is general conference, so I am going to have to ask that you don't send any spoilers because it just so happens this weekend are the Peruvian Elections and since there are rumors of those getting kind of crazy we are not allowed to leave our apartments at all on Sunday, neither will they have meetings on Saturday or Sunday to watch General Conference.

Also, I was just kidding about the spoilers, our president told us to "buckle up" for more changes.

The other news is that on the 20th of this month the prophet is going to come to Peru!! AND all the missionaries in Lima are invited... as of 2 weeks ago I am no longer in Lima.  So that is kind of a bummer.

We had a cool experience on my first week here. So the transfers were crazy and in order to make sure everyone gets where they need to be on time they sometimes get phones to be able to communicate. While all that was going down one of my programs in my district was left without a phone. And we didn't know what day we were going to have district meeting and they only way to tell them was by going over and knocking on their door. So the zone leaders call us like a half hour before the meeting to tell us to go and find where they live and bring them to the meeting, but we had no clue where they lived. We had to leave immediately, said a prayer to somehow get us there and started heading in the right direction. Made some phone calls to see if anyone knew where they lived but they only told us street names that we didn't know and things like "3 blocks to the left 2 blocks up cross the street there's a black dog in front of a white house with 2 stories and half a block up" and by some miracle we actually got there, A TRUE MIRACLE, only to realize they had assumed that the district meeting was that day and they were already on their way out.

We had our multi zone conference on Thursday and it was good like always. We watched that one "Life vest" video that explains what goes around comes around as all these people do random acts of kindness in the street. I really like that video. We also talked about really being grateful for the small blessings we receive. Then on Friday some members had bought us breakfast and we stopped by a gas station where one of our investigators works and she gave us a free drink and snacks. I said to Elder Jennings "wow everyone has been so nice today" and I realized that it was now our turn to go out and do something nice. I imagined a secret camera that was filming us waiting for us to do an act of kindness like "hey when these white guys gonna do their part?"

Yes, we met another pet monkey.

We also had interviews on Friday with President Richey which was also the same old same old, he is really calm and fun to talk to. He makes you feel like no matter what the numbers say that you are doing a good job.

Like I said before, I cannot wait for general conference!! We are so blessed to live with prophets. I hope you all tune in this weekend.

Love you all,

Elder Craythorne

Pictures from La Huacachina

Los Lomas to Ica

Dear Family,

Let me start off with an apology, I was planning on doing a voice recording because of the mass content of things I wanted to go over but I left it back at the house. (cara palma)

For those of you who have it marked on your calendars you will know that this week was transfers, that's why I'm writing on Tuesday. Sad to say I am no longer in Las Lomas Pachacamac. I have left Elder Bustillo and the ward and the elders and all my friends and the entire Lima zone and am now in the south. My new area is La Angostura in Ica. After traveling from 6 am to 4.30 pm I was greeted by my new companion, Elder Jennings from Phoenix Arizona. If you look on google for Ica (which I already know my mom is) you will see a lot of sand dunes and little towns in the midst of them and the most touristy spot is the Huacachina which is a literal guess of how you spell that, but the Huacachina is an Oasis in the middle of this blubbery sweaty blistering hot desert. The air here is dryer but not like it is in Utah but not near as humid as Lima. Good to get a change of scenery. On the long bus ride here I was with a Sister Legaspi from the Philippines (never did learn how to spell that) and she is going to Nazca, which is still 3 to 4 hours south of where I am. Still technically in my zone just because Nazca doesn't have enough missionaries to be a zone of its own. I will be here as district leader.

AND even crazier news is that the new assistant to the president is Elder Limao, my trainer! I was so excited to hear that he will do such a good job.

BUT no matter how crazy and exciting the transfers were it still has no where near the joy of baptizing Javier on Saturday. The baptismal service was probably one of the best and most attended. The YSA put it all together and invited everyone and it was very spiritual.

Love you all,

Elder Craythorne

Transfer Day

Dear Dad,

So I am sure you want to know everything I can tell you about my new transfer. My new companion is Elder Jennings from Phoenix, he is 20, just barely got out of training doesn't know that much Español but we will work out that. I didn't think I would ever get a gringo comp again because of something President Richey said about learning Spanish so there should always be a gringo with a Latino, (bee movie) "but that's life".

My new area is in Ica, far far away from Lima, it was a 6 hour transit. From 6:00 to 10:00 am  I was going through all of Lima picking up and dropping off Elders to different areas. Ica is hot. Super hot. And summer hasn't even started yet... We are surrounded by sand dunes which is pretty sick actually. I will try to learn a little bit more about it for next week because this is only my second day. Just Google it and you'll get a pretty good idea, it was pretty weird to see a few more gringos down here as tourists.

One thing I am excited about is to meet the Bishop, someone told me his son is serving a mission in Ogden, today after P Day I will go talk to him and find out a little more.

I didn't spend a lot of time writing on the keyboard this week for transfers but I do have a lot of pictures

Love you,

Elder Craythorne

Las Lomas and Happy 94th Birthday to Pres. Nelson

Dear Family,

As you will see from the pictures, we went to the temple again. It was really good as always, we are leaving the cold season so it was getting a little warmer. And of course we had to go to Subway after and you can bet your best dollar I got that chicken bacon ranch melt, AND I remembered to take a picture.

The day before while we were walking in the street I found 10 soles, so I decided to buy my companion his first Subway. No regrets there.

Something funny happened this week, well I thought it was funny but there are two parts to the back story. The Elders in my district had 5 baptism interviews I needed to do this week. The other part is that it is really common here when I am in the street we can pass by a group of people and they can be drunk or sober but the girls in the group will start calling "gringo!" they might whistle or whatever but I just have to keep walking. They say this because people aren't used to blonde and blue eyes guys. Anyways, so I am in the interview with the 11 year old of the family and in the middle of no where she blurts out "can you baptize me?" caught me off guard and I said that whoever she wanted could baptize her, so she said "yeah I want you to do it". Then I am talking with the 18 year old daughter and at the end of it all she asks "When do I decided who baptizes me?" I said whenever but soon and she goes "I think I want you to baptize me". Then we get to the mom and I asked her "who do you want to baptize you?" and she says "well I guess whoever baptizes my daughters". So I could have 3 baptisms this week but we won't have time because the baptism for Javier is at the exact same time. Ha ha just because I'm gringo. 

On Friday we had intercambios with the zone leaders in their area which was super green might I add, but at night we had planned another Family Home Evening with the youth, not a ton of people came but it was well populated and we had good participation. We taught about the affects of becoming used to sin. We used to thing where you have to put your hands in freezing cold water for a minute and then try to pick up rice, because of the numbness of their hands it made it very difficult. The same goes with people who are so used to their sinful lives that even if they are baptized it makes it hard for them to feel the spirit. Then to top it all off we played the charades app on their smart phones.

This week will be good as we will be able to baptize Javier, his progression has been unbelievable and he is so ready.

I love and pray for all of you thanks for everything.

Elder Craythorne

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