The Office, Thanksgiving and Happy Birthday to Easton

Dear Family,

Like I mentioned last week, turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy and stuffing are not at all popular here in Peru, but it was celebrated with a lot of stressful breakdowns as we had the entire mission come up to Lima again for another devotional with Elder Falabela. That is 186 missionaries who all need reimbursements and money to go back home. And I(the mission) paid for all their lunches.

Let me tell you a little more how Thanksgiving was super stressful. We bought chicken for everyone but the place showed up an hour late and everyone was getting antsy, even Elder Falabela. So we kept calling and calling and they didn't answer and then in the midst of all the chaos a guy from our apartment rides by on a bike and shouts, "Hey the floor above you flooded, and your floor flooded, and the floor below you flooded".. That was pretty fun. We couldn't do anything about it because we were waiting for the pollo but eventually we got back to look at the damage and there was hardly any damage or sign of a flood, but the girl next door got hit slightly hard so she stuck her head in to look at our room and she goes "wow nothing happened to you guys" and we said "its because we go to church" and left.

BLESSINGS OF THE OFFICE

On Thursday after the first training with Elder Falabela he had another meeting that we were in charge of with all the recent converts in Lima! It was so cool. Of course not everyone came but it was so good to see the Mateo Family again after a year, we also saw members from Pamplona and Las Lomas. So cool and really only a privilege from being in the office so it has its perks haha.

HELPING HANDS

Today for service we cleaned garbage at the beach with those yellow jerseys so the picture is from us returning.

Quote for this week 

We should not feel we need to be perfect to be ‘all in’ Latter-day Saints.

Time is flying it is so weird.

Elder Craythorne

The Office and Thanksgiving

Family,

I hope everyone is doing well.  I am on the downside of fighting off a man cold and I was losing that battle for a long time haha.  Don't tell my mom though because she doesn't believe in "man colds". Everytime I get sick in my mission doing normal things are just so much harder but as soon as I leave to proselyte or teach I can't feel anything its awesome, like Airborne but on steroids jacked on the spirit. Then we get home and I feel like I got ran over by a bus again.  This coming week is sure to be a huge blessing, we are having the area president Falabela come to our mission on Thursday and Friday to speak with the whole mission. So for my Thanksgiving I will be eating a Pollo a la Brasa instead of the traditional American Turkey. Either way I am blessed.

My studies this week have lead me back again and again to being grateful for all things. I am pretty sure lds.org is doing that on purpose and not just because this Thursday is where we stuff ourselves so much we can't walk up the stairs but also because I really want to exert myself to be more grateful. I have watched probably 30 times that one video "think to thank" and also "in the spirit of thanksgiving" where that one guy says "donuts and muffins" #throwback to young mens. I also had these good quotes I wanted to share.

 

President Gordon B. Hinckley taught that the more often a person says thank you, the happier he will be

An excellent way to express gratitude is by giving sincere praise. Praise lifts both the giver and the receiver. Mark Twain said, “I can live for two months on a good compliment,” and most of us feel the same way.

This week Lazaro and Lieti are in Cuba getting married so we can get them baptized.

I hope you all have a wonderful week and an awesome Thanksgiving.

Last quote I want to end on. God trusts us to do our part, and live our lives.

God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gives to man the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that man might know the joys and glories of creation.

Love you all,

I love my mission,

Elder Craythorne

The Office

Family

Just in case you are reading through this quickly only to look at my pictures the one I have attached is of today (Saturday) this morning when we had to wake up early and run to the office for something. On our way a Venezuelan lady called us over asking for some help she said she just wanted us to stand guard at her little Tamale Cart while she went and took something to her daughter. She said she wouldn't be long so we said yes. Thus lead to me yelling "RICO TAMALE 2 SOLES" to everyone who passed by. Elder Peregrino thought that was pretty funny so he stole a picture for me.

The other picture is from all the people that were originally in the office and the people they were training.

MIRACLES

This week we really wanted to get to know the ward well. We went to visit a family Negrete and they gave us a reference to Cecilia and as we were walking out we ran into her on the street not knowing it was her we contacted her. She is really awesome and super prepared so we decided to start praying for her everyday. She actually called the Negrete Family and confirmed the appointment for today at 5. Sad news is we learned she is in the other area... But we are on the same team so no harm no foul.

SHOUT OUT

Tomorrow is my mom's birthday and those who know her know what a blessing she is. A literal superhero in my eyes. I don't want to say too much because I know she will start crying but I want you to know mom that I really love you so much.

Thanks for everything, I am not sure if I should include our office shenanigans in these emails because other than that not a ton happens around here.

Love you all,

Elder Craythorne

The Office and the first time dealing with transfers

Family,

Shout out to Ryker and his 18th Birthday!  He is so lucky to be a future missionary.

To start off explaining the picture and the subject, this week was transfers which means no sleep as a secretary. It was a cool/wierd experience to see the elders who were ending their missions (but that is hard not to be homesick with them) and then on the other side of things to see the brand new missionaries from the MTC. It was so cool to see their faces like "what have I gotten myself into" when they found out their trainers. They have this huge map of the mission and they take their picture by their new area so Elder Kirby and I thought it would be funny to take a picture next to us pointing to the office so thats what that is and boy does it look like the camera filled my cheeks with marshmallows but whatever

Also! We just barely got back from the temple so that was fun as always but you aren't going to see any different pictures from the last 5 times going haha. Always a blessing.

FAMILY SEARCH

So I was messing around on Family search and decided to see how far back I could go (Adam and Eve) but I realized that in the 13th century the last name Crathorn just comes from a town and the Duke who was in charge of it was called William de Crathorn and his dad's name was Le Teuler so Elder Plada the AP has been calling me Elder Le Teuler this whole week. I need to do more work.

Love you guys so much, sorry this letter is so short P Day ran long.

Elder Craythorne

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