Las Lomas Week 2

Dear Family,

We had a really good week as always here in Las Lomas. Little by little I am getting used to the area. This week we had exchanges so I was able to lead a little in my new area. Usually it takes 2 to 3 weeks for me to get really familiar with an area. One thing I thought was really cool was that Elder Styler's companion, Elder Patiño, is 27 years old! He was baptized 2 and a half years ago and he is the only member in his family. Talk about motivation.

The pictures from this week are from the service that we did on Thursday, the same thing we did last week where we took out a mountain. Yes, we already made the joke that faith can move mountains.

For those of you who only read my emails I am sorry because most of the content is on the voice recording.

Love you all, I pray for you all the way from Peru.

Love,

Elder Craythorne

May 21st Letter

Family and Friends,

Well to start off just thought I would write something I learned about my companion this week. We were walking and talking and he told me that he had some medical problems so obviously big Spanish words I didn't understand but I pretended I understood. One time I just said "Yeah I don't know how to say that in English" and he goes "um hypertension"... Then I just sat there for a second. Yeah, he knows English almost perfectly.

The only picture I have of us is eating the bread.

Another interesting thing that happened this week, we were sitting in sacrament waiting for it to start and in walks Daniel, a Venezuelan member who was assisting Solidaridad when I was there. If any of you can remember back far enough to when we starting teaching Richard, well that was a referral we got from Daniel, he moved here a couple of months ago.

I also met Kevin finally. Kevin. He is hard to describe. He is a 14 year old member, and he is crazy. He is very very VERY energetic and a huge fan of gringos. Every time we see him he always runs up and gives me a hug and kisses my arm and then he tries to steal my wallet, so you gotta be careful with him. If I can ever sit him down long enough to take a picture you guys will be the first to receive it.

We had another Family Home Evening last night where we sort of roasted the 2 less active families who were there, no fault of our own. The bishop had told us to give a message by Ronald A. Rasband November 2016 called "So you don't forget" or something like that again I am translating. We had talked about the difficulties we as humans have to remember and how easy it is to forget. Of course the topic was directed to tell the less actives that they needed to come to take the sacrament to be able to remember the sacrifice for our sins. Apparently, we were not to sly in how we went about teaching it and the less actives had caught on to what we were trying to teach.

In other news, it took me 5 hours to eat lunch on Saturday.  That bread is from Cuzco and no we did not eat all of it.  

Hope you all have a great week.

Love,

Elder Craythorne

Pamplona to Las Lomas

Dear Family,

This letter might be short because I just barely talked to my family on Sunday but I guess I still have a lot to share considering transfers came and went. Both Elder Huanca and I got the boot out of Pamplona and a new Elder will train in that area. I hope my investigators and recent converts still get visited (haha nervous laugh).

Now I am in Las Lomas Pachacamac and it is huge. Actually that was my second impression my first impression of the area was that my area is on the beach. I can hear the waves and I smell the salt and fish of the ocean. That also means there is so much more sand and dirt. In my old area it was desert and mountains and this area is just desert and beach, very little difference. The houses are all the same but you will see that from the pictures.

My first day here we were able to teach Dionicio who is just a very simple and broken man. He feels super alone and well he is. He has no family, he has a house but he never goes inside because he thinks someone will steal his motor taxi so that's where he sleeps and everything. He is kind of crazy but I like him. I can see his eagerness to become closer to God.

We also had a Family Home Evening where a sister shared with us this letter as if it were from Heavenly Father. I know its not what he said or anywhere close to sufficiently accurate but I think it can help our humanly understanding of our parting. And bear (bare?) with me because I am translating. And you can change it to say "daughter" if you want.

"I remember very well the day that we walked together to cross the veil to send you on this new adventure on your earthly mission. The tears that surfaced in my eyes when I dressed you with your spirit with your coat of love and I sent you off to school.

I assure you, my son, that my thoughts are with you in this moment and will be with you because I love you with all my heart. I know your life, the good and the bad, your strengths and weaknesses even your most minuscule stressors and temptations. Remember that forever everything that I have will one day be yours if you only return home. Please son, complete your goal. In you I have put a little piece of heaven and also my hopes. You have gifts and talents, and almost more important is that you don't keep them to yourself. Share with your earthly family and put them in practice to serve others. Search for me in yourself because a little part of me is deep inside of you. If you love me, help others understand their purpose of this life and show them the path that leads to me. Don't forget that service is love and love is the base of my kingdom. Come to me, repent and be humble, be patient and strive every day to be better. You have weaknesses inside of you, I know them because I am He who placed them. Don't be upset, they are there because I love you without end and in this way you will be humble. There should be joy and hope in your life. Don't let the chains of the enemy win, in your hardest times look towards me, don't leave me.

Dear son, avoid contentions and reap peace wherever you go. It pains me to think that in your heart there might be anger or wrath. If you could see what I have prepared for you with all my love you would readily do that which would bring you closer to me. You, my son, are my hope, through you I will advance my work along. You don't have much time but you have much to do, I beg you not to waste your time. Start now. Complete your mission I gave you when you were in my presence. I will help you! Know that I am never too busy or never too far away. You don't know how anxious I am to be able to converse with you.

I have so much to tell you but I can't tell you. Talk with me son. Call me your friend. If you laugh I will laugh with you, if you cry I will dry your tears and in me you will find peace and comfort. Be diligent in the work and you will be heir to my kingdom. I give you my peace, love and blessing and the surety that I will never abandon you because I love and miss you. I trust you will return.

With all my love,

Heavenly Father."

The bishop had this idea that to unite the ward he would split it up into different groups based on the neighborhood and the separate groups could have Family Home Evenings all together. The idea is to get all the less actives reactive but until now it doesn't appear to have worked out so well.

I am super ready to work hard. It feels good to be able to look back at my efforts in my old area and see what I need to work on. I will let you know on how well I implement it.

Love,

Elder Craythorne

Dear Jason

Dear Family,

Ah I am at a lose for words. I almost started crying, almost. I don't even know what to say. That is so awesome. I have a nephew! 

Congrats to Emily and Jackson!!  Take good care of Jason for me.  To Ryker and Easton, enjoy it while you can the next 14 or so months until Jason finally gets to meet his favorite Uncle.

Similar to how it was last October and November, the people are getting really excited for the World Cup. Almost every conversation we have here it gets directed to that. They always ask me "Are you sad that the United States didn't get in?" And instead of saying "I didn't even know the United States believed in soccer" I have to pretend to know what I am talking about as I say "Yeah, I don't know what happened I think it was because we didn't have our star player (insert English name) when we played against Panama". Based off of what I have heard the first game should be the end of this month or the start of the next. I will let you know how that goes down, but based off my last experience it is bad news for missionary work.

We are working super hard out here. In my voice recoding I talked a little bit about Santiago who I still can't understand how we got that blessing.

We are still struggling a little bit with overcoming alcoholism and not just with Diomedez. We had a really good lesson with the Leon family. They are super good and we have a really good relationship with them to the point where we have some of our most spiritual lessons with them because they are so open to our counsel. They yearn to learn more about the scriptures, we focused a little more on how we(the missionaries) won't always be around and our main goal, now that they are baptized, is to teach them to fish in place of fishing for them. 5 months ago this family was way different and I am so grateful to have been here to help them.

Something else that is coming up is a probable baptism this Saturday for Katherine (also a door contact). I only say probable because I am not that sure. She has come to church plenty of times, she has friends, she passed the interview I just don't know how converted she is to the doctrine. No fault on our part nor hers but she has 2 kids who make it almost impossible to teach an entire lesson. I think the only lesson where we had 100% of her attention was when we taught the 10 commandments, every other lesson we had to either cut it short or pretend she was listening because her kids were screaming. We asked her how she feels about her baptism and she told us she felt prepared awhile ago. 

I love all you guys, I hope you enjoy the voice recording (I laugh every time I here it).

Elder Uncle Ben Craythorne

That baptismal photo is from the member family we helped out last week.

Exchanges with Elder Moreno and Elder Correa

This is Major Tom to Ground Control

Dear Family,

Not sure how many times I will mention Diomedez in my letters but in short he has been falling back into his old ways and causing the same problems in his family that previously existed. He only went 3 times to Alcoholics Anonymous. My companion and I decided that to help him out we could maintain daily contact with him, and since he doesn't have a phone that means we pass by to see how he is make sure he isn't drinking and is going to go to AA every night at 7. Well, this week was a rough one to start out with considering Friday was the only day out of all the times we passed by where he wasn't drunk. So we made 100 percent sure that he went, we even walked with him to the bus stop. I don't know if they will ever be baptized but we just have to help Diomedez quit drinking.

Yesterday we were thinking "no matter what, if Orlando doesn't come to church we have to leave him" because we have been teaching him for a long time now and he has progressed in everything except the church. Nevertheless he came! And he already had a friend in the church and I am pretty sure he had a good experience. We still don't have ward missionaries but there are a lot of members who are easy to make friends with so all we have to do is say "Hey, go sit by him."

On Saturday we had a really good Family Home Evening with an active family whose daughters are struggling a little bit with their testimonies, ages 18 and 16. So we went planning on teaching about the Book of Mormon and its importance as the keystone of our religion. We taught about the power of a testimony with an object lesson. I guess I can only speak for myself but I felt the spirit.

Yesterday was Branch Conference for the branch who shares our chapel and for some reason we had Priesthood first and the Sacrament last. And almost all of our investigators stayed for all 3 hours. It sort of helped our focus because we were thinking "Oh they have to stay for the sacrament". I guess other weeks we don't really put that much emphasis on the classes because we teach the first hour is the most important and everything. 

We are working super hard here and getting a lot of work done. I knew coming into my mission that it wouldn't be 100% happiness but I am so happy.

I relate a lot more to the story of the kid who is throwing starfish back into the ocean who has so much work to do but trying to make a difference.

I hope you all are doing well. Love you all more than I can express. Enjoy the picture from our Conference with Elder Montoya.

Love, 

Elder Craythorne

Pamplona and Las Lomas

Dear Family,

On Thursday we had a conference with Elder Montoya from the 70 and it was so good. The majority of his talk was centered on mission goals, weekly, yearly and after your mission. If we don't measure ourselves how are we ever going to know how we can improve. But he also touched on topics like the Atonement and being worthy priesthood holders. It was very spiritual and I learned a lot, Elder Montoya is a really good teacher and a good speaker. I will talk more about that later.

I have already mentioned this before but ever since the financial crisis in Venezuela the people have left to just about every country they can trying to live. So there is a large amount here in Peru and especially Lima. If I remember right then I emailed awhile ago about Wilmer who we found and now we found a new family, they actually came to the food activity. Their two sons are what you could consider to be nuts, but that is good news for me.

This morning we went hiking again, yes that same place we went 2 months ago. Its about the only thing we have here. So what I lack in words this week I will make up with the quality of pictures.

Again, I learned so much from Elder Montoya he is so easy to listen to (even in Spanish) and the whole room was silent waiting for what he had to say next. The spirit was so strong. Like I said he talked about goals, he also talked about traps we can fall into as missionaries and to stay away from any possible harm, or anything that could get in the way of our goals.

Super sorry this is a short one but enjoy the pics. I hope you all the best week and I hope you know I love you all.

Love,

Elder Craythorne

Pictures in no order:

Cactus and Elder Craythorne

Inca Head

"The Pioneers used to ride these babies for miles"

Two more points for Heaven

Dear Family,

This last Saturday we baptized Santiago and Jorge, and the service was good, not exactly because of what happened or what was said or done but the people or better said the souls who made it.

Jorge Yactayo was a baptism long in the making an investigator who started about 20 months ago. He got married on Friday, which is a miracle all on its own. His new wife is a member and they have been living together for some time now because they were waiting for papers to get married and it took a long time because he is from a little town in the jungle that almost nobody knows anything about. I have mentioned before that it is very hard to get married here in Peru as far as paperwork and blood samples go so I don't need to get into those details. So for his baptism I can't say we did much other than put together the service, he acts like a member and already knows a lot.

Santiago on the other hand means a little more to me, sure the worth of souls is great in the sight of God and no one is better than anyone else but 3 months ago it was super hot in the afternoon and we were planning to go up a little higher on the hill to contact and it was there I knocked on any old door and out walked Santiago with a big old smile "What can I help you with?" he said and here we are. He has an amazing testimony and a firm value of being early to things which made it really easy to get him to go to church. This last time when we went to the temple we decided to buy him a hymn book so he could sing along. I am so grateful I was able to help these 2 men make this eternal covenant.

I have mentioned before Diomedez and his family and all of their problems but it is really cool to teach them. They trust us a lot and we joke around a lot but they are just sort of a different type of people than ones you would see in church. And I know we are supposed to picture each of our investigators in the temple but for them it was just so weird to think about for me. They laugh a lot and are always making jokes one to another. Anyway, flash forward to yesterday and they came to church! It was a miracle! Little by little we are getting to that vision where they can one day be baptized, even though that is far off because they have to get married.

Well for my birthday, the zone will bring a cake on Wednesday to district meeting and I will bring the decorations there to celebrate. We also went to Papa Johns so it was a really good birthday week.

The elder who came in to replace Elder Macgregor, the other companionship here in Pamplona, is Elder Hatch from Arizona and he is just a salt of the earth type of guy.  He is super tall and played basketball in high school and very humble. Anyway, we get a long very well.

I just wanted to share my testimony of the small and simple things. Here we teach the acronym OLA orar leer y asister or pray read and attend. And I really know how important those 3 very small things have an impact. This week we were teaching a lesson and I needed to pull up a scripture but I have never been a wiz at that. I was trying to explain baptisms for the dead and I just thought to myself "Well I am pretty sure that's somewhere in Peter" and bam I opened right to it. STUDY YOUR SCRIPTURES.

Love,

Elder Kreyton (how they say and spell my name here)