April Letters

April 22
     Hello family and friends! Another awesome week this week! Super good week! We have been teaching this family named the entinza's! They are super awesome! The dad is less active and has been his whole life so we treat his as an investigator as he doesnt remember anything from before. They have 6 kids but one passed away when he was 23. We have been teaching the 21 year old ( mario jr), kobe (14) and marlo ( 9) and the mom ( 50s)( others are younger and sit in sometimes but have a hard time focusing). They are really good and have been coming to church the last couple of weeks. We had a church tour where we talk about the different rooms and sunday school, relief society and things like that ( the ZLs do the tour). After the section where we talked about the baptismal fount we said any questions? Sister entinza raised her hand and said " when can I be baptized?" WE were soo excited and talked to her after and set a date. Its amazing how she has completely changed from the first time we visited her. I was able to do splits with my DL elder valencia ( my old companion).It was super good, he is an amazing teacher, maybe the best in the mission. We talked about the plan of salvation and their whole family were all wet eyed as elder v talked about how mario jr could later do the baptism for his brother who passed away. Also we taught a 16 girl named may. He mother was a recent convert 2 months ago. She wasnt interested at all before. We spent some time being very simple about our beliefs on things she didnt understand ( jesus, god and holyghost, and BOM). elder valencia did such a good job talking about how the church will bless her specifically and her family and the joy that he has seen in his life. She smiled sooo big after when she understood and really saw the blessings, it was such an amazing feeling in the room. She committed to be baptized as well. Her mom was almost in tears of joy and was mouthing to elder valencia after thank you, thank you. 

This week i was polishing my shoes and I was it was like a tube with a sponge that you rub on the shoe to polish it. I was trying to figure it out and so i squeezed it really hard and the polish top shot off and polish was everywhere!! Ill include a photo. It was really funny cause after the one shoe was very very shinny. There was polish across the room, on the wall!

We found the culprit of our mysterious pan on the ground cause it happened again. In our wash room ( super small) there's a window that just has bars and the cat has been coming in and eating the left over food on the pan haha. Thats about it for this week! I love it here, in all the little village/ towns there are karaoke machines everywhere and it always feels so alive. We have a zone activity today that i am excited about. We are going to the beach and have a pick-nick, playing volleyball and playing frisbee! No swimming though aha Hope all is going well! 

Elder Crandall




April 15

Apr 15

   This has been a very busy week, but an amazing one. It started last Saturday with conference. There is a week delay. It was super good, I really enjoyed it. My favorite talks were nelson, holland, and the bishop about 4 min. My favorite quote was from nelson " faith is the antidote for fear" so powerful. They were all very good. I wasn't able to watch the priesthood session because the stake president accidentally took it when he left so I just listen to them while I email. Its been a good week in the Philippines too! Manny P won his fight so all week he has been the center of conversation. This transfer was zone interviews. President Schmutz did a workshop about the light of Christ. He really got into it and it was soo good. He is a big advocate of true conversion. He said something like " in the Cebu mission we aren't here to baptize people, we are here to have true conversions. Some of the requirements are hard, but they are very good because its those that are committed that are the ones who are baptized and they are the ones who stay active. His workshops are always super good! Mostly they are doctrinal. At conference we had some investigators come to watch. We had lorenzo who is 25. He is stellar! He has a baptismal date for may 17th but we will have to change it cause he is currently working on quitting his smoking and most go 4 weeks sober before baptism.We had Sister Entenze come too. She is an investigator and her husband is a less active and has been for the last 30 years. We also had kiano come to conference. He is an investigator, 15, and is really awesome. He has had a hard life, his mom isnt responsible and has kind of just jump from guy to guy and has lots of kids and so he has been tossed around and doesnt even live with his mom but a family that is just watching him. He is really a good kid. We are sad because he is moving to a different area in our missions but are happy because he will still listen to missionaries and be baptized. They are both progressing really well! We are excited because they are married already! So many people we teach are just live in's so its awesome when they are married and have families because our message is really for the families. My shoes are already getting soo worn out! Our are is mountiany so we go up and down all day and walk so much. We talk to around 100 people per week. We saw some kids that were have spider fighting. They put 2 spiders on a stick and then they fight to the death. Things are really going well here! I really love and am so grateful im on a mission.

Elder Crandall

Spider Fighting 

Basketball in the rain

Public Transportation

April 8th 

    It's been a good week! So this week we had a cleaning check. Elder Fuentes and I spent over 3 hours completely cleaning our place since it was super dirty! We found around 30 coach roaches. It looked really good after, but they ended up cancelling the checks, oh well, at least it is clean now! We had a temple tour this week. We spent about 40 min traveling there with our investigators and recent converts. It was really good, a very spiritual experience for them! We went over the importance of the temple, walked around it, talked about what happens inside, talked about the patron house ect. Yesterday it rained real hard, so I took the opportunity to shoot a couple hoops. I'll attach a photo. So if you wondering about the food we eat a lot of rice. We also have meat loaf that comes in the can, It looks like dog food but really isn't bad. I'm excited for this. We also have lots of bread and jam. The work has been progressing well! One challenge that we are having are live ins. So many people have their live in with kids. We have an investigator named Jessa who is really stellar. She always reads and prayers. But she has a live in, which is normal, except that she is 14 and her live in is 21. All is well! I really like my area and my companion. The language is coming slow still. What makes it really hard is the slang. So many words are abbreviated and cut to make it shorter.  I'm looking forward to conference this weekend. It comes a week later here since they have to translate it. Our bishop was actually involved with the translating. They have a room for cebuano and then another room for english. All is going well! 

Elder Crandall

Pardo, Phillippines

So I love my new area! Its called Pardo, right next to my old area. Most of our area is in the mountain area. Elder Fuentes is awesome! He is one transfer ahead, just finished his 12 week program but he is a native speaker. Since I went to the MTC he is only 2 weeks ahead of me in the mission so when I go home he could possibly be in the same transfer home. We get along real well. He is native Bisiyan speaker which helps a lot which my language progression. We have lots of investigators and people are really progressing. Something really cool is the area in the mountains. Little kids love flying kites. So from our area we can look out over the city and see tons of kites with the ocean behind and can see bohol in the distance. Super pretty. Something interesting I didnt know is that it is illegal to have a Philippines flag, which i have. I pulled it out to have elder Valencia sign it when he said " why do you have that?!" He explained it and was laughing cause I had no idea. He said none of the missionaries will care since I'm American haha. This week has been very busy. We go out at 1 and come home around 8-9 every day. The language has really been tough. My district leader said this the other day when I was trying to understand grammar, " cebuano has no grammar. There are 2 ways to speak it, the right way is the one that makes sense. The wrong way is the when it sounds wrong". Most of the words we learned are too deep so I am learning lots of new words from Elder Fuentes.  A lot of the grammar rules I learned at the MTC dont apply. So with time I'm sure I will learn it. People here are so nice. Most people in the mountains really don't have any money. We always look for service opportunities. On Monday we helped some teenagers make a basketball backboard. They didn't think I could work at all cause I was American, so I just grabbed the nail and hammer and started helping.  Well thats all I have! Loving the mission and love all of yall!

Elder Crandall

Elder Crandall and Elder Fuentes