Every Missionary Has a Dog Story...

Its been a super good week! I was able to go on splits with my ZLs which was a good experience. I really learned a lot! The entienza family is still progressing and doing very well! Mario jr committed to be baptized this week and is very excited. The next sunday the whole family came to church! ( except one of the older brothers, 28). We had our zone activity last wednesday. We went to this beach area and had a pick-nic, played Frisbee, flew kites, and tried to play volleyball though our net was a rope tied from one tree to another. We had a traditional filipino meal called budle fight( pronounced boodle) where there is lots of rice, meat and fish on banana leaves ad everyone just uses their hands!

          I have had a request to hear some funny stories so here we go. The other day elder fuentes and i were walking in our area to an appointment. Every time we walk down this one path there is this dog ( we call him devil dog) cause he just starts barking and jumping all over in his cage that is about 15 ft from the path. The cage is probably about 6 ft by 6ft and 4 ft tall. On the top there is a tarp held down but some big pieces of wood spread out across the top to weigh the tarp down. Every time he sees us he starts jumping up and hitting the tarp. So one day we were walking by ( btw this dog is a pretty big dog) and he starts just barking, growling, and jumping all over in his cage. We see the wood start to move and we were thinking "all that wood is gonna come off". The dog kept jumping and hitting the top and to our worst fear all the wood fell off!! We see that and we both literally just book it, not even looking at each other first, out of there, not even looking back!!! We kept going and there was no dog chasing us. We went back and and peaked around the corner and realized that the tarp was tied down on the cage. All the filipino ladies who were outside talking and what not were now just dying with laughter. We felt pretty dumb, but it was funny.

                  The 2nd funny story was during our zone activity. There was this massive cow and i wanted to go get a picture with it. I was standing maybe 5 feet from in when elder fuentes ( taking the photo) was like its coming at you. I thought he was just messing with me and i was laughing but looked back anyway. As i look back i just see this cow coming at me so i just start running. The picture is mid action when i was in my picture pose, and laughing cause i thought elder fuentes joking and the cow coming at me. He was tied to the tree but had lots of slack. All the local people were watching and all started laughing when they saw me running. 

      Im loving the mission! Still working on the bisyian as it is coming slowly, but i know that pretty sure i will be good at it. Hope all is going well with everyone

Elder Crandall

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

Transfers!

Hey hows it going? Well I'm getting transferred! It's really bitter sweet. I'm getting transferred away to Pardo. It's super close and all city. I'm sad to leave Labangon but excited too. I really loved it but never really went out. I'm getting a new trainer for the 2nd half of my training. He just finished his training so is just 6 weeks ahead of me but he is a native bisiyan speaker so I am super excited about that. Elder Valencia has been super sick so I really haven't been able to go out. He  has one transfer left so president left him here. I'm glad that now i will be with a native and be able to go out more and really work on the language and teach. 

Below are excerpts from some of Jacob's recent letters.

March 4, 2014:
....then later that night we went to a family's house and had dinner! It was a traditional filipino meal, I will attach a photo. It had rice, fish, squid, pork, chicken, snails, and more. I actually really liked it. I'm getting use to a lot of the seafood. The next day elder montanyo woke up in a lot of pain. In my apartment there are 4 of us, me, elder montanyo, elder valencia, and elder Gabriel. We had to take him to the ER. Ended up he had a inguinal hernia which caused lots of pain.  The following day he had surgery and now is recovering. We were all in an out at the hospital.

It is funny how there are a lot of culturally prevalent things here for the filipinnos. For example if it rains no one goes out. Literally no one, even the missionaries. They think if it rains on them that they will get sick and they all truly believe it. Also theres such a strong Catholic presence here

Sunday was good, we had a lot of less actives come to church which we were really excited about! It went very well. We have been doing a whole lot of work with the records. Already just going around to members we have found 10 people who are still on the ward records who have passed away and around 20 that have moved out. The bishop has only been bishop for a couple of months but has really been working hard. The ward mission leader is also brand new so we are working with him a lot.

The people here have such amazing faith whatever their religion. Its mainly catholic though most people don't go to church. But people have no problem talking about their beliefs in God. The people are so kind as well and super inviting.  I would like to share one example of the faith.  We visited a less active older lady who watches her 2 grand kids as her daughter just left them there and ran away. During her closing prayer she started bursting into tears saying how much she loves them but how she is so worried cause she is so old and poor, that if they get sick she wont be able to take care of them. She also said she wants to come to church but she lives in the bukid area (mountains) and she doesn't have the money to come. On sunday she came to church; i don't know how financially but I know that God provides ways. We were super excited to see her there and it was just one of the examples of amazing faith by the Filipino people

March 12, 2014:  
This week has been good. I got sick for the first time but it really wasnt bad. Saturday night elder valencia was throwing up and Sunday i wasnt feeling too well. I just rested all day but i never threw up. Im perfectly fine now. Im surprised after all i have eaten that i havent gotten sick but i very grateful as well.

They have been having problems with the records here and have lost a lot of membership records. About 15 percent in the mission. If members dont have photos or witnesses that are present to validate it then we have to re teach and baptize again.  We are teaching 2 girls, jasmine and jasail who are in this situation. 

He's Finally Arrived in the Philippines

      So this week has been the most humbling week of my life. I arrived in Cebu last week but wasn't able to email. Sister schmutz (the Mission Presidents wife) just asked us to send home that we arrived safely. I don't even know were to begin. I'm in an area called Labangon. It entails a lot of slums ( in american standards) and the bukid (mountains). The first day the new batch spent the day at the mission home going over general stuff. I got assigned to an elder from Mindanao named elder Valencia. He's a super good missionary and we get along well. He has 2 transfers left and so most likely i'll be his last companion. The language is coming along but is really tough but I'm really working on it. I live with 3 others who are all Filippino,the other 2 are from manilla. They are both really cool. Everything here is super cheap in American standards. The bukid is very pretty but the city area is real nasty. There is trash everyone, many cars and motorcycles and just not very clean. I have only been to a couple homes that are just larger than my room. They have plywood walls and tin roofs. Most just have dirt ground or bamboo floor. I asked to go to the bathroom one time and the other elder pointed me to the place to go. The house is built up on stilts. The bathroom was just a couple missing bamboo stripes where you just go through underneath. There really isn't plumbing. Next week i'll include a photo of what the stilt homes look like. Underneath there is soo much trash. I haven't seen one single public trashcan here. It's been real sad. I went to one area were the homes were basically nothing. I would see little kids wearing nothing playing near the nasty water and trashy grounds with flies, cats, and dogs everywhere. There are literally dogs and cats everywhere. I don't think most people have seen a white guy cause everyone stares at me haha! All the kids are like American!?! And when I reply in cebuano they are always super surprised! Here's a funny story. I went to the bathroom and we have a toilet in our place. Once I was done I reached to get some TP to realize there wasn't any TP. I called and asked my companion and asked if he had some. He said they don't use it there. There's a bucket with a dipper thing. You get water and pour down your back and use your hand to clean it all off haha. None of the Filippino's in my apartment ever use TP. Just a different way of life. You just have to make sure you wash your hands real well!!! I have a shower but the water never works and the spickett doesnt hang up above you, you just hold it. So normally during the day when the water is one we fill the bucket and then use that to shower. Also we wash all clothes by hand. So all in all I have truly come to appreciate all I have. Here most people eat just rice and meet. They have fruits things here everywhere but no one eats fruits and vegetables. The people here are super nice! Literally no one ever has a problem with talking about God. A lot of people though are Catholic and say I was born Catholic but have never gone to church. Something kinda funny is that everyone just pees on the side of the road! Well that's all I have for now,

Elder Crandall

One Day Until Cebu, Philippines!!

(January 31 Update)
Well I hit a month today! It's crazy how fast it's gone by, but also how slow it's gone by. The days are crazy long, but as I look back the weeks went pretty fast. This week has been pretty sweet! On Tuesday our service project was putting up the flags! Its always super fun when we can do that! The MTC has tons of flags and we chose 32 to put up each week. Last week we got to clean the water fountains around the main building which wasn't too bad, but the flags are a lot more fun. We also got our flight plans today which was the highlight of the week! We are flying to San Fran and then to Manilla and then to Cebu on Feb 10th! Its soo crazy how we only have 10 days left here at the MTC! Also we were able to host the new missionaries coming in on Wednesday. I got an elder from France who was super cool! He is going to Tahiti and learning Tahitian! I also had another elder going to Virginia who was super nice. It's cool but kind of sad cause you see so many families crying as they drop of they kids for 19-24 months! Other than that it's basically been the same stuff each week. Next week will be my last P-day! Hope everything is going well!

           Elder Crandall