3/26/12 SCORPIONS?

I don´t know if I´ve mentioned it already, but I get to go shopping at Wal Mart and Sam´s Club in this area. It´s a little bit like stepping into the twilight zone. Everything´s just like home there (well not completely, but it´s still really close). This last week I bought two boxes of FRUITY PEBBLES! Let´s just say I thought they were "yabba-dabba-delicious". I also bought a Beatles calendar to accompany me for the whole year. It even has a mini calendar for 2013 in the back, so I´m pretty sure it´ll accompany me for the remainder of my mission.

Oh yeah, and last night, Elder Guillen was in the shower when he suddenly went, "Ah!". We asked him what was up, and he said, "I just got stung by a scorpion!" I sort of freaked out, because, how poisonous are they!? We went to the doctor this morning just to check, and they told him something to the effect of "rub some dirt in it". He´s totally fine, but now, I don´t want to shower anymore....

This week, at mutual, we invited a bunch of young guys to the church to play soccer. (anybody who knows me who is reading this thinks they know how this story ends.) In Mexico, there are still basketball courts in almost all of the chapels (outside), but they know that Mexico loves her some good ol´ futbol! So they have goals on either end too, so people can play soccer. Anyway, we wanted to play soccer, but we couldn´t, because nobody had a soccer ball. But, we had a basketball on hand. "Hey," I thought. "My skills in just about any sport are just about equal. So yeah, let´s play basketball." Well, it turns out that the guys we were playing with were not that great. However, despite my "handicaps" I wasn´t doing too bad. But then....it happened. I started making shots. One. Two. Four. Half court! My team destroyed the other team! By the end of the game, the other people on the sidelines were chanting "Ko-be! Ko-be! Ko-be!" Pretty much that was the athletic highlight of my life. In the next game, I was bad again. Just saying.

Elder Running and I were working in his area one day when we knocked on a house that was actually pretty big. A lady came outside looking at us really strangely. We kind of gave her the usual "who we are and what we do" thing. Then, slowly, as we were talking, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. She took a picture of us! We were like "....What are you doing?" She told us "My friends will never believe me if I tell them that such attractive men knocked on my door."

Umm.......

Then she proceeded to show us that she posted it on her Facebook wall with the caption: "With missionaries like this I think I´m going to change religions.... c:"

Umm.... You´d think we´d just give up there, right? Well, not me! Even creepy moms with three kids need the gospel! So we ended up teaching her! She was a lot more interested than I expected, truthfully. Elder Running and Elder Martinez are going back with her-- more news on that when it comes.

Basically, I´m just always happy right now. I don´t even remember the last time I wasn´t happy! I got a letter from my dear cousin Greg the other day, and he said something that I want to share with you: "A lot of missionaries want time to go by really fast so they can go home. Others want it to go slower. Me? I´m happy right where I am." That pretty much sums it up for me. I love my area. I love Mexicans and Mexican food and Mexico! Thanks for everything, bye!

 

Love, Elder

 

 

Elder Hon, with a chick....and a puppy. Too much adorable. (These pictures are from all of my time in Culiacan, by the way. Elder Hon isn´t my companion anymore.)

 

 

 

Our house. I sleep on the bunk with the brown towel on it. The top bunk on the right. Yes, mom, it IS dirty...

 

 "Whoopsie kitchen."

 

We literally were lost here haha. Elder Guillen decided left.....correctly.

 

A bumpy picture of a Mexican bus! Note the picture of Jesus behind the driver, the Virgen de Guadalupe hanging from his mirror, and the really REALLY pointy brown shoes of that Mexican man.

 

A ward activity about the Relief Society anniversary. Pretty cool! She did a monologue about charity.

 

A copyright-infringing Mexican slot machine! Yep, they´re TOTALLY legal, and anyone can play, even little kids. I won´t say I play, but it´s only one peso.... Most of them are rigged anyway!

 

A real live scorpion! It was in the church!

 

My proudest non-girly moment ever. I, Elder Crabb, have had a scorpion on my shirt WITHOUT screaming like a girl.! Hazzah! Love you guys!

 

(There was no caption for this photo...but a lovely looking fish with Elder Guillen)

 

3/19/12

First of all, I totally missed Saint Patrick´s day because, well, nobody cares about it here. The only reason I remembered it at all was some thoughtful Mexican man hung a board that said " O´ " in front of his tienda´s name. It was called " O´ Tienda La Guadalupe". Doesn´t make too much sense, but hey, he speaks Spanish. I miss how my family celebrates holidays like Columbus Day, I´m not gonna lie.

I´m companions with one of the assistants to the president, so I´ve been enjoying some of the perks that come with that-- for example, I get to use the minivan of the mission! I finally know what it´s like to serve a mission in America! (for 4 hours on P day anyway). It´s pretty rad. We go to Wal Mart (Wal Mart = American stuff!) and Sam´s Club.

We saw a little movie that totally made me cry this week. It´s not even from the church, but maybe you´ve heard of it. It´s probably called something like "The Bridge" in English. Look it up on YouTube. I´ll let you see it without spoiling it. But wow, it really gives you a new look at the Atonement. We show it to investigators on a regular basis.

My companion, Elder Guillén, and I, were walking down the road on Thursday when two little girls yelled at us. "Mormons!!" We were kinda like....Who ARE you guys? The cool thing about Mexico is that you can just ask kids where they live, and if they show you, it´s not weird, because we´re missionaries! So we did. After the first lesson, we found out she´s a member! She was baptized in another part of Sinaloa, but she moved here and went inactive. Two of her daughters (ages 8 and 9) aren´t members, so we´re getting them ready for this next weekend to get baptized. Hooray!

By the way, they moved Elder Hon. My "Protestant" companion is now Elder Running, of Alpine, Utah. He´s really fun, and his sense of humor is awesome.

That´s all for this week! I love you all! The time is short, but the gospel is true!

Love,

Elder

 

Updates:

• My "burrito-damaged" tooth is totally fine. In fact, I had forgotten about it until I read the email. I´m not really feeling it, so we´ll just leave it like it is. Some guy on our street has a sign that says "DENTISTA" in his front yard, but I think I´ll try and do it on my own.

03/12/12

There are "special transfers" coming up. A bunch of new elders are coming now, instead of the end of the transfer, because of their visa delays. Elder Hon is OUTTA here, to be with one of them. That means I have another companion (who will probably be the district leader, since Elder Hon was ours) next week. Don´t know who, or when, or anything. That means I´m basically in charge of the area, having been here for about two weeks. All I can say is, I´m not even sure where most of the investigators in MY area live yet, let alone investigators of the OTHER area... is one of the gifts of the spirit "the gift of navigation"? I sure hope so...

The mission is making some cool improvements to all the missionary houses. For example, the wife of the mission president is making sure that every house has a blender and a microwave. That means.......nothing! To me anyway. The other three elders who I live with make smoothies for breakfast rather often. Usually I rock an omelet or cereal, but today,I have a better plan. I bought 36 eggs today, and I´m going to hard boil them to have breakfast for two weeks! Did any of you say "brilliant!"?

Sorry about the lack of pictures. It´s not like I´m not sending the ones I have, I´m just not taking any! I´ll try to be better like that.

I think that I have a really cool cool cool purchase in mind. There´s this guy who told us that he´s going to make us scripture cases out of leather, with whatever design we want on it! I´m going to put some AWESOME Mayan (ergo "Nephite") drawings on them. For example, this drawing of a man with a wooden bow and talking to God (my, interesting, isn´t it?)

Look! It´s totally Nephi! The brother of one of the guys in our district sent it to us. Mexico is the best place to serve EVER. =)

We´ve been having a lot of success even just on our street. It turns out that everybody knows each other, so it´s kind of fun. We teach one family, and they say "Oh yeah, you were teaching Lexzaida, huh? Is she interested?" We´re hoping to get an awesome number of people in church next week, all the friends of the street! We gave a blessing to Lexzaida´s sister (who has Down´s Syndrome) because she was really sick. Within two days she was good as new. "What was in that oil you put on her head?", she asked. We just smiled and said "Nothing. It was God." She and her son are going to get baptized this month for sure. Once she gets baptized we´ll get a TON of referrals because she has LOTS of friends. Not complaining!

Did I ever tell you about "suero"? I don´t know what it´s called in English. It´s like salty electrolyte water. Everybody in the mission hates it, but....I actually like it. It´s a mission rule that we drink it, so I´m all over it. I drink like a half gallon of it every day!

You know that line from Avatar where he says "It feels like that´s the real world, and this is the dream."? Well, that´s about how I feel with my mission right about now. Like, my mission is all I'´ll ever do for the rest of my life and my life before was just pretend or preparatory or something...

By the way, I love when I get emails from people that are in Spanish- or Portuguese- speaking countries where all the apostrophes are accent marks....because they don´t exist on the keyboards! Love you guys. I miss you. Thanks for your prayers. My testimony, especially of prayer, has been growing "machín" lately (a whole durn lot). If we ask, it´s good, but you gotta go GET the thing you´re asking for. God doesn´t give us things if we haven´t earned them.

On a less spiritual note, I had a sword fight with Elder Martinez this morning. But our swords were forks. (Come on, I haven´t changed that much.)

See ya later!

Elder

P.S. I haven´t heard head or tail of anybody watching The Testaments. Do it!

03/05/12 "Injured by a Burrito"

I´m sure you´re wondering about the title of my email. Here we go....

My companion, Elder Guillen, really likes to eat. He always prepares a really good breakfast. The other morning, he had made bean burritos with sausage. "How lovely!", I thought. So I took a spoonful of beans, slapped them on a tortilla, and took a big bite. Now, I don´t know how it works in America, but you gotta be careful with the beans in Mexico. Occasionally, they contain rocks. Yep. ROCKS. So, to prepare them well, you go through all of them and pick the beans. NOT THE ROCKS. Little did I know that Elder Guillen had not been too careful with the beans. I took a big ol´ bite, and CRUNCH!! My front tooth bit down on a rock as big as a pea. It hurt like the Dickens! (do you capitalize that? I´m assuming it´s talking about Charles Dickens.) But not until later did I realize that it had indeed chipped my tooth. It´s not too noticeable, actually, not noticeable at all. It chipped the very corner of my bottom front middle tooth. I´m pretty much just going to deal with it, seeing as dentists in the United States are bad enough, and some guy who sterilizes his tools with a pocket lighter (True story, although it´s not my story.) kinda freaks me out. Really though, don´t worry (, Mom,) it´s just a little chip. You can´t even tell unless I say "Hey, look at my tooth, it got chipped by a burrito." Mostly just a funny story. =)

Also, this week, I learned about how awesome it is to be companions with the assistants. They REALLY know what they´re doing, so it´s cool to watch them teach and teach with them. I also work with Elder Hon a lot. Probably about fifty percent of the time. I really like him too. Elder Tingey, my trainer, is in my zone! It´s fun to see him again and to catch up.

Just so you know, our investigators LOVE my pictures. They love seeing what americans do in real life. They always say "Look, everyone´s so WHITE!" It´s pretty funny.

Also, I´d like to share a cool story with you guys. On our street, we were getting ready to go to the house, when we heard a kid cry. We went to go see what was wrong for whatever reason, and we found a kid that had fallen and hurt his ankle (later we found out he had actually broken it). We carried him into his house, and his mom was all worried, but we gave him some ice and he calmed down, so she did too. We ended up contacting her and made an appointment to come back. Her name is Lexzaida, and her kid´s name is Royer. We came back, and we had an amazing two hour lesson! We taught everyone (Lexzaida, Royer, and two of Royer´s friends) about what happens in the church on Sundays, when one of the kids asked a question. I answered it, but then I realized that Elder Guillen and I had split off! He was teaching the mom, and I was teaching the kids. They asked me a question about what happens after we die, and I basically taught them the whole Plan of Salvation while Elder Guillen talked to the mom about the same thing. Then we sort of both came together into a sweet lesson about the Restoration! It was amazing, and they agreed to be baptized! We have various people who are going to get baptized this month, it´s going to be awesome.

Everything is going great. The mission president´s wife sent us a paper literally telling us what food we can buy. What a "blessing". Although usually I eat pretty well to begin with. Yogurt and cereal and eggs.

Sorry about the lack of pictures! I´ll try to send more. I keep forgetting to charge my camera. I love you guys!

Elder

02/27/12

Hey howdy hey! Well, first of all, I think you guys might like to know that I am no longer in Baja California Sur. Yep! I was transferred! I packed my bags last night and I found out I was getting sent to Culiacán, Sinaloa (cool ee uh CAHN, see nah LOW ah)! Basically, the headquarters of our mission my area´s called "Amistad" (which means "friendship".... ) oh, and something else....I´m also the companion of one of the assistants to the president, Elder Guillén (ghee ENN). It came completely out of nowhere! But I think it´s going to be really good. I´ll learn a LOT, I suppose.

The two assistants each have their own companions (me, and Elder Hon). They tell us that we´re going to end up working with each other most of the time. That´s awesome, because him and me were in the MTC at the same time and everything. We have exactly the same amount of time in the mission, and we´re pretty good buds.

The first thing I found out here was that it´s AWESOME! It´s hot. Already. But that´s okay! It´s going to be really fun. I get to see a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, I can already tell. But the coolest part (maybe, I´m not sure yet) is that I have my two little suitcases crammed FULL of stuff waiting for me in the mission offices. Who KNOWS what I have in there! I´ve survived for almost nine months without....whatever I had....

Wow.... really, I am super jazzed to be out here. I hope I can get moving in this area! We´ll have to see.

The sad thing about leaving an area is the last week. A lot of it is just fixing things up, getting packed, making arrangements, and visiting people. The sad thing is, I didn´t get to visit some of the people that I really would have loved to. There was a less active member named Estrella (es TRAY uh) who I got pretty close to, and also those two boys that we baptized. Transfers always happen a little too fast....

I´m going to stack up on stories this week in the land of friendship. =) See ya!

Elder

 This was in our apartment!! Cool, huh?! (of course, i didn´t TOUCH it, but....)

We had a good ol´ Mexican BBQ (carne asada!) for my last day. Elder Sanders did NOT feel good, but he said the food looked so good he might be able to be tempted to eat just by looking at it.  He knew if he ate, he´d throw up, so he went away so he wouldn´t be tempted

(he threw up anyway).

2/20/12

Well, this week has been just about as hectic as weeks get. We BAPTIZED, without even knowing we were going to until the day before, first of all! Here´s her story.

Her name´s Margarita. She´s Isidro´s mom (that really awesome wedding guy that just returned to church after like 20 years....by the way, I ordained him to the office of an elder on Sunday! Woo!). Isidro REALLY wanted us to teach her, but he had his doubts about if she would ever get baptized. We started teaching her (quite a while ago, actually....at the end of my transfer with Elder De Jesus!) and she took everything well, but she didn´t seem like she was progressing very much, so we stopped teaching her. Then, one day, we visited there with Isidro. He told us that we shouldn´t give up. So, Elder Cruz and I started to teach her again. We challenged her for a baptismal date. Everything seemed swell. She was a little hesitant about the baptism, but she agreed. Then.....it happened! Our zone leader, Elder Rabe, called Elder Sanders, the district leader. He´s like "Hey, do you have anybody you can baptize this weekend?" (it was Friday). Elder Sanders said, "Well, we have this one lady in the other area." "Perfect," Elder Rabe said. "Baptize her tomorrow." We all four went to her house, sang a hymn, and challenged her to be baptized the NEXT DAY. More amazing than all of that? She said yes!

We went forward with it, and Isidro baptized her. We were all absolutely thrilled. She came to church the next day and got confirmed, and everything went on without a hitch. But then, today, we got a call from Isidro saying that we needed to come fast. He told us his grandma wasn´t doing so good. (this is the MOTHER of Margarita by the way. I think she´s like 98 years old.) We all rushed over there, but we were too late. We learned that she had just passed away. We talked to the family and shared with them Alma 40:31. We called a ton of people from the ward. We barely had time to get everything done (actually, we´re going straight from here to her funeral.). We started talking about how it was probably inspiration that Elder Rabe had challenged us to do it a week early. Maybe she was just waiting for Margarita to get baptized so she could pass on. It´s been a super stressful day, we´ve been running around with chickens with their legs cut off. But above all, I´m grateful for the plan of salvation. It´s amazing to know (and I mean, "to KNOW") that no matter what happens, I will be able to see you all again. I´ll be able to meet Dad. Thanks for being awesome in the gospel. Like Thomas S. Monson said, "If you´re gonna be a Mormon, be a good one!"

Love you guys. ¡Sonrisas!

Elder

Me, sitting on the bus on the way back from La Paz.....in front of a TV screen in which they DID play a movie! AHH!

The way we figured out to not watch!

02/13/12

MIRACLE! Alright. So this week, we had a super miracle miracle. We were having another day of mediocre success. We decided it would be a good idea to pray, of course. We asked our Father in Heaven to bless us with someone who wanted to hear the gospel, and who would accept it. We decided to knock on a door nearby. A girl opened up, and we talked about geneaology (what?!) but she let us in. She was about 14 years old. She said "My mom´s here, I´ll go get her." And so she did. We ended up teaching her, her mom, and her other FOUR daughters! AND the dad came home during the lesson. So what did we do? We got baptismal dates with the entire family! =) It was so amazing! They are really cool people, I hope they are working hard to know the church is true. Anyway, that was just unbelievable. But in other news, the mom of that "wedding" couple I told you about? She´s got a baptismal date for next weekend. Her son is probably going to be the one to baptize her! =) Our district goal is to baptize 26 next month. I REALLY hope we can accomplish it. Frankly, I´m sick of not baptizing! My district leader gave us a copy of a talk called "You were not called to fail." I´m not sure who write it, but WOOOWWWOWOWOW. I´m really pumped to get going!! There hasn´t been much going on....what has happened? Oh yeah! Tomorrow, we leave for Los Cabos for a big ol´ Multi-Zone conference. Yay, my old area! After that, we have a training meeting for leaders. (´m not sure why I¨M going to that, seeing as I´m not a leader, but President said. I´d be lying if I said that didn´t freak me out a little.) Well, I´m pretty stressed out right now haha. We have two hours left of P-day (today, "P" stood for "pancakes"!) and I still have to get a haircut and hang the clothes to dry....sigh....P-day is never, ever long enough. But I look forward to talking to you next week! Sorry for the intentionally brief e-mail!


Elder Crabb

Birthday 2012

Holy cow, thanks for your letters! Love it. And just so you know (and as you can see by my pictures), my birthday was just swell. We made pancakes (the best we could. How do you say “Teflon” in Spanish? Don´t know? Neither do they…..) The fun thing is, nobody else knew, so it
was like a fun secret….

Our efforts right now are focused on finding new investigators. We don´t have many people to teach, but we´ll get there. This last week, we were DETERMINED to bring tons of people to church, so we invited ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY people to church! Unfortunately, we apparently invited all busy people, because nobody came. But we will continue working with said zeal!

Enjoy these pictures of my "birthday party"!

(and our new orange friend, Miguel. He helps us practice teaching sometimes.) I also note--Elder Cruz doesn´t look weird with that mustache...

Elder Crabb

My apologies

So in between a pretty busy schedule and a slight miscommunication, I have to apologize for the lack of updates on Elder Crabb's blog. I had stopped getting blog updates and after a few weeks I finally asked him what he wanted me to do with his blog. Apparently I was supposed to be using the pictures and updates he was sending his family.( ? oops, sorry!)  Which I am totally okay with because that means I won't have to try and transcribe and translate Cody's handwriting anymore! Copy and Paste...easy!  But just so this blog can be as accurate as possible I'm going to go back to the first week I stopped getting blog updates and hopefully catch you up with what's been going on with Elder Crabb. So stayed tuned this week we will be doing a huge catch-up series!


See you soon!
Rhoda