Elder Ethan Crisp

Happy Monday! Thanks for the love and sending the pictures--Stephen´s cake was beautiful! As you can tell, i sent some pictures-- the first is my companion Elder Sandoval, playing with toys. He´s like a little kid its funny. The second is me and him with the city of Culiacan behind us. The pic doesn´t do justice to how cool the city looks. The third and fourth are from our baptism last week. And the last is a pic of ants eating a dead cockroach--i thought you´d like that.

This week was good but also kinda sucked at the same time. It sucked cause we lost a lot of time with holidays and with conferences and cause our investigators are having some real tough times right now. Monday we couldn´t go out because it was Halloween. Tuesday we had a special conference with President that lasted all morning then we took the wrong bus and lost another hour. Wednesday was Dia de Muertos and EVERYONE goes to the graveyard--members, investigators, potentail investigators. We couldn´t do anything. Then Saturday we had another Conference. We learned alot from the conferences (and from the other lost time) but we didn´t get to do much this week. One of our investigators, María, is awesome. Her husband is an inactive member and she has a bunch of friends that are members and she already has a testimony of prayer and the Book of Mormon. The problem is the government sucks. They took away their house for no reason nd she´s super worried about that. She wants to get baptized but wants the whole sitution with her house to resolve, which could last who knows how long. Another investigator we have is Carlos. His wife is also a member. He asked that we have a talk with him in the church like out of the blue and so we did, not knowing if he was going to confess something or something like that. So we went and he gave like his whole life story. He had married a woman and had kids and after like ten years the woman left him and told him "i never loved you." So he started drinking. He met his wife, the member and they got married and years and years later brings us to now. He told us that she treats him like garbage--she yells at him when he even talks to otehr woman. He just has had a sad life. He too is awesome, already has an unbreakable testimony of the Book of Mormon but now he is thinking about leaving his wife if she doesn´t stop treating him like a dog. He said the same thing--i wanna wait to get baptized until this passes. Tough times here for the people--we´ve got some work to do.

I had an awesome experience this week of how the Lord prepares us to find people. Elder Sandoval and I like Tuesday were looking for a reference from other missionaries on this street. We asked a neighbor if they knew him cause the number we had didn´t exist. So we contacted them got THEIR info and it turned out that they didn´t live in the house or our area. They lived in the area where the other elders in our district are. We gave them the reference. On Thurdsay we did divisions and i went in their area. They had planned to contact the reference. So we went and she wasn´t home, but her neighbor was outside and started talking to us. She owned a little store and we bought some cokes and sat down an talked with her. After a couple minutes she opened up and started talking about how she lost her baby after a couple months in the pregnancy and then her mother died and she started crying. We gave her a pamphlet of the plan of salvation and set an appt to come back, but we both felt the power of the experience--the preparation to get to that point and then how immediately the woman saw us as representatives of Jesus Christ and opened up. I don´t know yet if they have gone back but i´m sure she was prepared to hear the gospel like we were to find her.

A thought from the scriptures also. This comes from Alma 32:41-43. Dice, "41 But if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with apatience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree bspringing up unto everlasting life.
42 And because of your adiligence and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, that it may take root in you, behold, by and by ye shall pluck the bfruit thereof, which is most precious, which is sweet above all that is sweet, and which is white above all that is white, yea, and pure above all that is pure; and ye shall feast upon this fruit even until ye are filled, that ye hunger not, neither shall ye thirst.

43 Then, my brethren, ye shall areap the brewards of your faith, and your diligence, and patience, and long-suffering, waiting for the tree to bring forth cfruit unto you.

We have to nourish the word--through study of the scriptures and exercising the faith to keep the commandments we do that. Thru faith, diligence, patience, longsuffering and hope. I have studied in Preach my gospel chapter 6 alot which is Christlike attributes. ONe is hope. Hope is more than just faith--they´re not exact synonyms. Hope is having the faith to expect blessing when we exercise our faith and keep the commandments. Every commandment has a blessing associated with it (D&C 130), hope is to believe and expect that when we keep a commandment we´ll recieve a blessing. It´s also to expect that all the promises of God will be fulfilled. It´s awesome too--when we xpect more the blessings, we get more blessings. I love it!

Bueno pues. Some notes. We found out today in our Zone Meeting that we are no longer allowed to use the DVD players for music because they have a short life and using them shortens the life. So i will have to find equipment to play the music. I think you should look for like a walkman and speakers too--i don´t think the walmart by me now has the same kind of stuff as the other--in fact i never knew if the other even had like a walkman dealy. We can both look. Other than that I don´t need anything. We did have daylight savings too end but we didn´t know it so we went to church an hour early so that kinda sucked. And for a couple days after we woke up naturally at like 5:30 which sucked but now its normal. Thanks again for everyone that wrote me this week (Nikki, I forgive you-you´re stil my friend haha). Also, Happy Birthday to anyone whose birthday HAPPENS to be this week. I love you all and hope you have an awesome week!

-Elder Crisp

By the way, I´m totally fine and totally happy :)