- -

December 19, 2011

Another week gone by. Its already week 3 in this transfer which is
absolutely crazy. Some news--so we went to the offices to pick up my
package which i had assumed was waiting for me but it wasn´t. I´m
thinking that the first package was a fluke arriving in 6 days--there
was one package sent in November and just got there was week ago and
it was from Arizona so I´m thinking it´ll come next week but we´ll
have to wait until January for that so oh well. The christmas tree
will be well used i´m sure by the elders who´ll be here next
christmas..... Also I´m doing fine without the card--it was lucky that
i had all that medical stuff to pay for right before it stopped
working and of course i had the reembolsments on my mission card so i
could buy my new shiny camera :D..... Awesome about the seminary
movie--sent it haha. Amy said she was working on getting the other
songs--send those too :)....So here´s the part that i know Mom has
been waiting for--we are going to take the call from the phone in the
Church. Here is the number (and this is the number they gave me--i
don´t know how you would call from there to here--i´m sure Dad
knows)--01-667-761-6460. And you are going to call this number at like
11:15 or 20 your time (it´ll be 12 my time) on Saturday. We have TWO
HOURS to talk so drink some coffee so you´ll stay awake and don´t get
bored haha.

Bueno. This week was really good because we met some really good
people. Our other investigators have lost their real drive so we´ve
been focusing more on finding newbies. We met this guy named Francisco
(ooh that´s fun to say) and we taught him. He´s christian and said he
felt he was in the truth, but said that if he found something better
he would change, so we were super pumped cause he accepted everything
pretty well. But we went back yesterday and he started bustin out
scriptures saying that Jesus is God and the Godhead are all one God
and we were trying to counter with scriptures but it just wasn´t
taking with him. So we busted out the Book of Mormon and said "If you
read this, ponder about it and pray about it, you´ll get your answer
and it won´t matter was you thought before" (we didn´t say that
exactly). He got pretty animated as he was bustin out scrips but
calmed down as we shared a couple scriptures from the Book of Mormon
and i know that the Spirit was working on him. We´ll see what
happens--his wife is SUPER into their church so we´ll see. We also met
a bunch more people who we´re gonna visit this week. One challenge
that we´ve seen here is people going to church--its even harder now.
We had 4 or 5 who were going to go to church but didn´t go because
they went to parties until really late so that sucked. In our builing
there are 2 wards and they´re gonna have the two together for
Christmas and New Year´s and in the later timeslot of 11 so hopefully
that trend will change this week and the next and then the time slot
changes to the later one next year so that´ll be good. I think its
better for us members in the earlier because we have more time after
but for investigators who aren´t used to going to church and getting
up earlier its a struggle so we´ll see if there´s a change in our area
with the new year. It´s absolutely crazy that this year is already
almost over. And to think that in a year and 2 days the world is going
to end! A year ago i was worrying about getting my papers in and now a
year later i´m here. ¡Que locísimo es!

In these times, there´s always the thought that we need to forget the
commercialized Christmas and remember always about Jesus Christ and
his birth and what he did for us. As a missionary i have seen--though
it seems crazy--that we missionaries sometimes forget about Christ.
Although we´re representing his Church--we´re representing HIM, we
forget him in the rush of helping others come unto him. But as Jo
Smith said,

22 And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him,
this is the atestimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he
blives!

23 For we asaw him, even on the bright hand of cGod; and we heard the
voice bearing record that he is the Only dBegotten of the Father—

24 That by ahim, and through him, and of him, the bworlds are and
were created, and the cinhabitants thereof are begotten dsons and
daughters unto God.

In the struggle of just trying to make it in this world in these
times, we gotta remember that when it comes down to it, its ALL about
Christ and the fact that he lives and that through him we can have
everything that His Father and Our Father has. As a missionary i gotta
forget about the numbers and stuff like that that don´t matter and
remember that i´m here because Christ isn´t. If Christ was here, he´d
be doing what i´m doing right now. As members in general we have to
remember that we need to be examples--although not all of us get to be
representatives like me :P we all covenanted to be an example of him.
And so in this season and even after, remember that when it comes down
to it, the blessings that we enjoy right now by living the Gospel come
from Christ.

Have an awesome week--its weird that I´ll be talking with you all--i
was gonna put some questions in here but i realized--I can just ask em
on Saturday! ¡Les quiero y espero que tengan buena semana!

--Elder Crisp

PS. To Stephen--your email popped up as i was writing this one so
that´s just special. Your results....oregon 27 vs wisconsin 14
byu 38 vs tulsa 13
stanford 35 vs ok state 27
nebraska 17 vs so carolina 9
championsip :( stupid SEC
alabama 19 vs lsu 14....AND THAT¨S HOW ITS GONNA BE! By the way Albert
is also dead to me.