Hola Familia!
First off Dad it was fun to get some spanish from you but Daniel la verdad es que no pude entender casi todo de su espanol porque no creo que googletranslate sabe como hablar espanol bien. ;) I finally got mail this last week and I also got your package so thanks! The backpack straps were not those caribeeners, but I´m sure I will find a use for them haha. The straps are the grey waist strap that is removable from my backpack. I´m sure they are in my closet somewhere but maybe they are in a box or something. In the next thing that you send, if you could send like 30 US stamps that would be awesome. I´m not planning on writing a bunch of letters, but it is easier to just write them with an US stamp and give them to somebody who works in the US to put in a post box. Mom I can print them off but I have to pay to do it.
That´s really fun to hear about choir and everything! Take advantage of every opportunity that you have at brownsburg in choir because after it is all over you are going to have random relapses of depression because you will miss singing songs that madrigals sing. Even at BYU the choirs were different, so treasure it all you can at brownsburg. In response to your question Benjamin about exact obedience, it depends. I think that before a mission there aren´t a whole ton of rules so its harder to measure your obedience. In the MTC it was really easy to be exactly obedient and I could see immediately the blessings of being exactly obedient. Here in the mission field, it is harder. Because you have a companion and very rarely will anybody know if you break a rule or if you don´t follow something exactly the way you should. And also its harder to recognize the blessings of it immediately like in the MTC where there really wasn´t much to distract but here in the mission field there is always a lot going on so if I don´t look for the blessings of being exactly obedient and if I´m not striving to be exactly obedient then it is hard to see it. But I know that when we are exactly obedient we can not only recieve a TON of blessings but also somehow we can understand all of the things that we need to do better and the temptations of the adversary are easier to recognize and avoid.
This week here in Tijuana has been good but really busy. We have a baptism with Maura and Jasmine this thursday so we are really excited for that. We have been contacting alot in the street and have been meeting a lot of people that we are excited to start to teach. On saturday, we had a goal to get a certain number of new investigators and we needed two more before lunch to reach our goal. So we prayed specifically for it and right down the street we talked with a guy who we have passed like 5 times everyday who details and restores cars for a living. Gilberto is super awesome and reads the bible and prays with his wife and son everyday but never has liked the idea of churches because he feels like the majority of people at church just listen and agree and he doesn´t think that its right that the people teaching just take their take on the bible and preach it. It was really cool to talk about his beliefs and he told us how much he admired us because we did this everyday all day for 2 years. He said that out of all the churches, the testigos de Jehova and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints had always been different in his eyes because both of them have people walking around sharing the word, and he figures that if we are spending are time trying to share the gospel its because we really have a love for people. I had never really thought of it like that but now I´m really praying and trying to have more love for people.
We got a new zone leader, Elder Holm, and he is awesome. He´s a farm boy from the middle of nowhere Utah and is just a hard worker and has really been pushing our zone to be better and its working. We had a zone conference last week and he showed us a video that his older brother had made and sent him and my goodness it was sweet. It had some clips of general conference talks and such and then had pictures and words talking about all the missionaries in the scriptures, like how Paul baptized 8,000 in one day and others, and how asked questions like what is the difference between them and us? It was really cool to think of the potential that we have as missionaries to be able to work as hard as we can to bring the gospel to everyone. There is a quote in Preach my gospel that talks about how as missionaries and members of the church, we need to share the gospel not to bring up the numbers in our church or not to have more baptisms on record, but to open the doors of the Kingdom of God to His children, and that there is no one else in the world that can do that except us. So we are super excited to work harder and try to get our wards to start helping us out to be able to help allow more people to get back to our Heavenly Father.
Today we had to go to the mission office to go to the border to sign some stuff for visas. All of the elders from my MTC district were there and we got to talk and be together for a good couple hours so it was really really fun to catch up and trade stories about the mission so far.
On Saturday there was a young womens program in the stake that was called Obra de Amor and it was to start up a dealeo where all the leaders and youth are going to contact all the less actives girls and at the same time try to get references for the missionaries. So all the missionaries in our zone were there and President Carreon spoke and it was really fun to hear his side of the missionary work and his view of all the stuff we do. We also sang a special musical number called Te Hallaré mi querido Amigo. It is super sweet and I´m pretty sure there is a version in english. It talks about how before we came to this earth that we were blessed with the opportunity to recieve the gospel, and that we had friends before that we need to be looking for now to help them find the gospel. The spirit was super super strong and I know that each and every one of us have people in our lives that are just waiting to be invited to hear the gospel and that we have the responsibility and obligation to do so.
I´m so grateful for every one of you! Also I´m excited to skype in less than 2 weeks. :)
Con amor,
Elder Crockett
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