Chinese people are awesome. I'm over this whole teaching Canadians thing. Chinese people are where it's at! Affe (from China) is on date! hip hip hooray! Jan. 3rd! woot! (we're trying to talk her into sooner you know since I won't be there for it but we'll see...) Vivian who is also from China is sooooooooo amazing! Ah! She has the BEST questions EVER!!!! She asked this week if God ever gets tired of hearing us pray, if we could ever pray TOO much. Of course I reassured her that that's not possible but what a great question! AND we got 2 new chinese investigators! woot! They're both students at the local university here and it's so cool to teach people who don't know anything about God. With all of the Chinese people we've taught they each have brought up that they think they should pray to God only when they need something or when they're having a bad day. It's so neat to teach each of them that they can pray to God and should pray to Him no matter what, even if it's just to thank Him. Oh man sooooo cool! I feel like I've now served my mission not only in Canada but China too. Except I get the perk of speaking my own language. The best is that Affe comes to our appointments and translates words that maybe they don't know in english like "baptism" or "authority." Man I love this job.
So our next door neighbors are now being taught! See guys you can talk to you neighbors and it works! Seriously they live literally right across the hall. Jessica is a less-active and Ryan her fiance is not a member. They have 2 adorable kids, Lilly and Logan. Lilly had her birthday party this week so we stopped by to give her a present. We got her a coloring book to use at church. And guess what they totally came to church! It was so cool! Lilly is seriously so adorable. On Saturday after her party we heard a knock at our door. (no one ever knocks on our door by the way so it was kind of weird) We open the door and there is Lilly with a little goodie bag from her party and 2 princess crowns for us. She said that her Mom said she could come give it too us and told us that she, "loved us with all her heart." haha who is this kid?! It was pretty cute.
We have a couple more new investigators too! We're teaching another person from Iran and 2 other girls. I just feel like God is pouring out His blessings on us right now. It's so amazing! The church is true! Another thing He's pouring out on us is SNOW! We had a massive snow storm on Wednesday and President told everyone that they weren't allowed to drive. bummer. That's never happened before that I know of, so the roads must have been really dangerous. So sister Lorenc and I found other productive things to do, one of which was taking awesome pictures in the snow. I am kind of glad that it snowed before I left so I could go knock doors in the snow one last time (well maybe, it could snow again for all I know).
I can't believe it will be December this week! Pretty crazy. I'm so grateful for the people I've been meeting. I'm constantly reminded of the good that planting seeds can do. We got let into a door last night and she said it was because last time she saw missionaries they saw she was having a bad day and stopped her on the street and asked her if they could help her with anything. She said they were just so nice and it seemed like the thing that Christ would do. These 2 missionaries will never know what an impact it made on this woman and how because of it we have an appointment to teach her this week. Charity never faileth! And good examples can have a huge impact. We may never know just how much. Have a great week! Go do some good act and have fun with it!

Love,
Sister Crane

Woah woah woah. What did we even do this week? It was nuts! So many lessons, so much stress. It was kind of crazy. There have always been moments of that on my mission, times where you get so stressed you can't even think clearly. People tell you sooooo much stuff and you listen A LOT. It's kind of insane the amount of information that you take in. And every now and then you get an overload and start shutting down. Sister Lorenc and I both hit that point. We became so exhausted and became zombies for a few days but some how recovered as you always do. I don't know how you recover, because you don't just get extra sleep or something. I feel like it's one of those times that God just gives you the strength and energy that you need for your calling. It's awesome.
So even after a paragraph of typing I still really couldn't tell you what we did all week. Sam is doing awesome. She comes teaching with us and goes to YSA and is just so cool. She's told us some more details of her life too that have made me realize how much God prepared her to meet us on the bus that day. It's pretty incredible how God knows us each individually. Sister Lorenc and I have been talking about that a lot she had a good analogy for it. It's like we're the quarter in the candy machine. God made the machine, he already filled it up with candy and he sticks us in and then he turns the knob and there you go! That's all we are really, the quarter. What a blessing it is to be apart of HIS work.
We've been working with a lot of members lately and getting a lot of dinner appointments. It's funny because we weren't really getting many dinner appointments until I announced in relief society that we would be happy to have kraft dinner (mac & cheese) or Mr. Noodle (Top Raman). bada bing bada boom. None of them have fed us that but I think they all realized how desperate we are :) I love going and seeing members. Lately we've been doing this scripture challenge with them and while they do it for a week they pray about their friends. They are all so willing to share the gospel it's so awesome!
I wish I could think up more details about the work but the weeks are so jam packed and all I can think to add is that I know that this church is true. I know that God answers prayers. I know that he sent me here for a reason. It's a priveledge to serve, and I love doing it. Have a great Thanksgiving week!

Love,
Sister Crane

Pictures from the baptism

Sam got baptized! woot! It was so awesome! She was so happy and so excited! She got baptized on 11/11/11 and it was also remembrance day in Canada (US has Veteran's day). So that day we went 2 hours early to go fill up the font. We start to fill it up and it's ice cold. I mean ICE cold. The St. John river would have been warmer. The heater is broken, so we grab an older member that happened to be in the building and he got us a ladder to get to the attic. So here we are in our skirts climbing this huge ladder to get to the attic. We try reseting the water heater and it's still not working. The clock is ticking and I'm thinking there is no way we could let someone go into something so cold! So we head over to the mother's lounge to fill up hot water into buckets and transfer the buckets to the font. The old fashioned way, you know. A member of the bishopric came to fix it and by the time Sam got there it was fixed. However there wasn't time to fill it up with hot water so it was more like kind of cold instead of freezing. When we told Sam about it all she responded with, "Even if it had been freezing I would have jumped in!" The baptism went smoothly from there on out. She did get out and mention that we could check baptism and polar dip on the bucket list though. :) So I guess it wasn't as warm as I thought.

      I can't express the joy I felt just witnessing this awesome baptism! This girl seriously is icredible. I've never seen such enthusiasm for the gospel not even from members. It's nuts! She kept thanking us for everything and even said, "I couldn't have done it without you." I laughed really hard at that and said, "ya, actually you could have!" We all looked at eachother and laughed thinking, ya that's true. Seriously she had been so prepared by our Heavenly Father.

     Yesterday our lesson with Elaine was awesome! Elaine is from China, she's the one that fed us all that good Chinese food. Elaine is so cool because she does this whole reflective listening thing. When we're done talking about a subject she will recap what we've told her in her own words and then recap what she needs to do. She shared this really cool experience with us too! She said that last week after we taught her how to pray she thought she would pray to ask for help on her test the next day. So before she went to bed that's what she did. Then as she was lying in bed she had this feeling that she should look over her notes from a lab she had that week. So she got out of bed and reviewed her notes. Then when she went to the test the next day there were only 3 questions on the whole test and one of them was all about that lab that she had felt prompted to study! How cool is that?! After telling us this she told us that she wasn't sure if she was just lucky or if God had helped her. We explained that God helped her and that the Holy Ghost gave her that feeling. She looked at us and smiled and said that she believed that it was God too. Then she looked puzzled and said, "but why would God help me? I've only been learning about Him for 2 weeks, He should help you guys more than me because you know more about Him." This was my favorite part of the lesson because then I got to explain how much God loves her and that He loves her just as much as He loves me and because God loves her He will answer her. I told her that God had been with her, her whole life, she just didn't know it was Him. ah! Chinese people are so cool! I love teaching them this basic, simple, yet HUGE principle, God is our loving Heavenly Father. Never has that principle meant so much to me as it does now! I've taken this information for granted for way too long.

     I'm so grateful for all of these wonderful experiences. I feel like that's all my letters home say now. But it's so true and I could never repay my Heavenly Father for being a witness to so many wonderful blessings. I'll forever be grateful for a loving Father in Heaven who has helped me endure so that I could make it to this point and see these blessings. I'm so grateful that God knows more than I do and sees so clearly my future. I hope that I can trust in Him more throughout my life because of the experiences I've had here.

 

Love,

Sister Crane

      

The Chi-lect are back! watch out! Remember when I went on exchanges with Sister Hudson to Halifax and we taught like 8 guys from China at once?! Well apparently I'm a magnent for these asians because we just taught like 8 people from China here and it was awesome! I love chinese people. They are seriously THE coolest people I've taught ever. So humble. So willing. They are awesome! Ok so here's the story:

We're getting out of an appointment with Samantha (I'll talk about her later because that's an awesome story too!) and we had planned to knock her street. Before we pray we decide that we'll knock the left side of the street. As we pray I just get this small nudge that we should knock on the right side instead. I almost didn't act on it, that's how subtle it was, we go and knock on the first door and meet Xiao Jing. She hears our shpeal and then invites us into the living room. She then calls her roommate to come downstairs. Her roommates name is Elaine (english name, they are so funny some of them like english names and some of them don't). So we tell them that we want to teach them about God and Jesus Christ and ask them if they are interested. They both go, "yes! I know nothing about God!" Elaine then runs upstairs to grab a paper and a pencil to take notes. Xiao Jing asks if they need to go to church. haha it was AMAZING! We teach them about God and about who He is. That He's their loving Heavenly Father and that they can talk to Him any time any where. AH! Can I just tell you how cool it is to explain to someone who God is for their very first time?! It is so cool! The Spirit is so strong and you just get so excited for them! And they get excited to. They then offer for us to stay and have lunch with them. So we eat mushy noodles and cabbage and chewy pork. It was actually pretty good. (I know right, I'm actually saying that, the pickiest eater in the whole world! missions change you, I don't know)

THEN they invite us over for a party the next night. They were going to have some friends over and make more food and they wanted us to be able to try some of the food. So we went and the food was so good. Ribs and potato stuff and DUCK WING! G-ROSS! chewy super chewy! Ok but here's the best part so there are like 8 chinese people there and they each arrive at different times so picture this: Me and Sister Lorenc sitting there on the couch with duck wing in front of us and chinese Book of Mormon's in our hands. Each person walks in and says basically the same thing, "Why is your first name Sister?" It was hillarious. Then we would teach them the restoration and they would flip through the Book of Mormon. It was UNBELIEVEABLE! I mean seriously this is what missionary work should be like. You sit there and get fed and people just walk in one by one and you teach them. It seriously makes me giggle with excitement when I think about it. It's so cool! Being a missionary is the best. Ok so then get this we're like, "oh hey so the girl who lives across from you is getting baptized next Friday." They all rush to the window to see which house she lives in and then ask, "what's baptism?!" ah! GREAT QUESTION! So we explain it and before you know it they're all like (to their other friends that arrive) "you coming friday at 4?" "ummm ya I think I can come, where we going?" "to the church" "ok!" So we're going to have a row of chinese people at Sam's baptism. booya!

Which is a great segway into SAM'S GETTING BAPTIZED ON FRIDAY! woot! This girl. Oh my word. You need to meet her. She's the most bubbliest person on the face of the planet. She just won Miss something county and is going to be competing in Miss New Brunswick. She's got this southern accent because she's from the sticks. And she's that same girl I told you that I met on the bus and she came over to us and says, "hey! come over to my house tomorrow for speghetti and apple pie!" She's so awesome! She bore her testimony in church on Sunday and it's like she's been a member her whole life! It's insane. She is such a tender mercy. She even came teaching with us and after we extended the baptismal date to our investigator she told her whole conversion experience and then invited him to her baptism. Oh man it was the best ever. She's constantly like, "I'm so excited!" or "I'm pumped" whenever we bring up her baptism. It's nuts I tell you just nuts!

woah exhale. So this week was pretty much awesome! I just pray everything goes well for the baptism and that we get all 8 chinese people there! The gospel is TRUE! It is I know it. It changes peoples lives! It's so amazing! Hmmm any other updates? It's really cold....

I just feel so grateful for a loving Father in Heaven who knows His children. I know that nothing that I have done could ever make me deserve all of the blessings that He's pouring out on this area. It's a miracle. And it's only through God that it's possible. I'm so grateful for the scriptures and for the Savior. What a blessing to be sharing this message with everyone!

Love,

Sister Crane

Let it Snow!