January 24th

EXCITING NEWS ALL AROUND! ok first Chad is now a baptized member of the church! yay! Next is I'm training! Unfortunatly this means that Sister Peaden is leaving, but she's going to the "valley area" which is gorgeous and she's really excited about it. I get my new companion Thursday morning. I don't know her name or anything about her. Tomorrow I'm going up to Halifax for a meeting with President on how to train a greenie. I'm really excited because I just found out that my MTC companion Sister Hudson is training too so we'll be at the meeting together. It's really neat to have someone that is going through the same experiences as me at the same time, we started together and leave together too. :)
So lets talk about the REALLY exciting news! Chad! yay! The baptism was incredible. The Spirit was felt so strongly. We opened it up with the hymn "As Zion's Youth in Latter Days" which was perfect! And then one of the speakers, Sister Mahoney quoted that song and directed it to Chad. Everyone was in tears, including Chad's Mom, Darlene. She is so proud of him. Yesterday in church she told me that she couldn't even describe how good she felt to know that he has a place he belongs and to see him be so at home in the church. The Spirit was also really strong as the youth all sang "when I am baptized." and then especially as I saw him go down into the water. I still can't even believe it all happened, and so smoothly too. It must be because Chad was sooooo ready. He really is a good example for all of us.
Some other exciting news is that we have 5 new investigators! What the? I know it's nuts. This does not happen every week so I'm really excited. Especially because after a baptism you feel like, "ok, he's baptized, now who do I teach?" One of them is a 17 year old named Brenden. We've had 2 lessons and he committed to being baptized March 5th! cool huh?! Another one of them is Greg. He's older and seems that he's been looking for truth for a while now. He's an avid reader and we met with him twice and then he said he wanted a week before we met again to really dive into the Book of Mormon first. When we gave him a copy, the first thing he did was look to see how many pages long it was and then said, "ok so a little over 500, sounds good." haha We committed him to read the intro and the testimony of the witnesses like we always do and he said, "oh I'm going to read a lot more than that." Ya that's rare. And amazing!
Our other investigators are Amy and Alyssa. They are married to a less active member. Amy is the Mom and Alyssa is 9. Alyssa is so smart! Seriously she's brilliant. The whole lesson she paid attention and gave the occassional head nod. And then at the end she asked questions like, "when President Monson dies, we'll he be in the Book of Mormon?" It was such a good question because she knew that the Book of Mormon had the writtings of prophets in it, so why wouldn't our current prophet be in it? haha When I teach her I pretend I'm teaching Janai or Abby and think about if Alyssa was my niece how would I explain the gospel to her. I'm really excited for that family. Oh and one last new investigator is Keon. This is a really cool story. So we knocked into Keon a few months ago and he really wanted us to come back, but everytime we did he wasn't home. So on Tuesday we wrote down in our planners to stop by his house, but didn't have time and instead went to an appointment with Casey and Eytan, and guess who was there sitting in their living room?! Keon! It was insane. Apparently Casey and he are friends and he's staying with them for a few weeks until he gets a new apartment. Wowzer. The Lord does work in mysterious ways. Obviously I was excited, so much so that at the end of the lesson he said, "I don't think I've ever met someone who smiles as much as you do." Hopefully that's not a bad thing. :)
What a week. Seriously it's been amazing. We've been so busy I just love it! I hope it doesn't stop! I think all of these baptisms is making the branch members really excited too, which is so awesome. Matt is getting baptized on Saturday and remember his brother in law, Steven who we taught and he got baptized in November? He's going to baptize Matt and his son Cole who's 8! I can't even believe it. From our very first appointment with Steven we envisioned him receiving the Priesthood and baptizing his son and now he gets to baptize Matt too. Ah! It's so cool! We had a lesson with them yesterday and Steven kept practicing the wording and had his gospel principles book all marked on the chapter on baptism. :)
Truro is incredible! I feel so priveledged to stay here. Oh and one last really cool story! So we found out last week that the Meisner family (a less active family who we've been working with for months now) is moving to Kingston. And guess where Sister Peaden is getting transferred to? KINGSTON! what?! I know I'm in shock. It's pretty cool. I know that the Lord is in charge of this work. I also know that the only reason I'm having this much success is because of your prayers. I've never really felt prayers before my mission, but I really can feel them now. Everytime someone says, "yes, come back" or "yes I'll keep that commitment" or seeing someone get baptized like Chad on Saturday, I think, "It wasn't me" because really it's all of your prayers. Thank you so much!
It's freezing here by the way, -19 and it's supposed to be -27 soon. FAN-tastic! As we walked to the library this morning I literally felt the inside of my nose freeze (sorry if that's too graphic) but it's so cold! And the windshield makes it feel like -27 already. yuck. oh well. I'm just so grateful for all of the appointments we've been having that keep us out of the cold! yay! Well have a great week! Say a prayer for the new Sister if you'd like, I know it's a hard transition, and I really hope I help her make it as smooth as possible. Thank you for your letters and prayers!

love,
Sister Crane