August 12th Letter

This was a decent week! I got to give my first baptismal interview last Thursday and it was an awesome experience. It was sweet to see someone so excited to join the church. She's 17, and was referred by her friends. shocking! Member referrals WORK. Our new mission plan is strictly following that. We have this new plan that we are to work strictly with members. We aren't really even allowed to tract! ha ha that is amazing. We do this thing where by the spirit we identify someone who we can go visit and challenge them to have someone for us to teach in 7 days. Its for sure an inspired program and people have already seen success from it. Normally i hesitate with change but i know that this was inspired and its AWESOME. This was also kind of a bad week. Over the weekend a few times i was really struggling many times with self esteem and what not. I could REALLY feel Satan working on me and i didn't like it. I tried so many things, listening to some of my favorite songs, writing letters to people, but stuff just kept bugging me. It wasn't until i sincerely prayed that i started to feel better, and this morning i read a great article on the Atonement that OOBER made me feel better. I love the Gospel. We taught one of our favorite member families the restoration, and it was awesome. The Spirit was definitely there, As i was teaching i felt impressed to testify of Christ, and i don't know how i talked so well, ha ha it fo sho was NOT me. I love when that happens. Its a big builder of the testimony. There goes another week in the life of me. I'm excited for pday today, hopefully we'll do some sweet stuff, and if we play volleyball I'll be able to ROCK it. Love you all!

July 29th Letter

Hey family!Life is good, just doing the good work. We're going fishing today for pday so that's gonna be lots of fun. A nice little change of pace and relax with other missionaries and stuff. We had interviews yesterday and they were awesome. One thing that i liked a lot more was they were very personal. Pres Priday would ask if you were obedient and all, worthy and stuff, but wouldn't really initiate any other personal talk during the interview. But Archibald just dove right in to asking questions and teaching stuff, it was almost a little overbearing because i spent 30 minutes in there with him talking about planning effectively and effective member visits.. And sister Archibald is a sweetheart. She spent 30 mines at least asking about me and my family and my interests and stuff, and she's doing something really cool, where she's having every missionary mark their favorite scripture in her scriptures and writing our name. I gave her Alma 43:23, the one about the certain men. She loved it.
Also during interviews, Harvey will appreciate this, I ran to the library because we were watching testaments and i was quoting the whole thing from memory, and i grabbed the old videos and found PIONEERS IN PETTICOATS. For real the best Mormon movie ever. It was a gold mine of old Mormon movies. We started with Uncle Ben, then watched the gift, and then the mailbox, pioneers in petticoats, and then Johnny lingo. ALL ON ONE TAPE! Amazing. I reminisced quoting the pioneers movie with Harvey. Good times. After we're done with emails I'm going to go get a screamer, its a slurpee with soft serve ice cream. SO good.
I totally had a dream last night that i was saved by transformers. Everyone keeps telling us about the movie and it has me transformer crazy. I want our car to turn into one! that'd be so cool. We've started up another sports night here and its fun. Mostly just basketball though. I haven't played volleyball in forever and i miss it. Thanks for the family reunion pictures. I can't wait until next years!!! It's gonna be awesome. love you all!
Elder Crippen

July 22nd Letter

SO, biggest news of the week, i got in a little bike crash. Burnham cut me off while going down a hill so i hit his back tire and flew over my handlebars, and somersaulted a bit and landed in weeds. Funny thing was, my first thought was, this better not screw up my tie. Which it didn't. Gladly. But it cut my hand up pretty good. Its all good though. It was a good experience. We got some part member families to work with this week so I'm really excited about that. Elder Whitt is back in the zone as a zone leader so its REALLY good to be around him again. He's one of my favorite guys out here. But we off to go do some stuff, the computers been wiggin out so sorry this is a lame one. But i love the gospel SO much! this is a good work. And i have people complaining about the blog not being updated.... Elder Crippen

July 15th Letter

ok, to answer dad's questions, The mission president's name is Alan Archibald, and he's from St. George. He and his wife are way nice, and i like them a lot. The subject you sent me freaked me out. I can't believe I'm almost halfway done. SO weird. So I'm staying in the area with elder burnham,and I'm happy about that. There are so many cool families who were praying that we would stay. I think they were actually literally praying. So i will be Elder Burnham's last companion before he goes how to Mesa, AZ. So weird. I did get your postcard, and i sent your self addressed one yesterday, haha you guys are funny. postcards are awkward to write on because there's like, no room, but i did my best. So, i got my planner back, but then forgot it this morning. haha I'm terrible. NEXT WEEK for sure. But there's been crazy weather up here, its been rainy for the last week pretty much. Its nice, but also, July is half click month, so we only get half the usual allotted kilometers for our car. So that's why we've been riding bikes a lot, but with rain, its harder to ride bikes. SO we're struggling. But i promise next weeks email will be jam packed with stories. I love you all!
Elder Crippen

July 8th Letter

Canadian rednecks...SLUMS boomer the dog, lookin chill this is for harvey beavers chewed it down! crazy! the tree asian pose no pose

So, HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY AMERICA! God Bless America. I love that country. Life is going good here. I had a whole list of things to write, but i left my planner at some other elders apartment, so I'm a little lost, but will try and remember. As you can see from the picture, we've been having a little bit of rain lately. Crazy southern Alberta weather. One night we woke up to a HUGE thunderstorm, and in the morning it was sunny with NO clouds. LAME. But whatev. Every time we go out riding bikes its a potential we t-shirt contest. YIKES. But here's the coolest thing you've ever heard. Elder Burnham, me and elders Mansfield and mella, (the zone leaders) RODE our bikes to mission conference. probably a 30 km round trip, and that's pretty awesome. SUCH a good workout, and it didn't take us that long at all.
I'm loving biking around now that we have nice weather. Well, kinda nice, hah. It just makes you feel good, and people see you out and about working. We just had a mission conference where we met our new mission president, President Archibald. He's a great guy and I'm looking forward to this next year under his leadership. Transfers are next week so i email on Tuesday. I love you all!
Elder Crippen

me and my boy, elder taylor, reunited in the south stake rode through the rain! woooo

June 30th Letter

The MTC district! Asian pose after hangman... BAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA The Korean girl and Whytni Morrison, notice the hangman word.... YEAH! the wreck, so sad...

SO goes another week in the life of me. First things first. That was SO much fun flying those RC planes. I was meant to fly, i just know it. I just wish it didn't cost $5,000 to get the license. There was a little mishap when i first tried to fly. We were on these controls where there's the main controller, and then a other one connected by a wire, and if the pilot held down a button it gave control to the other person. That's how we were flying. And when i took my first turn, right before it was being handed off to me, the plane somehow lost reception for the controller, and took a straight nosedive to the ground from 300 ft up. It was nasty. That's what the picture is. But i emphasize, it wasn't my fault! phew!
This Sunday we had a surprise farewell fireside for the Pridays. They were so surprised and loved it, i could tell. I'm so grateful to them for everything they have done for this mission. They are Such awesome people. There were lots of musical numbers, and you better sit down for this one, i sang in one! Me and some other elders in the zone sang come thou fount and it was pretty good. Not gonna lie.
Elder Burnham and I have been riding our bikes around a lot and its been such a blast! I just feel so much better being all exercised. WE taught primary this week and that was crazy. It was a class of 2 eight year olds. Such a gong show. (Canadian phrase for something chaotic.) The two girls were Whytni Morrison, yes the famous Morrison family, haha, and then some Korean girl who spoke NO English, that was fun. haha but we played hangman, and Whytni was in charge and the pictures is the result! haha so touching. Love you all!
elder crippen