February 24th Letter

HHEEYYYYYY! whats new? Life is STILL good up here. I don't really know where to start. I think i'm really going to like it up here because on pday all we really play is basketball, so that is good for my heart. Not for my knees though, i don't know why they are so dumb. Elder Clawson and i went running this morning in the beautiful -3 weather, and my knees were really hurting at the end. This is dumb. But wow, this was a great week. Namely because of the Spirit packed week it was. On Monday we had a mission tour, which is pretty much a MASSIVE zone conference where a general authority is there. We had Elder Melchin, our area seventy or something. Before he spoke he said something that was really neat. he said, don't write down anything that i say, but write what the Spirit tells you. That was neat because it made me pay more attention to what i specifically needed to hear. It was a way good meeting that we got built up a lot. We've been focusing on faith because we need to have a faithful February if we are to have a miraculous march. 100 baptisms in march. Its going to be SO cool. One thing i noticed was that in Ether 12 Moroni mentions the miracles brought by faith. One of them is when Alma and Amulek have such great faith that the prison they are in falls to the ground, and they are unharmed. Applied to us that means that Faith helps us escape our own prisons of doubt, disbelief, discouragement, and so forth. A prison is something that holds you captive, and prevents you from progressing on in life. you are stuck. So when we have that strong faith our own prisons fall. yeah. It was also a blast because i got to see a lot of other missionaries. That's always a blast. AND it was back in the south stake center so that felt so good. it felt like home. The missionaries who were still there told me that it was weird that i wasn't there, cuz i was there for almost a year. And they said that it was pretty much MY building. I thought that was funny. BY the way, do you know how EXPENSIVE sticky notes are? its nuts. anywho yeah, it was good. I was planning on visiting some people but some missionaries needed us for exchanges and they ended up being late anyway, which didn't make me happy. On Saturday we had this WAY powerful lesson with a girl that we're working with that is just coming back to church. We taught a simple lesson 1, the Restoration. A lesson that i've taught over and over, but this was probably the most powerful one EVER. We focused on praying whenever we weren't talking for the benefit of the teacher and the learner. It was awesome. We left the appt feeling so good because we knew that we helped her out. Its amazing the strengthening that can come from the Spirit. Its also such a good feeling when you meet those people on the mission that you know that you were sent to help. SO good. OH! On our way home from mission tour on the big freeway, Deerfoot Tr, this car right in front of us slowly came to a stop. At first we thought she was trying to change lanes or something, but the we saw that her car was broken down. I wasn't at first too excited to get out on the middle of a freeway, with cars zooming by on each side, but i finally did, and went up to the car. She confirmed that her car just stopped working and it had never done it before and stuff. SO i told her to put it in neutral and that I'd push it to the side of the road. I then went to the back of the car, stopped traffic and starting pushing. The freeway was uphill at that point so it was a bit rough, but the Elder Clawson ran up and started pushing too. Which meant that our car was now parked in the middle of a freeway, haha. We got her to the side and she told us she had AMA (apparently, same thing as AAA) so we ran back to our car across the freeway, suit coats blowing in the breeze. It was pretty dramatic i'm sure, haha. But as we drove away we talked about how good it felt to do service like that. And also, we were in our suits so it probably gave the Church some good publicity. It was exciting! Woot woot, go service! Well, we are going to Burger King for WHOPPER WEDNESDAY! Yay! I love you all and miss you! Elder Crippen