Boogies Burgers!!!

Elder Meyers, my homeboy, i thought for sure i'd serve around him for the rest of my mission

gulbrandsen and jensen, two of my favorites

my posterity!

saying bye to clawson, i miss him a lot yup.

lethbridge

its really windy here

WOW Lethbridge is Windy. like, REALLY windy. We don't have a car so we really get to appreciate the wind a lot. I guess this is good though, I'll get to get rid of this belly! woot woot. definitely hampering working out though is a pulled groin and a sprained wrist. good times! But life is good here. These are some good wards wit great people. Check this out, on Sunday, we went to the Vaka Family's house to eat, and he's Tongan, he graduated with Pita Hopoate Jr!! His name is Ben Vaka and he came to Canada on rugby tour. I want to learn rugby. They're an awesome family. He says that they always called the hopoate's white tongans because they're lighter i guess. I thought that was so cool to meet them and make that connection. We ate great food of course. Oh, and he was wanting Tino's number so they could chat and stuff. You may or may not remember the Joosten family from New Brighton ward. They were one of those young couples that we hung out with a lot. He's a pilot. His family is on one of my wards, and they are just as cool! He's planning on visiting in the summer so get ready! haha. Tuesday was kinda frustrating because we were supposed to have a baptism, but we could not get a hold of her no matter what we did. Last time we talked to her was Sunday morning, and she's pretty much disappeared since then. NO answer at her door and no returned phone calls. Its frustrating. But we're having fun. I'm not sure if you've noticed yet but the Owens, the senior couple here, are amazing. They take such good care of us and are so much fun. They're the greatest. Oh, and i got a letter from Jayni, and apparently Chris is famous! She plays on a co-ed team and heard some peeps talking about playing vball in Salem and telling all of these stories about some Chris character, she asked if the were talking about Chris Crippen and they said yes! Chris, you're famous!!! I'll do my best to not get blown away! I love you guys!!!
Elder Crippen

The Smith family. they were awesome and one of my favorites BUrning stuff is fun. bye bye 18 months! (yeah i was a little late)

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yeah i got your letter today, what happened to mom's knee?! my boy is cool, his name is Elder Madsen and he's from Gilbert AZ. his personality is a lot like mine, I'm just stressin a bit about purging this area. its rough. and its a walking area, so yeah, haha. but I'm excited, theres some really cool people here that i already know kind of. The joostens, from new brighton ward, his parents live here! when i told him i was going here he got all excited and said, that's my parents ward!! So I'll get to see them every now and then so I'm really excited for that. But life is good as you know. It was really hard to say bye to people, especially Caly, Henry, Carly, the Rasmussen brothers, the smith sisters, its so weird being gone. Transfers are not my favorite thing, but they're just part of life. On Sunday night we went to a fireside and i got to see a bunch of people so that was a blast! And afterwards we went and gave Caly a blessing cuz she wasn't feeling well and as always it was an amazing experience. MAN i miss it up there.

Check this out, on thursday, this girl called us up asking us to go over and teach her. We went over there and the first thing she said to us was that she wanted to be baptized!!!! She'll be baptized on Sunday, we're way bummed we're going to miss it. We're kinda rushed because of appts so I'll tell you more next week. I love you all!!!

March 17th Letter

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Me and Clawson helping a family with dinner. he cut the lettuce and i SPUN it

THis is clawson, Carly (a girl who was baptized last year, she's way cool and made me a bday cake AND got me a pinata), me and Henry, the sweet kid who always comes out with us
we DESTROYED the pinata

The guy we lives with is from Chile, hence the sombrero

This is the Ice Cream cake that Caly made for my birthday. the crust was oreos mixed with melted reese's peanut butter cups, and broken up oreos, with ice cream and reeses pieces on top. SO hefty!

Clawson, Henry, Me, Caly, and her friend Becky

HEyyyyyyYYY!!! It was a great week. Before i start, Happy birthday to Carrie and Katie!!! Lots of amazing experiences. I don't know where to start. Maybe with Bednar, that'll be good. Elder Jensen from the Presidency of the Seventy was there as well. So cool! It was an amazing meeting and so spirit packed. I think the greatest thing i learned from him was how to teach better. Our purpose is to teach doctrine and invite people to act. And the best thing i learned is that i don't need to hear a general authority to speak in order to learn something. He wanted us the learn from the Spirit that which we needed to know. It was SO cool. Afterwards, we all got to go up and shake his hand and stuff. At first i was bummed because it looked so impersonal, they would shake his hand and move on. But when it came to be my turn I shook his hand and connected eyes with him. All i could see in his eyes was pure love for all of us, and me personally. It was SO cool. I think if i could share anything about that meeting that would be it. I didn't really learn anything groundbreaking, but i know that the leaders of the church have an immense love for all of us, and that love comes through their devotion to Jesus Christ. The drive ending up being pretty sweet because we didn't drive down, we got all the missionaries in the city on two charter buses! It was awesome and the seats were way comfy. And it was fun to be able to kick it with a bunch of buddies. SO fun. Oh, and i was in the ward talent show. I played the piano part for a song the Henry played on guitar and sang. It was exciting. The birthday was a good one as well. We had lunch with carly, went to the office and got mail and my CAKE! yum. ANd then went to a stake meeting and then went to caly's house for a great dinner and lesson. It was definitely a lot better than last birthday, haha. no car accident. Another amazing experience happened Thursday night. We had a sports night where people from the ward played kickball. And a girl we're close with, Carly, the girl who had the pinata for me, hit her head sliding into home. She's an athletic girl so we weren't really worried too much about her. She left early to take a friend home and we could tell that she was a little different and hurting. On the way home i was feeling really heavy in my chest and felt a lot of concern for her and had a strong feeling that we needed to go and visit her. I told this to Clawson and he felt the same way. SO we drove to her house and called her a few times, but she didn't answer so that had us worried. As we pulled up to her house she finally called back and we told her what was up and she told us she was feeling fine and stuff. Clawson said he felt like we should give her a blessing and i agreed. We went and talked to her on her front porch a bit and she kept telling us she was fine and whatev. We finally got out that she had a bit of a headache and was dizzy and she had 2 concussions last summer. We told her all about how strongly we felt the Spirit tell us to come see her and we asked it she would like a blessing. She had never had one before, minus her patriarchal blessing. So we explained a little bit, i anointed and clawson sealed. It was amazing and the Spirit was there for sure. During the blessing a thought came to me about calling upon the ministering angels because she was also scared about staying home with none of her roommates home, its something that bothers her a lot and she can't sleep some nights when they're gone. And right after i thought that ELder clawson said it in the blessing. I've never heard anyone do it before except for dad and me. SO it was awesome. Afterwards we shared our testimonies of priesthood blessings and the promise of angels. The next morning we talked to her and she said she had no trouble falling asleep and had no headache whatsoever. SUCH A GREAT NIGHT! I love you all and miss you!
Elder Crippen

p.s.- jayni, i mailed you a letter on monday! no worries!

March 10th Letter

The Calgary North zone started it off with a BANG! We had 3 awesome baptisms and they were great. One of them was a 9 year old kid and i asked him, "hey Cesar, are you glad you got baptized?" He enthusiastically replied, "yeah!" Then i asked him how he feels and he goes, "AWESOME!" and gives me a huge high five, it was sweet, haha. I'm falling in love with Excel, the computer thing! That's what we use to report numbers every week and I've gotten to do some crazy things on it, its pretty awesome. It was a good week, we got to help the zone out in a lot of ways and we are really excited for the meeting THE WHOLE mission gets to have with Elder Bednar this Saturday. We have to leave to drive down to Lethbridge at 4:30 in the morning. Luckily I'm not driving haha. As you know, i don't drive too well when I'm tired. (God bless that little Avalon!) Yesterday we went to the mission office to pick up mail (finally got some! thanks jayni!!!!), but we didn't drive at all! it was sweet. We took the bus and the train. That sounds kind of lame of me to say it was fun but it was an adventure for sure. I like to make things fun. Saw A LOT of interesting people too! haha wow. AT one bus stop, it was by a school and RIGHT when school got out, so it was quite the experience to see 40 crazy grade 8 kids get on the bus, SO loud, SO annoying, and SO immature, haha. I have some pictures to send, but i forgot to bring my camera card, so oops. We had a great zone leader council where president talked a lot about accountability. First we talked about ours, and then members. He used the parable of the talents to illustrate that we have each been given something, and we need to do SOMETHING with it. We need to constantly improve ourselves and share our gifts. Including the gospel. Aka God won't be too happy when we've been blessed with the gospel and we don't share it with others. That's just selfishness. And we talked about how its our responsibility to invite people to be baptized that's how we fulfill our purpose! Woot woot! Now we just need to find some people. On that note, i like this quote, (rhyme! ha!) "We properly pray for the safety and success of the full-time missionaries throughout the world. And a common element in many of our prayers is a request that the missionaries will be led to individuals and families who are prepared to receive the message of the Restoration. But ultimately it is my responsibility and your responsibility to find people for the missionaries to teach. Missionaries are full-time teachers; you and I are full-time finders. And you and I as lifelong missionaries should not be praying for the full-time missionaries to do our work!" That's from Elder Bednar's ask in faith talk. God wants us to ask in faith, and then DO. We've been focusing a lot on that lately, DOING. Being not just hearers (or preachers) of the word, but DOERS. jeah. Well, we're off to play some football and soccer and stuff. love you! Elder Crippen

March 3rd Letter

Yup, March is here! 100 baptisms will happen. We're all so excited for it. Lately I've been really worried about getting on in march, because we don't really have anyone to teach. But the Lord helps us out. At FHE this week we had a potluck, and afterwards they had a lesson about the importance of reverence during sacrament hymns, and to demonstrate the Spirit that could be felt as we are reverent and all singing. It was pretty cool, because it was way spiritual. A girl in our ward had brought a non-member friend there, and we asked him afterwards if he would like to meet with us and learn a little bit more about the church. We have an appointment with him tomorrow so we're really excited about that. we had a good week of going around and teaching people, and a really awesome experience in challenging 4 people to find someone for us to teach in 7 days. One girl was nervous about it, but the other 3 were awesome and so excited for it. One girl almost did a little happy dance in her chair she was so excited. One guy was nodding his head the entire time and thought we said 3 days instead of 7. It was great to see these people that we identified with the Spirit, following PMG, accept the challenge. Life is good here. It's warm, (highs of +10 for the whole next week!) However, it was pretty depressing however to hear about the US losing to Canada in the gold medal hockey game. But, also really cool because we got to be hear. They set a record for most golds won by a host country or something like that. I was just really happy to see that the States won in the 4man bobsled. I STILL want to be a bobsledder. how cool would that be? The Canadians were REALLY excited to win the game as well. pretty much RIGHT as is ended we went to an appointment at a members house. We were already dreading it because we were at this persons house the night that we beat them in the preliminaries. She answered the door and yelled, "My country beat your country in hockey! WOOOOOOOO!!!!' it was pretty funny, and it was cool to be hear for the olympics. Even though they were a whole province away. Well, bday is coming up and that's pretty crazy. I"m excited for it, hopefully it'll be better than my last one in the mish. I love you all and miss you! talk to you next week! Elder Crippen