Talofa fam!!
Yes, life in the Tropical Breeze Ward is pretty awesome! As for my Samoan - I am not doing too well at learning. We need a book with all the Pronunciation! If you find one on the internet, please do send it. But don't spend a ton of money because most of them do speak English. We are just total outsiders in the ward and I would like to at least put forth some effort to show them that we are trying!! We really want to gain some ward trust that way. It is pretty weird, though being the minority. There are like 3 white guys in the whole congregation. Elder Peacock, me and the Stake High Councilor. So it is a different experience and they all make fun of the little white guys. So we just kind of have to deal with that. haha. Elder Peacock is a really good guy. I am loving how funny he is, and he reminds me a ton of Jacob Christensen. Hilarious and just a super good dude. By the way, how is Jacob doing?? We are going through an adjustment stage as you do with all change of companions, which can be tough at times. But it is good. He and I are going to be working hard and we just need to get the area going. We are both leaders and so making our ideas mesh together sometimes can be difficult. I know I am learning a ton from him and he is a really good guy to teach me the zone leader ways. As for the zone, there are 18 Elders total and then we have 2 Sisters. So far, it seems pretty good. There are times when it gets a little tough.
As for the English ward we are serving in, we have quite a bit of work going on in that area. We are teaching several people and they are set with a date of April 26 and April 27. So the work is really going well right now. Our Bishop is from Blackfoot and then there is another family form Burley... Idaho follows me everywhere!!:) The weather here is definitely warming up. Yesterday it hit 90 for the first time, which to me was pretty crazy. I was like what the heck? It is only APRIL!! But it will be good. Oh and Ethan Gilstrap is going to a super, super ghetto part of town, but don't tell his parents that. I actually get to go over there a couple times a week now because we cover the Samoan ward and the church building is on the East side. So if he gets out here soon maybe I will see him! We do get to interact with the Elders that serve in the Samoan ward with us because the Samoan ward covers the whole valley of Las Vegas. So Elder Peacock and I cover the West half (the promised land) and they cover the East half haha. Our church building is super cool. It is old and it has a lot of character to it. When we come back to visit the mission we are going to the Samoan Sacrament meeting, no doubt. It has such a sweet Spirit there. Even though we know nothing that is going on, we still try and sing along and act like we know what's happening. I really am going to try and put forth a good effort to learn some of the language. I am memorizing a new word or phrase each day so if you can find a book like I said earlier, that would help me with pronunciation, that would be a huge help to me. So far I know how to say mom, book of Mormon, and hello. I will try to keep you posted and hopefully by the time I call you in a few months I can say something cool to the grandkids. O Le Tusi a Momona is the Book of Mormon. It is kind of tough because I have no idea how to pronounce stuff. Never fear though the East missionaries speak Samoan and so do a ton of the Ward members, so I just call them and ask them how to say it. But I am sure that they will get annoyed of me real quick!!
So for my experience that I had this week, we will stick with the Samoan ward. This last Friday evening was the 1 year anniversary of the Tropical Breeze ward and we were super pumped because they planned a rocking PARTY!! Let me tell you, they know how to party it up! We white people don't know anything about parties!! They had a live band and they were dancing and everything! It was nuts. They had like 450 people there - members and non members. The thing was when they started to serve the food we as missionaries volunteered to help them serve and we were being instructed on how to do it. One thing I have learned is DO NOT keep them from their food. People were getting super upset with us because we were following orders and taking the food to the back and working our way forward. And then when we would give food to people in the front the people telling us where to take the food were getting ticked as well! It was pretty dang crazy. One of the East Elders even got flipped off!! It was weird. It wasn't like a food line. We actually served them the food. It was interesting. There is a plus side:) When we got our food I will be completely honest, it wasn't what we expected. We were so upset that they were rude to us we had to go and get some five guys instead. hahahaha. I got a SICK lava lava for serving, so it was totally worth it. Last night we had dinner with our Samoan ward Bishop and he fed us so good it was crazy!!! So they do love us, we just need to learn a little Samoan to get on their good side.
And for the English ward, we are teaching this lady named Debbie. She's a really nice lady who they found street contacting. We went over on Tuesday to have a lesson and it went well. She is totally ready to get baptized, but the weird thing was that she kept saying she knew me from somewhere. She just kept looking at me funny, like where do I know you from? And of course I was like I have no idea where you know me from. Well, we met with her again on Tuesday and about half way through the lesson she stopped us. She looked at me and yells, "I know where I know you from!!" I was like ok, where did we meet? She said, "I saw you! I saw you in a dream! I knew you were going to be coming to see me." Wow that is pretty crazy! I would have never thought that that would happen to me. She knew that I would be there to teach her and to help her make this next step in her life. Now granted I don't know too much and I haven't met with her a lot, but it was just a really sweet testimony builder for me that the Lord really does know what He is doing. I was sent to this specific place for a reason.
All in all, things are going well. I hope that life is going good for you back at home sweet home. I am having a blast out here serving the Lord. I love you all so much and Kace, that a boy on getting baptized! That is so awesome!! I am really proud of you, man. Sounds like Foster has grown a lot?? Dang, he is going to be taller than me when I get home, but I am sure most of the kids will be haha. Stay strong and carry on everyone!! And as for things we need out here there really isn't a whole lot. The members are really good about taking good care of us, but if I think of something I will let you know. I love you guys and I pray for you often. Tell Judd and Susan I said hi as well as everyone else. Next week I will tell you goodbye in Samoan as well.
Talk to you soon!!
Love Elder Crapo
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