Halloween

Dear Family,

     Thanks for all the emails and letters from all of you!  I apologize if sometimes I'm not able respond to everyone right away, but I try really hard to make time with the couple hours I have free on P-Day to do things.  Any letter I get from you guys though is the one I try to respond to and write to first.  It just seems like P-Day is extremely short and Fridays for Weekly Planning are extremely long.  I've been considering just changing P-Day to Friday just to see what would happen haha. ;)

     Last Monday I did get to dress up as one of those missionaries we hear so much about .  Funny thing is that my "costume" is one that I get to wear around 24/7 for 2 years haha.  People told us that Elder Parry and I should have just switched name tags to switch it up.  We were debating on whether or not to got trick or treating.  It would have been the same thing we do basically everyday just with a reward if they're not interested haha.  They gave us a curfew of 8 p.m. so we were allowed to come in early.  Brother Murray had us go over to their house though and spend the night serving scones.  That's what they do for Halloween.  They open up the garage and set up a table to serve the homemade scones,and honey butter; along with powdered sugar, apple cider, and apple juice on and put up chairs for people to just sit in and relax.  It's their tradition and people drive from all over to come to their house.  It was nice to help and just talk to people that came too so they could see us as real people haha.  It was funny to see some of their neighbors we tracted into the week before who were not interested or really too friendly at all show up and talk to us there.  People are very interesting that way.  How they'll act with a crowd and other people around as opposed to not.  I think it was good to help open up some people's minds though and will make it better now when we tract around there and see those people again haha  The rest of this week in the Garden of Eden was filled with a lot of tracting. haha Elder Parry was asking if this is all that we do.  haha I had to inform him about my days down in Kasson of becoming a tracting professional and that what we have to do here for the few hours we do each day is pretty nice.  We had a lot of miracles from all the finding efforts we put forth.  One of the greatest blessings has been the lack of snow so far, but from what I hear that will soon be coming this week.  Unlike the couple inches that you got in Utah this past week, that will hopefully melt for you this weekend, once the snow hits here get used to seeing it for the next 5 months!  I remember right after I got out here last year there was that storm of 22 inches in 24 hrs, and Elder Blume telling me while we shoveled the Greenwood's driveway to be sure to throw it far because we'd still be seeing that snow by March.  He was a little off though.  I remember seeing that snow hang around until May!! haha  Not only were we blessed with the nicer, milder weather we also were able to talk to some really great potential investigators and have some appointments set up with them for the end of the week.  We're really excited and hopeful to be able to start to teach them and build up our teaching pool here.  Thanks so much to all of you for all of your prayers on my behalf.  The Lord has really been helping us along to do what He wants us to do here and we'll be working to continue the miracles and have more things to talk about in future emails haha.

     We had Stake Conference yesterday that we went to and it was really good.  We had to travel to Crystal to the Minneapolis Stake Center for it.  President Clements was one of the speakers and along with the Stake President, President Schneiber, they both talked about missionary work and challenged the members to get more involved.  It was cool because the Stake President is very missionary minded and helped to encourage, support,a nd challenge the members here to share the Gospel more.   Kind of like how Elder Perry counseled us all to open our mouths more and share the Gospel with all those people around us and look for opportunities to do so frequently.

     Sorry there isn't much more to write about.  Thanks for sending all those pictures Kat.  It looks like your wedding /sealing pictures turned out really nice.  By the way I did get your email Natalie.  Thanks for the update on everything.  Sorry I haven't been able to respond to it yet.  I'll try to do it as fast as I can.  Just know that I wasn't ignoring or forgetting about you :).  I hope that everything is still going well for everyone else.  I miss you guys and pray for you always.  I hope to hear from you soon!

Love, Elder Craft