Downsizing

Dear Crafts,

     This week was kind of a crazy one for us too.  But that's kind of typical for missionary work.  Talking to any random stranger you can, if you're lucky going into their house, and explaining to them how Christ loves them and has shown His love through a Prophet and modern revelation all with a book of scripture that they can just read to feel a difference in their life.  It all sounds pretty nuts if I put it that way, but that's why I love it.  Sometimes I find myself losing focus of what we really are here to do and how miraculous it really if that it ever works.  The Lord definitely guides this work and it's so awesome being a part of it!

    The weather sounds like good old typical Utah for us. haha  Here in Minnesota it's been pretty nuts too.  Last week like I mentioned we were planning for tranfers and getting all that finalized, but that's when we found out about the storm coming right for us.  It was suppose to hit Tuesday afternoon and continue through Wednesday evening bringing 18 inches of snow and freezing ice with it.  It would have been sweet with a ton of service opportunities as a missionary, but not so fun for everyone else.  The bad part was the timing of it all too because our transfer day at the mission home is usually Wednesday morning into the afternoon and we go to take the departing missionaries and pick up the arriving ones at the airport all in that time.  It's a crazy schedule with good weather, so this storm was going to throw a realy wrench in our plans.  President decided to err on the safe side and postpone transfers until Thursday to avoid everyone trying to travel in that storm.  It did come on Tuesday but it wasn't anything too bad.  Wednesday morning when we woke up to take the 10 departing missionaries that'd spent the night in our apartment to breakfast at the mission home before the airport we saw the nice coat of nice on eveything that had formed with a couple new inches of snow.   Needless to say I drove the big 12 passenger van full of missionaries with the cargo trailer full of their luggage to the airport as cautiously as I could.  Good news is that I, as well as the 10 departing and 16 arriving missionaries, survived the roads and storm over those two days that only brought a few inches of snow and ice that has since melted down and mostly away.  Despite moving the transfer to Thursday to avoid the problem with the storm we had another challenge come up Tuesday morning in the form of a funeral on Thursday at the chapel right next to the mission home and the family wanting to keep it private and dignified with no missionaries allowed during the 5-6 event.  So we worked like crazy to move the transfer location now along with the time up to the Minneapolis Stake Center in Crystal so we could have the transfer and meetings for the trainers and trainees there as well.  It seemed do go off without too many problems.  It was an interesting experience for me and Elder Dalrymple taking those 10 missionaries to the airport to go home.  They were all laughing and joking all on Tuesday and Wednesday morning even until we pulled up at the airport.  Almost immediately you could see everyone's expression change.  It got really quiet and all of them looked white and nervous.  It was a crazy experience to see reality hit with them of actually going home, and when Elder Dalrymple and I were talking about it after it's definitely something I'm not looking forward to. haha  Along with all the crazy coordination and logistics of transfers the Elders that used to cover the East Bloomington area, the other half of our ward, got transferred out so that we now cover the entire ward.  It was funny at church yesterday to see people's reaction when the ward went from 5 missionaries last week to 2 this week.  It's going to be a lot more work, but that also means a lot more teaching.  We need to build a model area for the mission and that's what we're hoping to do with new and more people to teach and a larger area.  When Elder Zwick of the 70 came on mission tour in October he changed up our exchanges so that we no longer do them with Zone Leaders, but now we bring all new missionaries and their trainers here to Bloomington for a day to work and train with us here.  That's another reason we have to make a model area because of all the exchanges we'll be doing.  We're going to have 8 new missionaries and their trainers coming on exchanges here within the next 6 weeks.  It's going to be awesome!  We got some really great missionaries that are going to build the mission so much.

     We also have a cool experience this week of having two members from the missionary department Brother Lusvardi and Brother Woodruff come out to do some training with President to all the District Leaders and Zone Leaders on Thursday.  We also get to have Brother Lusvardi come joint teaching with us all Tuesday night.  I'm not going to lie I'm kind of nervous but pumped at the same time.  It's going to be sweet I just hope that all our appointments we've been trying to stack for that night go through. haha

     With all of that going on this week there hasn't been much else to report on. haha  That's too bad to hear about some of the health struggles you guys are having, but I'll be praying for you.  I appreciate all your love and support that you guys give to me!  I look forward to talking to you all again soon!

Love, Elder Craft