Well...

Well family, this last week.... you could kinda say we hit rock bottom, but I have a lot of faith this week is gonna be different! I don’t have time to write and well, I don’t have much to write about, so either way.  Here are some of the pics for this week; one is of Elder Barlow who just got here.  He is from Sandy, Utah and he’s a good guy. The other is of my 5th pair of shoes that broke this week, and the last one, I was just chillin’ in a tree!

Everything is just fine here so I’ll write you all next week!

Love ya!

Elder Crump

With Elder Barlow

Pair #5

Chillin'

Learning Quickly

Well. I’m currently enjoying the fact that I played soccer for two hours, my shirt is completely covered in sweat, I smell terrible and am squeezed in here between two sisters that are surely enjoying the odor, hahaha. But at least I get the blessing to write you all another week, so it’s all good!

So this week was superb, it was filled with a lot of hard things to accept but as always, they were necessary. Elder Calero and I were able to bring three new people to church this week that hadn’t happened before so that was awesome. The best part was the fact that César went. He is a guy that lived in the States for 30 years, speaks English and got deported. Right now he is living with a younger girl and they aren’t married yet. The awesome thing about César is that he is literally always happy. No matter what. We see him and he just shouts WHATS UP MY BROTHAS! I LOVE YOU MAN! Haha. I’m even sitting behind the sacrament table in church this week and he walks in a little late and started calling me to get my attention, it was hilarious! But anyways, the cool part about César is that we taught him the First Vision and he’s like, ‘Bro, you won’t believe me but I totally saw this before in a dream I had while I was in prison before I got deported! I totally believe this!!' So that’s sweet because he believes in Joseph Smith, loves the church and has a ton of friends already. The only problem is the marriage issue so that’s what we will work on this week!

The lesson that I learned this week was a good one. There’s a guy in our ward that’s the husband of our cook. So every lunchtime I always chat with him. His name is Pedro and he served his mission here in El Salvador. So the eternal truth I learned while we were chatting is this. God gives us trials in life to learn. If we choose to learn quickly, the trials can end quickly. If we choose to be stubborn and not learn the lesson, he has to drag the trial out. It’s something that is very simple but just something that had never really hit me before. For example, we haven’t had much success in our area that past few weeks, does God want me to have success, of course! But he puts trials so I learn. If I learn the principle in a week, in a week I can have people to teach. If it takes a whole month, in a month I will be blessed with more people. So my invitation for you all is to just take a look at the trials you have in life, and what you should be learning from them. If you choose to be a quick learner, well, things will pass by faster, and you’ll be happy faster!

This week we had a Multi Zone Conference were I got my flu shot given by the AP, Elder Long. He’s my pal. The crazy thing was that it was the first shot he had ever given in his life... well no wonder my arm hurt so bad the entire week, haha! But the Thanksgiving dinner we had was sweet because I got to eat turkey...not even close to the Gpa Crump turkey, but I had to make do. The other cool thing was that Elder Craig was there so we got to chill for the day there!

Well fam, you’re great. Love ya all. Don’t ever stop being true members of the church, living every single commandment God has given us! SALU PUES!

Elder Crump 

Getting a flu shot from Elder Long.

Self-explanatory

Thanksgiving feast with Elder Craig (his MTC companion).

The missionary tree.

Multi Zone Conference
Matthew's on the back row, middle right.

After all we can do.

Aih Familia, que bendición tengo de escribirles cada semana... lástima que no lo puedo hacer en Español verdad. Haha, just kidding family, life is great here in the mission and well, another week closer to Christmas for those who are counting down! This week was a crazy one and I was really able to learn a lot and strengthen my testimony. We had Stake Conference which is always a great time and we listened to some really quality talks there.

So the miracle of this week is that we really did see how the Lord works in blessing us, only after doing everything we can. This week I worked suuuuper hard, like the hardest I have my entire mission so that we could have people in church. My comp and I just wanted it sooo bad. So anyways, after the week of work, Sunday comes around and nobody shows up at church and I was super sad… until I saw a guy sitting with a lady I didn’t recognize... turns out the lady was less active and this week they had just felt the Spirit super strong that they should go to church.  So she took her family, including her husband that isn’t member. They all went and now we can teach the whole family. The best part was that the dad hated the church because his work mate always watches porn while at work and gives the guy a bad image of the church and so he wanted to go see what our church was really like. He went yesterday and just drilled the people that use pornography and helped them realize that it’s not something accepted in the church at all. We will see how things go teaching him this week!

At five in the morning today I wake up to go to the bathroom, and get locked in the tiny bathroom we have with this big guy (see pic). A massive rat. Needless to say I killed it after five good hits to the head with the shampoo bottle and then took a HQ pic afterward. Life is awesome, haha.

I don’t have time to write anything more but I love you guys and have a sweet week. Missionary life RULES!

Elder Crump

At the Santa Ana Cathedral.

Matthew's bathroom rat :0(
Disgusting!!

Finding the Peace

Oiiiihhh! Que ondas pues familia!?

It’s been... well, a week since I last wrote you all! We had a good week and even though it’s still been a little hard on the investigator side of things, I’m a happy camper as Mom would say! So this week we were able to find a bunch of new people to teach and I have been able to help all the new gringos in the zone so that’s been a blast. Overall it was a pretty quality time, so here is some of what went down...

First of all we had the miracle of finding 16 extremely positive people this week as my comp and I worked super hard to find new people to teach. The biggest miracle was that Sunday night I was really depressed because the day just went horrible and I felt like we weren’t doing anything right in our area...so my comp and I are just talking about the day and how we had literally spent the entire day on our feet instead of visiting people. So I’m just like man, I literally have no idea what to do.. and he just shrugs his shoulders but then looks over at me and sees a girl outside that he had helped baptize in his old area... so we cross the street to go talk to her and she’s just insanely happy... Turns out she had been talking to a work friend about the church and then decided on Sunday to go visit her. So she had just gotten done visiting this family when we found her with the family.. if that makes sense. So she had been telling the work friend she could call missionaries to come visit her and then we just came around the corner and saw them! Hopefully that all makes sense but ya, it was a miracle and now tomorrow we are gonna go out to visit them!

Another awesome thing was that today we had a giant football (soccer) tournament with our zone against Zone Modelo. It was sweet because we played on a new turf field they just built and we were able to play with our Stake President that is a total boss. Needless to say we won and I’m now totally red because I forgot to put sunscreen on, haha.

So for some reason random kids here just literally hate me and I have no idea why...a few weeks ago it was a Coke can and this week it was with a coke bottle… I’m just walking down the street with my comp and we decided to contact this family we saw, so we start talking to them and all of a sudden their like 4 year old son get this super angry face and starts hitting me as hard as he can with a Coke bottle. The problem was he is really short, and hit me... well, were it counts. I’m like ready to collapse on the ground, my comp’s about dead of laughing so hard and the Mom is hitting her kid as a punishment. It was great, haha!

Last thing for this week is that I was reading in Jesus the Christ and I have finally got to the part about his death and how all of that took place. As I was reading that part last Thursday I had moved my seat out side of the house just to enjoy the fresh air and it was just so peaceful. I started reading and learned about how they whipped Christ and that they put small pieces of rock and bone to make the whip rip off more skin... then I started reading about how they would pound nails in the bones and that the nerves they would penetrate were the most sensitive possible and that it was the most horrific death possible known at the time. I just wanted to cry sitting there having to read all that. I sat there for a good time thinking and I just felt so much love and peace thinking about the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Even though it’s hard to read things like that, it makes me know, without a single doubt, that my Heavenly Father loves me. He sent his son as a sacrifice for ME. And because of all that, I can change. I can become a better person. And one day I can become like Him. What a blessing it truly is to take that message to everyone as a missionary!

Well fam, GTG for now but have a happy week and go do some missionary work! Especially you Elder Crump #2 haha Love ya all!

Elder Crump #1

His companion when they don't agree on their planning :0)

Enos

Elder Crump