Completing the Family

HELLO CRUMP FAMILY!!

Things just keep cruising down here. I’m sweating like none other every day but I feel more satisfied with my work than I have in a very long time. We are finally starting to have success and the area is progressing a lot. In Nahuizalco we walk so, so much and it’s just made me exhausted all the time but well, I love it.

This week we were able to put a date with Bryan, the son of a lady that I baptized a year ago. For an entire year the missionaries had been going there to try and convince him to be baptized, but he just never wanted to. In the ward we baptized a family of four and Bryan went to the baptism. That was the trick and he later accepted the date to be baptized a week from now. We watched the video of Christ getting baptized with him and the Spirit was so strong, so he just knew he had to do it! We were also able to bring 6 people to church this week, the most we have had in a waaay long time, so that was a great relief to have things improve some!

A cool experience from this week... I’m sitting with my comp, eating mangos with the Fam Tadeo, and one of the daughters puts two tiny red chilies in the bowl with the mangos.  So I finished eating my mangos and ask them, ‘Am I suppose to eat this chili or what?’ but nobody answered me.  So then I ask my comp, ‘Dude, did you already eat yours?’  ‘Yup!’ he says.  So I eat the chili whole, with all the seeds and...Wowzers!  I thought my entire head was going to blow up. My entire mouth was soooo red and I thought I was going to die. The Fam Tadeo made milk for me as fast as possible and I’m just sitting there bawling my eyes out because my whole mouth’s on fire. Like 30 minutes later I could finally talk normally and my tongue wasn’t super swollen, but wow! That was a terrible experience. Supposedly the daughter had put it there as a joke, not thinking I would eat it. But seeming as though I just have to eat everything here, I gobbled it right up!

On the spiritual side of things, well I’ll fill you all in next week. I got to go for now! Love you guys!

Elder Crump

Helping the RS sisters do some cooking.

The views from Pushtan are the best.

Nahuizalco Once Again!

Good Morning Family!

The news is in and well, I’m back in Nahuizalco, the same place I was last year at this time! On Thursday, President called us and let us know that he had decided to put us in Nahuizalco because it was the best area of the zone and the area in Juayúa just wasn’t gonna cut it. So we just packed up all our stuff real fast and went down to Nahuizalco to work! We are in the same house as Elder Robbins, who came in my group.  So it’s been a riot to live in the same house as him.

The work here is awesome because there is a ton of people to visit and there isn’t a single minute of the day when we have nothing to do. It’s a lot more satisfying work compared to in Juayúa, that’s for sure. I was able to visit all my converts here and all but one are still active, so that was great! It’s awesome to be able to see the progress of people and how much their lives can change after living the gospel for a year’s worth of time.

We have been working in Pushtán and wow, what a difference it is to walk in tiny dirt paths again, going up and down mountains, compared to the nice paved streets of Juayúa! The other thing is that it is HOT as all get out and I just go through the entire day sweating up a storm. But overall I love it. Free pupusas again, and beautiful scenery. It's great to be back here!

Time is out and I need to go eat food but I’ll write next week. Love you all lots!

Elder Crump #1

Eating some apple pie!

Helping build a small house for a boy in Juayua whose mom had died.

At the entrance of Nahuizalco, again.

Do What's Right

Good Morning my fine feathered, furry friends. Checking in here from Juayúa, El Salvador and well, the weather down here is COLD. Or should I say, freezing cold. I thought that would be impossible to say while I am here but Juayúa, being in the mountains, gets super cold for like 3 weeks of the year. I am currently using a sweater and the wind at night just about knocks my socks off. It’s serious stuff. But to be honest I like it, it’s a nice change from the every day heat that is usually here!

So two sweet things happened this week... well kinda three, but I’ll summarize real quick...

First things first, on Monday I had studied a ton about being guided by the spirit and wanted to put it in practice. A lot of times in our area we literally just walk around doing nothing and contacting people because we don’t have anybody to visit. So Monday we decided while visiting to go and visit this girl that is leaving to go on the mission in a few months. I told her that she was going to practice teaching us Lesson 1. So she starts preparing and everything and then the mom, who is a little less active that we had taught some, comes into the room. So I’m like, Karmen, sit down and your daughter is going to teach you lesson one. So they start doing it and the girl did a terrible job and I’m just like, well great.... and Karmen says, ‘Well I wish I knew that what my daughter just taught was true...’ I’m like ‘Say what??? You have 27 years as a member of the church and you don’t have a testimony of Joseph Smith??’ So then I told Dina, ‘Alright teach your mom again but use your testimony this time. Not just words.’ So she shares her testimony and it was so perfect. She and her mom were crying a ton and the spirit was so strong. We starting teaching the mom and told her that even though she had 27 years as member it didn’t matter, she NEEDED a testimony of the Restoration of the Gospel! We taught her a little more and had a kneeling prayer with her. When she said the words, ‘Father, help me to know that all this is true. I need to know if all this is true…’ and bam, silence...Wowzers, was the spirit strong or what! I wanted to jump up in the air and be like, YOU HAVE A TESTIMONY HERMANA KARMEN!!! Haha, but it was quite the experience and it was just for following the spirit and going where he wanted us to go.

Other sweet thing that happened this week was that Sunday comes around and we literally had nothing for the weeks worth of work that we had done. I was super depressed and wanted to just sleep the entire day when Sunday morning came around. So anyway we go to church and well, the Lord blessed us in the end. The other ward that goes to our church building had brought a girl to church, which is our job to teach her (she’s in our area), and now she will be baptized the end of this month! With patience the Lord really does bless us!

Well I’m out of time but I’ll write the rest of the stuff next week! Love you all, keep reading the Book of Mormon every day, don’t ever let your trials get the best of you and be a light to the world! LATER!!

Elder Crump

Sorry, no pictures this week :0( 

Monday Miracles

Ahhh... well family, it’s been one crazy week for us here in Juayúa but I can still honestly tell you guys that I love being a representative of Jesus Christ. We have been contacting people like crazy this last couple weeks and I have come up with literally a million ways to start conversations with people and start to teach the simple principles of the gospel. It really has strengthened my personal testimony of the truths we teach as missionaries. Talking about the BofM, living prophets, temples, the priesthood, etc... really helps you to feel that the restoration of the gospel is true. We were contacting for an hour and we even got rejected by 6 kids that are like trained by their parents to lie to us. Everyone in our little area knows the missionaries and it’s funny what the parents do so that they don’t have to talk to us.

This week something extremely difficult happened here in the ward. Brother José Gonzalez died in an accident. He is the uncle of the little girl we just baptized last week. He has been a member for his entire life and it was extremely hard for me to get ahold of. He was less active when I came and we had visited him a lot. His problem is that he wasn’t married with the lady he lived with but he really did have a desire to change. He had gone four Sundays in a row and was finally starting to turn his life around when all this stuff happened and he died on Saturday. People always say here, ‘You never know when this life is going to end!’ and well, it’s totally true. Life can end in an instant. We have to be ready to live with God again at any moment of our life. We really can’t say next week I will try to change this around because it could be too late.

So this week I have been really stressed with all the goals and stuff that our President gave us, and one night I just couldn’t take it anymore. So I started reading a talk that mom sent me from Elder  Holland. It talks about life lessons we can learn from Liberty jail. I really liked the talk but the best part was at the end of the talk, where it shares a scripture in DC section 123 verse 17. The scripture is the following:

Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed.

Well, in Spanish the scripture is a ton better... as is so with the majority of the scriptures out there, haha, but the scripture really did help me out a lot. I know what I am capable of doing and I just need to give it my all. And I have to do it CHEERFULLY. That is the key. That is what I lack a lot of the times. Is to just be happy. So this week I am going to work with all my heart, might, mind, and strength and then I can stand still, know that God will show his arm or power within my area.

Love you lots family. I’m the most blessed person in the world to call you my family! Have a fabulous week!

(The last pic with Elder Alberca before he left, all the elders in the zone, and the temple when we went, which was the last time I was able to go before I go home! Yikes haha)

Elder Crump

At the temple with Elders Alacan and Alberca.

Juayua Zone

Good Morning America

Good Morning America.

Life here in the mission just keeps on going. Time is flying.

This week we had the baptism of a girl named Leah. She has family that are members but her dad is inactive and her grandpa as well. So she never got baptized when she turned 8.  Years passed and she never got baptized. When I got here I started leaving with her Grandpa, Antonio, who is actually the old bishop here. He had a lot of time without going to church and was struggling. So we helped him out and were preparing him so he could baptize his granddaughter. Everything was going well until he fell out of his pickup truck. (He’s 71) and he got injured pretty badly. So that was the day before the baptism of Leah so, in the end, I just ended up baptizing her. I guess the important part was that Antonio finally got his temple recommend and stuff, even though he wasn’t able to actually do the baptism. It was a super sweet service and Leah’s testimony at the end was really cute.

Besides that... well this is the last couple of days with Elder Alberca before he goes home to Peru. He’s a great guy and we are going to live it up these last days in trio! That’s all I really feel like writing for now but I’ll write more next week. The pic is of a painting that is by our house, it’s really interesting. 

Love you all!

Elder Crump

Translation: "The roads we should cross for a better life?"

Baptism of Leah.