New Area With Lots of Potential

Well sorry for dropping off the map there for a while!

I'm in a new area. This area is like my first and second areas combined.

It's small.

Like like reeeaaallly small.

We were missing two active members at church yesterday.  There are seven active members total. We had SIX people at church!

Yes, you read that correctly. SIX that's it! One of which was a less active who had not come in a long long time. We went to his house and offered service and that motivated him to come to church.

We do not have an apartment in Miramichi.  The reason being... the Mission President was going to shut this area completely down. When the Branch President found this out he said, "I will have to shut down Miramichi if the elders are not here." This area needs priesthood holders. There is only one active member who hold the priesthood.  He is elderly and his health isn't good. 

Let me explain in more detail how it works here...

The branch meets in Bathurst, but there is an area called Mirimichi (an hour away) which skypes in for church. We bless and pass the sacrament and fill in if Skype doesn't work (which apparently happens all the time). We stay in Bathurst with the elders here and then travel to our area and then back again every day.

Unfortunately the last several sets of missionaries have either...
1) knocked all day long (min. 30 hrs a week)
2) didn't do any missionary work
3) seemed to create problems for the Mission President

This area has way more potential then what has been achieved. My new companion's name is Elder Ashton. We are loving it here!! It's all fresh and untainted!! We are ready to get to work.

l love you guys!

Elder Craig

Our church building

Look who I came across during transfers...My MTC companion.

Day to day efforts

Well Deborah got baptized! I'm so happy about that!!! She is amazing!

This week we got a referral from a member for a Chinese family. We went to their home and we are now teaching them (Frank, Ella, and their son Vin). They are awesome!

We also started teaching a guy named Sean and his mom. 

We biked a lot and it rained a lot this week! Other than what I've already mentioned, not to much happened outside of the normal day to day missionary efforts! 

It's rainy today... And there has been more clouds than sun the last couple weeks! Soaking that up before I get home in the hot hot hot weather:)

Love you all so much! 

Love, Elder Nathan Craig

Glimpse into my schedule...

Hey everybody! 

A little glimpse into my schedule:

Monday:
We made friends with a member (she's a recent convert) and she let us use her washer and dryer! This is a big tender mercy because laundry will cost me $48 a month which would put me at $1.80 per meal for the whole month... (Rather than the typical $2.25) so she's great! But between the three of us we spent our whole day doing laundry(didn't dig that). Today should be better!

Tuesday:
We worked all day then had a lesson with a family we are working with to do missionary work. Also, we had interviews with our mission president. It was awesome! He told me there's a good chance Elder Crandall (current companion) will get mid transferred in a couple weeks. We talked about several other things...one of which is something called contacting standard.   It used to be a certain number of people we needed to talk to in a week. Right now we just  "talk with everyone". 

I have been trying to do a better job with asking for referrals, so I recommended that we change the standard to "talk with everyone" which means we are asking EVERYONE for referrals. In other words, you don't get the standard unless you talk with everyone and ask for referrals. He said,  "I love this!" So... this is the new standard!  This originally was a little way for me to motivate my self and now it's gone viral.

Wednesday: 
President went to our district meeting and that was a lot of fun. One of the best district meeting ever! We discussed what we learned and how we were going to apply it. "IT" being when Elder Bennet of the 70 came a couple weeks ago.

Thursday:
Don't remember...

Friday:
Work, plan, soup kitchen service.

Saturday:
We found out Elder Crandall was leaving... and worked. 

Sunday: 
Church then took Elder Crandall to meet his new companion and came back for a dinner appointment then had  YSA F.H.E. 

Monday: 
(Today) we are doing laundry and cleaning our apartment. It's nasty and so is our car. Three guys living together is no beueno! 

Love, Elder Nathan Craig

Coming into this new area...

Coming into this new area we only had one person lined up to work with, so we have had the opportunity to start from square one (my favorite place to start).

First, I'll tell you about (I will use the fictional name Anne to preserve confidentiality) one of our investigators. Anne is in her late thirties and has some mild mental heath issues, but let me tell you, she is a saint. Her family is super anti! Her sister said "If you investigate and join that church, you are dead to me!" 

Super sad, eh? But she said this is what she needs to do and she's going to do it!

It's still weighing heavy on her, so if you wouldn't mind keeping her in your prayers I'd appreciate it. She needs it!! Could you specifically pray that she will have the STRENGTH TO ENDURE to the temple? We are meeting with her tonight!

Second, we have a family lined up for tonight that we will start teaching! Oh man, I'm pumped! They smoke. I hate smoking! I'm going to help them quite! It's one of my favorite things to do with people!

Third, we have another new investigator lined up (for tomorrow). He is a single guy in his late to early thirties!.

There is a ward here. In most of the areas I've served, it's just been a branch. Yesterday church got cancelled due to a snow storm, but if my sources are correct there's about 100 people or so that attend. Also, from what I hear it's very diverse.  This is exciting for me because throughout my mission I've had the opportunity to rub shoulders with a lot of older folks, but here there are tons of young families and even a good handful of youth! 

The mission is introducing something called Gator-Aid (gator=investigator and Aid= aid of members) Elder Hansen and President came up with the name at dinner (it was a funny process!), but it's designed to help missionaries teach the basic principles of missionary work to members and help them invite people to learn more. I made a video for the mission ( I think i told you all about it), but ill send that to you this afternoon! It's funny! 

Well, thats a wrap for me!!

Love you all! 

Staying Committed

ELDER CRAIG

Hello Prince Edward Island!

Hello everyone! Let me tell you about my week...

I've been transferred! I'm now in CHARLOTTETOWN Prince Edward Island!!! (Yes, this get's THREE exclamation points; It's amazing here).  As a side note... this is the home of "Anne of Green Gables". Mom, you would love it! 

We had a huge, I mean HUGE transfer week! It's been the BIGGEST of my mission so far! Elder Hansen (my last companion) and I made all the plans and worked to get everyone where they needed to be!! It's was long! I was supposed to leave (to head to Charlottetown) on Thursday, but ended up driving to Moncton and back, then spent about two hours packing (yes, I waited until the last minute, I was to busy!). Next, we went to the mission president's house where I created a movie(this is a little fun thing we are doing in the mission). This took a lot longer then I thought it would which resulted in us spending another night in Halifax!! 

Now here's where you can get out a map! 

Saturday morning we wanted to make it to Charlottetown before conference started, but we had some places to stop first.

Our first stop was Truro (I had to visit my good buddy elder McNabb/give him the underwear he loaned me). Next we stopped in Amherst. Next was Memramcook (which is half way between Amherst and Moncton.  

Next, was Summerside Prince Edward Island where we arrived in time to grab a bite to eat and watch the first General Conference Session.  Then in between sessions we traveled to Charlottetown.

I enjoyed watching Conference today! Oh man, wasn't the priesthood session amazing! 

Today (Monday) I get to go to Amherst where I will meet some sisters who have a laptop for me. I have to recreate the movie I made(It got deleted.UGH!! but I'll get it done!

That's a wrap for me. I Love you and want to know how you all are doing.

Love, Elder Nathan Craig

We Didn't Lose Faith

Wow! These past several weeks have been awesome, especially this last week and a half!! It's so good to hear from each of you!

So this last week the "new missionaries" got in at the beginning of the week, so we did orientation with them and took them out street contacting to show them what that's all about. We had three sisters and an elder from Belgium. We also had a missionary who went home early from his mission about a year ago(he was in the Vancouver mission), but was re-assigned to our mission. It's cool that he's back out! They are all unique. It's cool to see the new missionaries commitment.

Well, anytime there's new missionaries we have TRANSFERS! Those took on a whole new meaning this time. Elder Funa and I get the opportunity to arrange the travel plans for each missionary who are effected by transfers! We have 51 companionships in our mission and this transfer 39 of the 51 were affected by the transfer!! Whoop whoop. It was fun and took a lot of thought, but elder Funa and I got her done! 

We also had to shuffle some beds and stuff, so we got to do a lot of driving. Although not considered traditional missionary work, it's so cool to see the beauty of the maritimes! 

We had a great lesson with a man from China and he's been meeting with the missionaries for the past several months, but he hasn't really progressed much. We were planning on dropping him, but we didn't lose faith. We brought Ryan (one of the members here from China) with us. Ryan almost word for word said what we've said in our past three lesson, but finally the spirit spoke to this man we are teaching from China and he said, (think of a little Chinese accent) "So elders... I think that in order to know if these things are true and if the scripts(he means scriptures) are true I need to pray every day and read them". We pause and were like... Wow!  That's a really good idea! Can we commit you to do that?  He said, "Yes! I will do this."  It's was sweet!! The Spirit spoke to him, he heard it, acted on it, and doesn't realize it yet! And we have been following up with him and he is still going strong!!!

So the past 2 days it's been super warm(44+) and rainy, I like it a lot!! Except we were in a parade (the light parade in Halifax) the other night and it poured the whole time. Cool to say I've done it, but don't think I would do it again..;) Well, The temperature will be rapidly declining pretty quick!  Also, we got a little bit of snow last week!!:) 

Love, Elder Nathan Craig

Crazy Busy Week

I literally have a few minutes to be on, so I want to make sure my favorite people know that I love 'em!

This past week was crazy... I mean crazy! There a couple missionaries that are just losing it! Haha it's kind of funny, but I shouldn't laugh! Like one got in a fight with an old lady... This elder verbally fought an old lady and has been tearing members in his area down!! It ain't good! We are working with a couple other additional situations as well.

We are also preparing for zone conference and doing a lot of traveling! I mentioned last week that I was going back to Woodstock... I made it there and it was awesome! Just to break it down:

First, I went from Halifax Nova Scotia to Fredericton New Brunswick ( get a map;) Second, I went from Fredericton to Woodstock. Third, I went from Woodstock to Caribou ME. Fourth, I went back to Woodstock worked with a few people from the past, then booked it to Fredericton where I met back up with my companion( I was with one of the Zoneleaders) then by this time it was about 8:00 at night then we drove from Fredericton to Prince Edward Island (which is magnificent by far best place I've been). We got there late! Then we did some work with the senior couples, then we drove back to Halifax... It was long! Then when we got back to Halifax we had lesson after lesson(it was awesome!!) then we had the crazy missionaries do their craziness while the mission president and his wife were traveling.... And this next week is going to be a tad bit similar! I love it keeps me on my toes!!

Those photos are all from Prince Edward Island! If you don't mind sharing them with g-ma and pops that would be awesome!!!

Love, Elder Nathan Craig