Elder Bobby Crofts

October 14, 2014

My beloved Family,

Sorry about yesterday! We had interviews with President Kahnlein so our P-day got changed to today. The interview was so great! I felt the spirit really strong. It was really good! He seemed impressed and pleased with me and was happy with my Spanish. He seemed happy with what I was doing and I just expressed my desire to learn as much as I can and to be the missionary I want to be. I said to him that I finally feel like I know the type of missionary I want to be and how to do it. I told him how I want to know the scriptures and really be a Preach My Gospel (pmg) missionary and how I am going to emphasize my learning from pmg.

We had cambios last week and Elder Dunn went up to the North to train and be a district leader. My new companion is from Guatemala and his name is Elder Marroquín. This is his last change and he just got done with being a zone leader in Valparaiso. Talk about a blessing! My Spanish has jumped this week and I honestly feel like I can understand almost all of what people say with exception of strange vocab. I am really grateful and I am learning a lot. I feel like President shows he trust me with this privilege! I am going to do my best to soak up as much knowledge and experience as I can from him. This means I will be staying in Concon at least one more change after this one.

Elder Marroquín is REALLY good. I really like having him for a companion because there is so much to learn. haha.... the other day we ate at a place where they always give us a lot of food. It was scheduled to be all 4 Concon missionaries at their house but the others couldn’t make it so we ended up eating for 4 at a house that gives PLENTY of food normally. We ate a GIANT plate of noodles with chicken, another GIANT salad, then a GIANT dessert of fruit and cream. I was pretty happy but Elder Marroquín was on the verge of throwing up and had to lay down when we got back to our pension for about 10 minutes. I love eating there and he says he never wants to go back. haha

So this week, we contacted a kid from Australia named Jesse. He is not religious but I was amazed at how hard it was for me to try and do a contact in English. I was stuttering and felt goofy. I can talk normal in English with people but as soon as it gets in church vocab or daily missionary routine it is sad. haha

Diego, the kid that lives in the Zone Leaders side of Concon got baptized Sunday! I only taught the 1st lesson and challenged him to be baptized but it was cool to see a little bit of the fruits of my labors. Our numbers in our side of Concon haven’t been that high but we have been having good contacts and our goal is to have 5 baptisms this change. Hopefully we can achieve it!

Yesterday we had a contact who was a lady about Mom’s age. (so like 33 ;)...) We were in a hurry so we almost didn’t contact her but I felt we should. She took a step back at first and showed no interest. She then saw how young we were and asked why we weren’t home with our mommies. She talked about how she has kids our age and she was just mind boggled by what we were doing. She said no to passing by but we gave her the restoration and the plan of salvation pamphlets and seemed somewhat interested in coming to church. We may never see any results of it but I feel like a seed was planted.

I really feel like I now not only know the TYPE of missionary I want to be but HOW I am going to achieve it. It feels great to be a missionary and there are things to miss but a lot of things to love. Some of the rejections sting a little but whatever it takes to hasten the work in these parts. We are having trouble finding people who really want to change and accept the gospel. We have a grandma and mom of a member that I am hoping we can get to keep commitments and progress. We have a daughter in law of a recent convert we are trying to work with that agreed to a baptismal date but can never commit. Then we had a good contact that we have a lesson with this Thursday. We have like 12 investigators but we are struggling to get people to really keep commitments and progress. We are having a lot of "oh yeah sure pass by..." then they aren’t there or never progress. We are filtering out and trying to show people how much happier their lives can be with the message we share. Thanks for everything and may you have a very happy 14th of October.

Love Elder Crofts

Ps....in answer to your questions just send my love to Amy and give her a big hug for me! And really I feel like I have basically everything I need. Snacks would be nice.... President told me he thought I looked skinnier. So more high chews and snickers or whatever snack you want to send would be so great! And I don’t know if this is for Christmas but if it is maybe a small family calendar! Thanks!