Email mixups

I am sorry you did not get my email last week. That is curious. I sent a big group one. Apparently none of my emails went through... So I resent you last weeks.

I don't have much to add this week. We just prepared Paula for baptism and went finding a lot.

I love you!
Elder Crowe

Last week’s email

Hello Hello,

I am not doing any personalized emails this week because I want everyone to get the same email. There are so many things I have learned and have been swirling around my head and I want to share all of them and I have no time.

So, Dundee is amazing. The work is moving forward like a rushing river. It cannot be held back. We had a baptism and we have another scheduled for the 26th. We are working hard and inviting souls to Christ, and The Lord is hastening His work.

I really wanted to jump into some things that I have learned this week.

First thing I wanted to discuss. I have spent so much time this week studying and praying and pondering. I have a deep and burning love for the men and women who lead and guide the Lord's church. I also have a tremendous love and respect for His chosen servants in earlier times. I don't have time to teach everything but I have scripture references with little thoughts:

• Ephesians 4 - We will know it is Christ's church If it has Prophets, apostles, with Christ as the cornerstone.
• 2 Peter 2:10,12- Peter is a fireball. He is very up front and doesn't sugar coat things. But the wicked taketh the truth to be hard. I have been guilty of not giving people the respect they deserve. I have also been guilty of talking about the Lord's called and chosen men and women. This was a good one for me to read.
• Titus 3:1-2 Same principle as the first
• Doctrine & Covenants 58:22 Christ is the head of the church and will always be. But right now we listen to those that are appointed to lead and guide us.
• Matthew 10:1 Christ gave the Apostles power. He did not make them perfect. He did not make it so they could not err.
• Numbers 12:1-10 We do not receive blessings but cursing when we disobey and speak against the Lord's called and appointed vessels.
• Doctrine and Covenants 1:38 If the Prophet says it or if God says it, it is the same.
• Mosiah 15:11 If we listen to all the Holy Prophets and heed their words we will inherit the Kingdom of God
• 3 Nephi 12:1 The words of Christ to the Nephites saying what was stated above.
• Amos 3:7 Surely the Lord will do NOTHING but He reveals His secret to His servants THE PROPHETS. He has always worked through Prophets and will always work through Prophets.
• Mormon 8:17 Prophets are not perfect. They admit they have faults. God has no faults but the men and women He works with do. But he who openly opposes and condemneth is in danger.
• Romans 4:20-21 Let us believe in Christ but let us also BELIEVE Christ. We need to believe that He can and will do all that He says He will. We must have a heart full of faith and gratitude.

I had a thought come into my mind this week. It was provoked by a friend in my ward saying something. His Mission President said to his missionaries in his departing testimony "I do not want you to believe my testimony because of what I say to you but by how I live my testimony" If I had someone else get up to bear my testimony what would they say? Do I live my life in a way that they would know what my testimony is? If I stood up to bear your testimony would I know what you would say? Would I know that you know Jesus is the Christ by your actions? I can honestly say that I need to be better. I do not represent my testimony well enough. I need to act more like my Saviour in all I do. Another example: If I said your prayer tonight and you said mine would you know what I would pray for? Would you know who I would pray for? Do I show who I love and what I care about in how I act? Just some thoughts.

On a lighter note: look up "If ye havni..." By I. W. King. It's so funny. Great poem.

Jesus Christ is the Living Son of the Living God. If we want to know anything we can turn to Him for our answers. He will answer us. He is no respecter of persons. We are all His children. He is leading and guiding us. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the only true church on the earth today. Christ set up a church with Prophets and Apostles and He is an unchanging God. Pray and ask god. We must constantly be reaffirming this in our hearts everyday. He has saved us, but there is a work for us to do.

With all my love,
Elder Crowe

Missionary work is tiring. I fell asleep texting a potential investigator

Irene's Baptism

We go running at 5am - this is my view :)  3 miles in 20 minutes today

Another view of us out for a run

Dundee is Amazing!!

I am sorry. This will be rushed. Elder Pease and I are singing and preparing our Firesides today to show President and we have a bit of work to do.

Dundee is amazing. I love the ward so much and the area is so amazing. Elder Parsons is so good! I am so blessed right now. We have a baptism on Thursday! Her name is Irene Glen. She is so amazing. She is a referral from a recent convert. 

A cool story that happened this week. They taught this girl named Paula twice before I got there. We invite everyone to be baptized in the first lesson. And she didn't accept. Then I got there. She and I clicked really fast. The second lesson we had with her, I invited her to be baptized (on Feb. 26th) and she still wasn't sure. But I said to her "Paula, if you wanted to say no, then you would have told us no already. I know you want to do this." She answered and said "You've only known me for two days, and you already know what I am thinking." I said "I may have known you for two days, but God has known you forever." I asked her to pray about it, and said we would call her at half 9 when we got home. I called and she was really silent. Then she said "Alright, I will be baptized." The next day was Sunday and she was telling all the ward that she was getting baptized and how excited she was and that she still needed to plan everything and ask people to do things. She has already changed so much in the short 4 days I have known her. I know Christ loves her and is helping her to grow. I don't tell this story to brag but to show how Heavenly Father knows each of His children. He knew that Paula and I would click. He knew that she needed me to be really bold. I didn't let her get away that night without an answer. We need to be lovingly bold because we know how much they NEED this. The Lord knows us so well!

We were knocking doors and we met this man named David who was on charges because he beat someone half to death. That was really a little frightening. We then went over to an investigator, named Vincent, who told us he had gotten beaten up earlier by David. We don't know if it's the same David but the coincidence is incredible... We could be teaching two people that have tried to kill each other. Awesome. 

We run 4 miles every morning. I almost had a heart attack the first run. I'm lucky to be alive. 

Elder Parsons plays the piano, so we might be doing a lot of musical numbers in church. The ward is so good at finding out what people did when they were home... 

I love it here so much. I love you all so much.

Keep Fighting the Good Fight

Elder Crowe

Not the best photo, but Elder Parsons & I

Elder Parsons reached his 6 month mark.

Bound for new adventures

This will be an eventful week. I am off to a strange new world. Elder Lampropoulos and I are parting ways to continue where the Lord needs us at this time. I will miss him very much. He has become one of my best friends. We will definitely be friends for eternity. He has taught me so much, and I have grown in ways I couldn't have imagined.

He is going to Edinburgh to be in a YSA district and talk to all the cute girls on the Uni campus ;) haha. He will love it in Edinburgh. And I have been called to serve in Lochee, Dundee. I will still be the district leader, and I have a new district with some awesome people in it. My new companion is Elder Parson. He is from England. I will find out more about him this week :) He is a hard working missionary and has had a lot of great success in Dundee. I am told it is the greatest ward ever. People say they are the greatest member missionaries anyone could hope for. I am excited. I have a Uni city as well so I will be talking to people all day long. It is really exciting. 

Elder Tang served in the Lochee ward as well, so I will get to follow in "Fruity Brown Sauce"'s footsteps. We call him that because there was a bottle of HP sauce in Tesco and it was tangy HP Fruity Brown Sauce. So we call Elder Tang that. He's a quarter Chinese so he's a little brown anyway.

We said goodbye to the ward yesterday. I will miss them all so so much. We have definitely grown to love this ward so much. They are practically our family!

It's also weird that I will never spend as much consecutive time with anyone as I have with Elder Lampropoulos. He will forever hold that record. Unless my wife and I get trapped in an Amazonian prison for 6 months; then it'd be longer.

I love the Lord. I am grateful He is leading and guiding us in all we do. I am grateful for my testimony of him and for my increased knowledge and testimony. 

I love you!

Elder Crowe 

Wonderful Dumfries saints

Last district meeting with these guys!

Service is good for the soul

I am sorry that I regularly do not seem to have sufficient time to write, but I have service I need to do for some people and I need to leave soon. P-day is not always a day of rest ;)

We had an amazing broadcast from the General Authorities and leaders of the church. It was all about increasing our efforts to bring people to repentance. It was a great lesson and helped me to focus so much more on what is needed. I am here to preach nothing but repentance to these people. That is why we are here. We invite others to repent. The way we do that is by giving them commitments. Praying, reading scripture, attending church: these are all bringing our lives in line with God's will. Ultimately we invite people to get baptized and receive the Holy Ghost and progress towards the temple. This is what our Father in heaven asks of us. We must repent of our pride and our enmity towards God and follow Him. Easier said than done, though. I love this gospel and I am very grateful that we can all repent. We all have repenting we must do and we must repent daily. I have so many things that are holding me back but I know the Lord is grateful that I try. My favorite line from Ephraim's Rescue is where she calls him a holy man. He replies that he cannot count how many imperfections he has. She wants to know why he can perform such amazing blessings if he is imperfect. His reply gives me so much hope: "I try"

I love you and I pray for you. 

Elder Crowe

Some of the last times with one of my best friends

My homies

Burning a tie and shirt - Elder L's 6 month and my 1 year (well almost!)

Looking for miracles

Releasing my inner photographer

Hello Familia

I apologize. I don't like typing things over and over so I am copying and pasting a story that I wrote to Erin earlier: 

First I wanted to tell you about one of my favorite miracles this week. We were at a member’s house for dinner and we were shoveling their driveway so they could get to work the next morning. They have a really long steep driveway. We were struggling trying to get it finished because they didn't have snow shovels and it was a MASSIVE driveway. So we prayed that we would be able to clear their driveway. We worked for about an hour. By this point we were sweating and had taken our jackets off and we were just in our white shirts. A man drove past and was giving us some advice about how to speed up the process. We thanked him and he drove away. 5 minutes later her drove back and dropped off two big buckets of road salt. He was a huge answer to a prayer. We were able to get the rest of the drive salted in 15 minutes and it was melted in about an hour.

Another miracle was when we needed to catch a bus to get home. It's about an hour bus ride to get home and we had to catch the last bus of the night. Our bus came at 6 and it was 6, so we asked someone to give us a ride to the station. I offered a prayer of faith (Elder Lampropoulos and I were alone putting our shoes on) and we just pleaded saying that this was the last bus and we needed it. We know He will provide and so we asked Him, knowing that He would, to provide in this dire situation. We got there right as the bus was pulling into the bus stop and got on the bus safely and started heading home. I looked at my watch and the bus had been 5 minutes late. What a miracle! I have been trying to have my eyes open to the miracles this week. So this was awesome! Faith is such an amazing power that I don't really understand yet. But I am getting a little closer everyday. The Brother of Jared got to see Christ because he had such amazing faith. Heavenly Father let a bus stop for my faith ;) I'm almost there.

Galashiels

We had a fun District Meeting this week. My District has been working so hard and doing so well, and so I planned some games for District Meeting. Obviously they were spiritual games that allowed us to learn ;) We went on an exchange with the Galashiels Elders on Wednesday and had a grand time. I enjoy seeing my missionaries and getting to be one on one with them. They are all such powerful men of God. They teach me so much every time I see them. We got to go to a ZIT in Edinburgh since we missed ours because the train was down. It was a great conference that left us spiritually uplifted and edified. After that we didn't have much time but we ran and grabbed some dinner with some missionaries. We were going to sleep in the Zone Leaders flat and we were going to be late getting home so we had to walk really fast and didn't have time to talk to people. But we were walking and we decided we would stop the next person that passed (we can't be outside and not stop at least one person). It was amazing! He had talked with missionaries before in Poland, and we got his details and got to give his info to the Zone Leaders. Hopefully they can start teaching him. 

Anyways. It has been an amazing week. I feel very happy to be alive and to be serving my Lord and my God. 

We can choose to believe that God is running His church, or we can choose to believe that there is chaos all around and we are to fend for ourselves. I know that God has called His prophets and apostles. I have felt the spirit testify that to my heart and my mind. He in in control of His church. Everyone from the prophet down to the deacons quorum President is called of God. Faith is a choice. I pray we will all choose to trust God and those He has appointed. 

Elder Crowe

It snowed! :)

Massive snowball fight....everyone ganged up on the Elders.