November 21, 2016

Dear everyone,
I hate the cold haha I know the missionaries reading this who are in
actually cold places are laughing, but the humidity adds in a factor
that cuts through any human-created fabric. Let me describe the
bipolar weather attitude of Kentucky: on Friday it was 76 degrees
🙌🏻, on Saturday it was 45 degrees 😅, then yesterday it was 31
degrees 😱! The city of Lexington is DEAD when it gets cold, so
talking to people is a bit harder, but we did meet some really cool
people on Thursday! We kept talking to these groups of people with
blue name badges and we were really confused because we didn't know
why there were so many of them and why they were so nice to us! Then
one of them told us they were ALL from the Idaho bible college and we
were like "WOAH that's why they're all so nice: they're from the west
and they know we're the Mormons!!!" So that was pretty cool, I haven't
talked to almost anyone from the west while I've been on my mission!
But it's ok, I stopped telling people I'm from Washington when I hit
like 6 months haha you would be so surprised how nice people are to me
when I say Alabama instead! Us southern folk stick togetha!

I read something really awesome from the teachings of one of the
prophets of the church, Spencer W. Kimball, he said "No matter how
much we say of him, it is still too little." "Him" being Jesus Christ
of course. We cannot ever say enough about our Savior! We cannot
testify of His Atonement enough, we cannot live enough like He lived,
we cannot love enough like He loved, we can always do more for our
Redeemer because He did so much for us! I challenge all of you to look
for more opportunities to share your testimony of Christ, whether in
word or in your actions. It is much harder to say "I hate" if we are
too busy finding things that make us say "I love"!

Have an awesome week and Happy Thanksgiving,
Elder Crow

September 26, 2016 Bed Bugs and the Flu

Heller everybody,

This week has been a bit rough as you can tell from the title. Yes, I had my first run-in with bed bugs, and I hate them...so much!!! Words do not describe my burning hatred for bed bugs, they are NOT just something to go along with a song!!! All of you who haven't had bed bugs, stop whatever you are doing, I don't care if you're driving a car or skydiving, stop whatever you're doing then get on your knees and pray for the next 3 hours that you will never have bed bugs!! They suck!! I didn't take pictures of my bites, but they're pretty knarly. That wasn't even the worst part, it was all the dang cleaning we had to do! We had to wash and dry (multiple times) all of our clothes, pull everything away from the walls, and we can't sleep in our apartment. So we've been camping out with the Downtown elders this week. And then I got sick and it made it hard to go to sleep. So that's my sob story haha but I'm not dead and I'm not in Hell so I can't complain. 

I re-read a talk called "What Lack I Yet?" this week and got a lot out of it. It's such a blessing to have living prophets and apostles here on the earth today, it would be so confusing without modern-day revelation and guidance from these men of God! So anyways, in this talk Elder Lawrence recounts the story of the Savior and the rich young merchant. In this story, a wealthy young man approaches Jesus and asks what he needs to do to inherit the kingdom of God; Christ, in response, tells him to keep the commandments of God, to which the young man replies that he's been living the commandments his whole life so "what lack I yet?" Jesus tells him that he still lacks one thing, to give all he has to the poor and to follow Him. But the young man couldn't do it, he loved his worldly things too much. So what do you personally lack? The simple answer to this question is to pray and ask Heavenly Father "What Lack I Yet?" and I know He will tell you what you need to do to improve. We all have room to improve, which implies that we need to fill that empty space with something. It is our choice to fill it with good or bad, but true happiness never lied in wickedness. I'm so grateful to have endless opportunities to become more like the Savior and to have so many restored truths to bring me closer to Him like the Book of Mormon!

Love y'all go watch General Conference this weekend,

Elder Crow