February 17,2014

So I'll start with the route canal. I think my tooth had been hurting for a long time, i think, but it was small enough that i ignored it and went on with life but on last Tuesday while in our little Persian class a part of my tooth came off but i didn't know from where so thought little of it but the pain kinda became noticeable over the next 24 hours. Then Wednesday night i decided to finally say something and so i told my companion that we would probably need to set up an appointment with the dentist for next week. Then i bit into a cucumber and my mouth caught fire. I bit in the wrong spot and suddenly this giant hole was filled with cucumber and so i turned and said to my companion hmmm. change that we need to set one up as soon as possible. So we contacted the mission nurse and she gave us a phone number and we had an appointment the next day. I thought it was just a filling having come undone. well, the dentist came in and said  we will need to do a route canal and so he numbed me up(i hate that stuff) and went to work.

Other than that from Tuesday on we were constantly busy and having to teach people lessons. Tuesday we taught the Ganjineh family and talked about life and read from the scriptures with them. Melody the little girl asked us a really good question about God and so we talked about that and we do as much as we can in Persian with them as possible. We also had to tell them that we could only meet once a week now with them. They were so sad but we are hoping that our absence on Tuesday will help them have the desire to actually progress. After that we went to our English Class and taught Homeira a little bit and we set up an appointment with her and her family the next day.

 Wednesday we taught Mr. Sigaarrii. His lesson was really good and we found out his major concerns as we do what we can to help him overcome them. Then we get a call from our later appointment and they asked if we can meet now like 5 minutes after the lesson with Mr. Sigaarii. So we teach Marjan and Ali the Plan of Salvation and they had such good questions such as "How can we follow Jesus?" Had they had their interview with President White (all investigators before they can be baptized and even invited must have an interview with a member of our mission presidency because if  they go back to Iran they could be killed) we would have invited them to be baptized. However the good news is that Ali is getting a new job and so they will be able to come to church now! There we will be able to have them talk with President White and then invite them to be baptized and they want to learn and progress a lot.  After that we went to Nacer and NAhiid's and we taught the plan of salvation to them as well. After that we had a dinner/lesson with Someira and Homeira and Sister Larson. I love dinner's with people because that is the best place to talk and connect with people because their  barriers are down and they want to talk and so we talked with them. We left them with a book of Mormon to read and study. They went out of town this weekend and so we haven't been able to see them yet but we will.

Thursday was the root canal. and we also had a good lesson with GAnjinehs and correlation. 

Friday was our Zone Conference where a big part of the meeting was on training us to better prepare for our investigators and companionship study as well as teaching us to help our investigators and connect with them. It was really good and such a spiritual uplift for the day and then we went on splits with our Zone Leaders. I went to their area which is the UCLA campus and YSA's in our stake. So it was weird to work with people my own age and to try and talk to them about God but it was fun and enlightening the gospel is true no matter who you are.

Saturday was our English class and we had two new students come in and they totally only wanted to only learn English but after a powerful spiritual thought in which the spirit was strong they began to change their minds and they wanted to come to church so we told them they didn't make it but maybe on Tuesday at English Class we can talk to them about it. WE also went down and talked to Sam. It was good we able to teach him about Fasting and help him progress. That day was also the day that just felt absolutely incredible i had never felt so in tune with the Spirit and filled with the desire to sin no more. Really their aren't words for it but it was incredible.

Sunday was incredible as well we were able to go to a baptism of Natasha Williams. I don't if you remember her and her mom Marisol but Elder Kempton, Elder Yoon and I found them and taught them way back last June and because of living situations and evictions it has taken this long to have them be baptized. They are incredible those two. We didn't find them they found us when they walked into church and asked to be taught the gospel and the miracles and stories that we heard from them as they progressed were amazing. It was so cool to see the next stage and fulfillment of their journey and the Mom is set hopefully for June or July! We get home Sunday evening to start weekly planning and 20 minutes in we have this idea to call an investigator and see when we can meet this week and they tell us that they are on their way to the Visitor Center to a fireside that Sister Larson invited them too. So we set goals and we dashed off to meet them their as well and have a small impromptu lesson and daily contact with them. The fireside was really good. It was given by Peter Vidmar the Olympics gymnast. 

That was our week. The language is coming we as a program have set goals to do SYL everyday building up to 8 hours on the first day of next transfer.

Elder Craner