Elder Mason Crandell

Hello everyone! We had our first real snow experience here on the Cape- we woke up this morning and everything was covered. The weird thing is that whenever it snows or rains, it gets warmer here, so that's the positive side to the weather.

We had a baptism yesterday at 3 pm! Our friend's name is Jim Tuttle, and he's been listening to missionaries for about 7 months, but only in the last month and a half has he really started progressing. He started reading the Book of Mormon every day, and before we knew it, he was accepting everything we taught, had gotten over some of his fears, and was willing to follow all of the commandments and do anything he needed to do to prepare for baptism. It was amazing to his his conversion. There were about 25 people at his baptism, which is a good number seeing that there were less than 40 people at church earlier that day. The only unexpected event came when Elder Henson and Jim went into the water of the font, and the water turned out to be freezing cold even though we had filled it with hot water from the beginning. Apparently there wasn't too much hot water at all, so the majority of it was filled with cold water. The positive side of this story was that I was standing in the warm, comfortable room watching the baptism, instead of in the water!

The work is going great. I've made lifelong friends out here with members, nonmembers, and other missionaries. I love being a missionary, and I feel God's love when I am serving others. Merry Christmas!

Love,
Elder Crandell

P.S. I've been nicknamed Elder Cranberry, Captain Chaos, and Krendoll by some of the people here. Very strange names.