Reed's last week in the MTC

Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006

Well this will be my last letter while I am here at the CTM. It´s
amazing how time flies. By this time next week I will probably be on a
plane to Joao Pessoa. It sounds like getting Kari off was a great
experience. I will always remember when we took Bret up to the MTC, riding up in the Dynasty, Tami, Bret and I in the back and then singing Called to Serve with all the missionaries and the spirit there was so strong. I´ve always been so blessed to have brothers and sisters who have always set the best examples for me and also two awesome parents always urging and encouraging me to do what is right.
This past week was great. I´ve been getting really excited to go out
to the field especially after going proselyting on Friday. It was an
amazing experience. It started out a little slow but we ended up passing out 14 cards but the best part about it all is that instead of just walking around and talking to a few people, giving our message, then leaving, this time we did a lot less walking (we probably walked 10 - 15 steps between each person) and more talking. We could actually have conversations. We had a couple of hard ones but 2 of the three spoke english so we could explain things in english. Of the two that spoke english, one said he had his own way of worship by hugging and crying to trees so that was kind of weird and we mainly just bore testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel, and the other tough one that spoke english asked us why the church doesn´t like gays. We gave him a condensed law of chastity lesson and tried to bear our testimonies that God loves us all but sexual relations outside of legal marriage between a man and wife, homosexual, or lesbian activities are all abominations to the Lord. The best experience of the day though was when we were talking ot the "tree hugger" guy I kept seeing these two men that were probably in their early 20´s just keep looking over at us while they sat on the next bench and I knew that we needed to talk to them. So as soon as we ended our conversation with the other guy we went to talk to them and ended up talking to them for over 20 minutes. It was amazing because I could understand almost everything they said, but they others I talked to I could only understand about 1/2. They had both heard of the church and even had heard about Néfi. They seemed really enthusiastic about being able to talk to other missionaries and receive the Book of Mormon. I have a really good feeling about them and it just got me really excited to finally be able to go out into the field.
The rest of the week was great. Sunday I got to bless the bread in
Portuguese which was a good experience. I don´t remember if I told you
or not but tonight we get to hear from Elder Uchtdorf!!! I don´t know
why I got so lucky to hear 2 apostles becuase before Elder Nelson came,
an apostle hadn´t come to the CTM in over a year and I get to hear from
2 of them. I´m really excited and am hoping to get some answers to a couple questions that I have. This morning we went to the Sao Paulo
temple which will probably be my last time in 22 months so that is pretty sad. I love the temple. I am planning on sending a cd of pictures today along with a tape so I hope it gets there. It´s amazing that I have already been gone for 8 weeks already!
I love you all and hope everyone is doing great. don´t worry about
me because the Lord will watch over me. A pretty good quote I heard the
other day was "there are no sacrifices, only great opportunities." That
is how I feel about my misison. I´ve been reading about the SOns of
Mosiah and I just think it is amazing how much they were willing to give up. It never really hit me before but they all had the chance to be the King, THE KING, of the Nephites and they gave that up to serve people that hated them. they didn´t know how long they would serve and were willing to serve until the day they died. It´s amazing. I know i didn´t give up as much as them and I know it will all be back when I go home in 2 years. I love being able to put on the black name tag everyday and be a representative of Jesus Christ. I love you all.

Your brother and son
Elder Crosby