Friends and Family!!
Wow, I have a ton to tell you!! First off, missions are horrible! haha I’m getting transfered and I feel like I did in the MTC again! Now I have two places to be homesick for! aaahhh!
I got a great letter from Grandma Smith!! It was really good, but tell Morgan I am jealous out of my mind! Tell him that I am Grandpa’s work buddy and he better understand that the second I get home I get my spot back! haha Tell him to enjoy working with Grandpa while it lasts. Also, thanks a ton to Jay, Payt and Alex! The letters were great!!
Alright, as for transfers, here’s how it went!! This week was amazing and I DID NOT AT ALL want to leave! Juliet has a firm date for the 20th of March. Martha has a firm date for the 27th and Akon could decide to get baptized any day! Akon got her car fixed so she now drives to church and Martha’s family and Juliet have solid friends and rides in the ward! All of our lessons with them this week went great and we found a ton of new great people!! I was sooooo hoping to stay! Church was amazing and the week and day was just going great and then President called.... He said, "Elder Smith, I’m sorry but good things don’t last forever." haha It was downhill from there. He said that I am going to Selkirk (a small town 45 minutes outside of Winnipeg). It has a branch and it was where Bishop Baronins was found and baptized. I’m going to be serving with Elder Turner, which is crazy because Elder Ewell trained him before he trained me!! I’m going to be senior companion, and he’s served in that area for a while already. I’m way excited and I couldn’t have asked for a better place to go because I’ve wanted to go to and out lying branch. But it still stinks sooooo bad!! I wish I could be more excited about it but I don’t want to leave this area!!
So I’m headed to Selkirk and I should be so excited, but its so hard! President said, "You two have been a great companionship and you have done so much with this area and so we are going to split you up so we have two good areas instead of one." President’s funny because he just makes everyone feel so good. If he ever didn’t talk you up it would be a shock. He’s so nice and such a good guy, but I’m pretty sure he could tell that I wasn’t to happy. haha But I asked for permission to drive in for the baptisms and he said I could, so that was really exciting!! The worst part was that I got my call and I already wanted to cry and mostly just whine to somebody about it. haha But then I had to go and tell both Akon and Martha, who we had appointments with! That honestly was the hardest thing on my mission so far! They took no mercy! Akon was pretty mad and really sad! She said all kinds of stuff that made me feel horrible, like "Nyandeng is gonna cry all week" and "I don’t know if the new missionaries should come this week because it will be to hard on us" and "Why don’t they just leave you here so you can keep teaching our family". It was sooo hard!! Martha said, "I want to sneak in your bag and come with you." I just tried to make them feel good and talked up Elder Leonard, but they wouldn’t have it! aaah! It’s so hard and it made me feel guilty too! After that, I decided it’s definitely the right thing!! I want to stay so bad, but it’s for me! The best thing for them is for me to leave! I worry that they like me too much and not the gospel enough! I know that they have strong testimonies, but with me not teaching them anymore I think it will definitely be best for them and their conversion! It is soooo hard because I love all of them so much!! But it’s what is supposed to happen and I’m gonna do my best to stop whining and make the best of it!! I’m way excited to serve in a branch and to serve with Elder Turner! And any area that converted a Bishop Baronins has to be good!! And no more city! I thought I’d be excited to leave city life but man it’s giving me a gut ache just thinking about it!! It will be an interesting change for sure!! I wish I could skip the next couple days though because it’s just gonna make good byes that much more painful!! I am amazed at how fast my mission is passing!! It’s so scary!! It feels like I just left home and now I am going to be senior companion in some area I’ve never heard of! It’s so crazy! And really scary! Everything is going too fast!! It’s weird because the gut ache I get about leaving this area is the same, if not worse, than the gut ache I get when I think about home!! I’ve decided that missions are just one big gut ache! haha I hope I don’t get moved too much throughout my mission because it’s so hard!!
But I am loving it!! Everyday is so great and I learn so much!! I am so blessed to have this opportunity!! Missions are the best, even thought they really stink a lot of the time!! haha I love and miss you all a ton!! Keep up the great work with everything and be safe!! I’ll look forward to telling you more about Selkirk next week.
Oh, and don’t write to Agnes anymore, I won’t get the letters for weeks, if I even get them at all! haha I’ll send you my new address next week! I should be able to write more letters because on P-days in Selkirk you don’t have to drive all over.
Oh and my comp is staying and training!! aaaahhh! Him staying with a good comp makes me nervous, let alone a greeny!! haha He’s really excited though and I know he will keep working hard!! It’s what the Lord wants, so it will go great!
What’s the weather like there and when do the ski hills close? I forgot and everything here is different because they say the snow won’t be gone until April or May and some years even June! But it really has been great weather the last couple weeks! You hit 0 celsius and people are out in t-shirts!
Can you get me updates on all my friends that are out on missions? I’m curious how they are doing! Things have been so weird lately! Time is flying by!! The more I learn the more I feel like garbage! I need to improve so much on so many Christlike attributes that it’s ridiculous! It’s funny how you grow, and get cocky, and get cut down, and then grow even more just to be cut down again with more weaknesses that you find!! It’s also funny how much easier life is when you aren’t thinking about yourself! Days that I think about me and my problems or me and how good I am, seem to be the hardest days! But days that I am worried about everything but myself fly by and go great! The thing is that it’s hard not to think about myself!! haha But I saw a neat quote the other day. It said, “Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself, but it’s thinking of yourself less”. haha I like it but it’s a lot easier said than done for sure!
So I get to drive again because I’m senior! No more worrying about my companion from Seattle who had never driven on snow. Now you can just worry about me!! I’m gonna be in a branch!! haha How crazy!! And I thought Waverly was small! If we get ten investigators to this branch we will really double the branch. I’m getting excited, I just want to leave now though because it’s hard being here!
Payt, tear up the slopes and lift hard! I expect some great football stories!! Go Canada Hockey!! It’s because I’m here! Just kidding.
I love you all so much! Love Elder Smith
