Tuesday, May 18, 2010

PRAYING IN THE PARK

Friends and Family!


You guys are the greatest! Grandma, your toffee and fudge made it to me here in Selkirk and it is amazing! You are the greatest!! Aunt Camille and family you also are on my favorite list! I got your package today and it is so great! Thanks a ton! My feet love you right now! haha Also family thanks a ton for the great letters and emails!! Your emails are the best! Payt, you are such a good looken’ man!! I’m so excited to look for a wife because she will marry me just to have you as her brother in law! haha I’m so happy you had such a good time at the dance and so jealous! Dances are the best! A-rod, it sounds like you are tearing up baseball! Mow some kids over at catcher and hit me a homer! Mom, you are the greatest! haha I don’t know how you always get stuck moven’ poop! haha I promise I’ll take that job when I get home. Tell Payt I am glad that he got his chance to spring clean the kennel though! Take that! Man, I love and miss you guys!!


Fill me in on Akon’s health stuff though. I haven’t heard anything! Did you get her package?? That’s probably why she emailed you. It should have gotten there. And tell Juliet I say hi if possible! And Dad, plan on many late nights in the future!


As for the heat here, I am die-ing! The last couple nights I have planned for the next day while I lay in on the floor in my garments! It is an oven in our apartment! We got a fan and an air conditioner today though so I’m super excited about that!


As for the area ...... things are going crazy here! We have four streets left that we haven’t tracted. But we now have 4 people who have set dates and we had 12 people to church this week! 7 were 8 years or older and the rest were kids! The branch was going crazy! It was the best! It feels like Agnes!!! The Primary President looked like she was gonna lose her mind! hahaha It was sooooo great! And we are planning on even more people next week!! We have been working so hard and everything is finally starting to workout and transfer calls are Sunday. My fingers are definitely crossed! President Anderson said he was going to call President Paulson this week to try and keep us here.


President Paulson called Sunday night and congratulated us! He knew I wasn’t happy to leave Agnes, but he said, “Elder Smith, now Selkirk is another Agnes.” haha It was a great day!! I really love the people and the members here!! There were 79 people in church this Sunday!! It was packed!! I wanted to die laughing when I saw President Anderson’s face when new people just kept walking in! haha Also, I got a call Saturday night that I was speaking, and all Saturday night we were setting up rides for church. So Sunday morning I had to prepare a talk in like 15 minutes and then I practiced it once and we had to go make sure everybody was ready for there ride! It was an insane morning, but man, it feels soooo good to be overloaded with appointments again!!


We had a pretty neat experience this week though! We were walking down Main Street and we street contacted this kid. He was walking home and he had some time, so we asked him if we could teach him right there, after he had already shown interest. We walked a little further and sat down with him in the park. We said a prayer in the park and taught him the first lesson. We committed him to church the next week and to baptism in a month and a half! We are meeting with him again Wednesday, but he is a great kid! His name is Steven.


Karl missed church for work and Chris missed too. Velma was sick so everyone that was at church was new! Velma is doing great but she is sick and dealing with Word of Wisdom problems. Karl is doing great but it’s the busy month at work and Chris has a great heart but he flakes out every once in awhile. Hopefully they all buckle down in time for there dates!!


Kim has 4 kids and she was at church with 2 of them and she is great! We found her a couple weeks ago but she made it to church this week and loved it! She said she’d go next week and we hope to set a date with her this week! Milton and all of his kids made it to church, too! We found them last week and we are teaching them tonight. Leona and Dylan also made it to church and they are great!


It’s so funny because there is a map that says all of these streets have been tracted before but there are all these amazing people that have been looking for the truth for so long! I am so convinced that there is no bad area (that’s not what I thought 10 weeks ago!) hahaha There are prepared people everywhere and we have been so blessed to find some of them!! I am loving Selkirk! I never thought I’d say it, but man it’s great here!! Training is great, missions are great, life is great!!


Thank you so much for everything that you all do! You are the greatest! Mom, Dad, Payt, Alex and Addison I love and miss you all so much! Keep up the great work and keep me posted! I love you all a ton!! Have a great week!!


Love Elder Smith