Hey Family!
Thank you so much for the wonderful emails!! I can't believe what a wonderful family I have! I am so proud of all of you and I love you so much! Your emails make me so happy because you are all so great!! Thank you for the pictures! I can’t believe how old everyone is! haha I know I say that every week, but it’s so ridiculous! I love Payt’s Grizzly painting! The Smith legacy will hang in Skyline for years to come! Man, I am just so proud of Payton!! He is such a great kid and I love and miss him a ton! I also am so proud of Addi and Alex! It looks like they are both healthy, happy and doing all the right stuff! Thanks for all of the things you all do! You are so great!!
So I’m gonna start with a hilarious story!! So this week was just ridiculous because we tracted soooooooooo much!! All in all we tracted over 25 hours!! haha That’s just knocking doors...... for 25 hours!!! haha I am already looking pretty dark. The weather has been great! But we have had a lot of appointments fall though, but even with all the tracting, we still taught 17 lessons. So it was good, but back to my story. When you knock this many doors, you have lots of hilarious stuff happen! I’ve walked in on door-to-door salesmen, family parties, immodestly dressed people, crazy people, mean people, drunks, nuns, the list goes on. But most of the stuff just becomes old news and so you don’t really pay much attention to it. But a couple days ago, I knocked on a door and a large man came to the door. Picture the Brother Landon (Barry) that pulled up on the four wheeler after Payt hit the skunk, except picture him with a lot rougher haircut, and beard and a really hairy chest and a huge beer belly and completely and thoroughly butt naked!! Like, no kidding, this guy flings open the door with one hand on the door and one hand on his hip completely naked! hahaha So instantly my head shoots up and I say “you wanna card?” I gave him the card I don’t even know if he said he wanted it! Then we took off. He stood in the window waiting for a reaction, and he got it! I made it like 10 steps before losing it laughing! It was pretty good. But the week was good! We tracted a bunch and found some super solid people!! The tracting is hard though because there are a ton of wealthy people that won’t give us the time of day. It’s good though! We have been having some amazing lessons! The members here are so amazing! Like man!! It’s a ward full of powerhouse returned missionaries! Our ward mission leader is so great!! He has been the ward mission leader just a couple weeks now and he had Maricio and Angelica over for supper with him and all the couples they are friends with in the ward. Maricio and Angelica had a blast with them and they are doing so good!! I really hope he sets a date soon! He is so great!! This week’s lesson with him went good! We’ve tried so hard to meet with him more than once a week, but they are just too busy!! But we have now taught him all of the commandments and he pretty much agrees with everything! Tithing is hard, but I think he will do it!! Hopefully this will be the week!! They are great though!
Cleavon gets married this week and hopefully after the honeymoon he will be getting baptized! He has a testimony, but a really hard situation. Hopefully all goes well there! We also just started teaching a part member family that is super great! The guy has been less active for years and his girlfriend grew up with no religion. They have come out to church and she really likes it and we finally got to teach them last week!! It went well and they fed us! It was great!! We were supposed to meet with them tonight, but they just called and bailed! aahhh! So we will probably teach them in a couple days. More tracting time I guess (: haha
We are teaching a lot of Atheists still and I don’t no how to teach them! It gets a little frustrating because it’s just hard to know what to say! It’s hard to teach faith and when they struggle to understand God and faith its hard to get them to read, pray, and come to church, so they will get faith.
But things in the area are good. It’s getting super high stress because the time is just going so fast! I feel like I just got into this area and I still feel clueless with a lot of the members, but the transfer is already more than half over! It’s ridiculous!! Things are going great though!! Being a district leader is really fun! It’s funny because I was really hoping to be done being a zone leader and get the chance to finish my mission as a district leader. So even though it was hard leaving Winnipeg, it was exciting, but I thought all my meetings would just be amazing! I thought it would be way more stress free and I’d do everything right! haha But it’s not that way! I have loved teaching district meetings but it definitely isn’t as easy as I thought it would be! I miss teaching meetings with a companion, even though before I was wishing I could go back to teaching by myself! ha ha And, motivating district leaders is a lot easier than motivating districts! It’s been really fun though and I have learned a ton!! The meeting today went pretty good! All in all, everything is going so great!!! I love being a missionary so much!! These last couple weeks have been super weird and stressful! It feels like my senior football season with like 4 games left, except like 10 times worse! I have worked SO hard and done my best, but I feel super pressed for time. I wanna make sure I do everything that I was sent here to do! It seems like the more I stress it, the faster it goes and I’m loosing my mind! It’s just a really weird thing!! Missions are so great! It’s just weird because every time I hear about Payt’s papers or that stuff I just get a stomach ache! I can't believe how blessed I have been and how many miracles I get to see out here!! Everyday as a missionary is such a blessing!!
Well I’m just rambling but I wanted to tell ya one more story! Yesterday we taught this young single mother and it went sooo well!! She lives in this huge house with her mom and her kid. She is so good!! We had an amazing returned missionary with us and he was so great!! The Spirit was really strong and she was eating it up!! We taught the lesson one and she had great questions!! At the end she was excited about reading and praying and church and so we invited her to be baptized. She said yes and set a date in June! Like man it is so great! haha It’s just crazy all of the wonderful experiences there are on a mission!! I’m so grateful for you and all the love and support you give me! I have the best family ever! I love you a bunch and have a great week!
Love Elder Smith
