Hey family!!
I love your emails!! Tell Payton that I’m ok with him not emailing me, but payback is coming his way quick! Just kidding, but I am so impressed at how great you all are at emailing me!! Best family ever! I just better get a big one from Payt next week! Alex, it sounds like you had a blast on the camp out! You gotta work on your fishing so we can go a bunch together! Mom, it looks like you had a blast on your sisters retreat!! I loved seeing Aunt Jill and Aunt Camille! You definitely win the classiest and most beautiful sister award though! MY Mom is classy and the best!!! (:
This week was crazy though!! I’ll start with the crazy and funny stories first! So first off we were in Kenora after our exchange the night before district meeting and we were getting ready for bed! So I’m in my usual routine, in the bathroom, and all the sudden I hear the car alarm going off! So I yelled out and they think I’m just playing around or something, but then they hear it! So the 3 of them dart out with basketball shorts and garment tops, with Elder McDanel at the front! He went booking out and the lady across the street yells, "Get inside! There’s a bear in the back of your truck!" haha So they book it back in and tell me. . . so we all book back out! We had a bag of garbage in our truck bed that was spread all over, and there was a fatty bear poop by the tire of the truck! haha No damage to the car though, other than a couple scratches on the side of the bed. It was pretty funny! But here’s the crazy part, the next morning we locked the car and had 240 pound Elder O'Driscoll get up in the bed and jump all over and shake the truck and no matter what he did, he couldn’t get the alarm to go off! He was shaking it good!! So the bear roughed it up pretty good! It was funny stuff!
Then we came in from Kenora and met John at President Vahovick’s for supper! We taught him the Word of Wisdom and it was good, but for coffee. We said it and his jaw dropped! He goes "coffee.... really??? coffee... I need it to stay awake at work!” Needless to say he’s been coffee free a week tomorrow!! woop woop!! He is great!! He’s a goofy guy though! haha He is an electrician and he’s pretty goofy. You will like meeting him! But then this week we taught him tithing too, and that was rough for him but I think he will do it! If all goes well he will get baptized on the 17th!! When we taught him this week though it was soooo funny because he asked what a Gentile was. So we taught him it and he paused for a minute and said, "I don’t feel comfortable calling myself a Jew." haha We both about died! We must have taught it really really bad! hahaha Sooo funny! He has made it to church 3 weeks in a row though and this week he was the first one to the chapel!
Other crazy story, we taught Gerald and his family the Law of Chastity. He has a girlfriend that sleeps over....... and we knew that going into it. So we teach it and he went pale with guilt. He looked kinda sick and said "Wow....... how am I gonna do it? Wow..... does that include masturbation?" So we were like, yep, and pornography. So we talked it out with him and he said he’d live it. He actually did great with it! It was pretty weird though because he talked WAY open about it with his girls right there! Being a missionary is soooooo crazy because a 19 and 20 year old kid having to teach a 38 year old guy, that has 2 kids about the Law of Chastity! It’s really so fun, and exciting and a rush kind of! It’s sooo neat to be a missionary, and I have gained such a strong testimony of the commandments!! Especially the Law of Chastity!! It’s so sad to see his girls compete with his girlfriend for attention! It makes me so sad! I love Gerald’s family so much though! I really hope he mans up and lives the commandments!! I love his girls so much and they deserve so much better! They are great and I love the way they treat us! They see us and they take off running for us saying, "It’s the Elders!" They had a rough week though!! He got bed bugs and his girls got lice!! They are temporarily in a hotel! Luckily with one bed so the girlfriend has to stay away!
Other funny story for you!! So we are tracting and we walk up to a house and right as we walk up these guys open up the garage door and we are hit with a thick wall of weed!! They all hit the ground and started to pretend they were working on a six wheeler. haha It was pretty funny. They were in there hot boxen’ the garage and I’m sure we scared em pretty bad at first! It’s crazy though because it was a dad his friend and a teenager!! Weed is huge here and it’s like a father-son thing, I guess! It was pretty ridiculous! It’s crazy that I learned how to pick out what weed smells like on my mission!
This week we also set up a booth at the fair! President Vahovick got it for us so we went and set stuff up and left it. There were members from Fort Francis there with a booth close, so they kept an eye on it. They told us some funny stories of people looking at the stuff, but they said some girls came over and said, “Oh those guys are so hot! We should take this book so we know stuff about it so we can talk to them.” hah Elder McDanel is convinced they were talking about him! It gave us a good laugh! It was a pretty crazy week but so good! Hopefully my stories aren’t too bad unedited, but I’ve been terrible with a journal and I wanted to remember some of the crazy funny stuff!
I got some bad news. I think that dentist messed up my tooth so I’m probably gonna have to get it fixed up again when I get home! It’s hard to chew with and I went back and he said it might be something else wrong, other than the cavity he fixed, so hopefully Dr. Hoover can fix me up! I’m fine though, it’s not a big deal and it’s just a little tender, but I’m just mad if the dentist did something wrong and it’s gonna cost us more.
Things are great though! its weird with all the home talk from you and President and everybody else! Scary stuff!! I’m so excited to see everyone in Winnipeg again though!! That will be a super fun week!! It was a great week though! John, Gerald, and Gerald’s 2 kids, Emma and Alisha all came to church, which put us at like 17 people there in all! It’s crazy small! But it’s so great!!
I had kind of a neat insight this week though! The Holy Ghost is so great and it plays such a huge role in conversion, but I really have recognized the role it plays with us as missionaries! It really helps us to know what to say, what to do, and it directs us with so many different problems we face. But something I have realized is that it helps us to get a taste of how people really feel and what they are going through too. It helps us to relate with people and have more charity towards them and their situation and I never thought about it much but I think that that is part of the long suffering talked about in the scriptures, because some times it’s so hard to see people and the situations that they have put themselves in. But it’s so good that we can receive guidance and help in showing patience with these people and also receive the charity and guidance needed to help them! I’m so grateful for the Spirit! I’m so grateful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ! Life is so great and so hard!! But when we live the Gospel it is so worth it!! I love you all a bunch! Thanks for all that you do!
I did have one request for all of you!! It’s a crazy time in life with one kid on a mission and one about to leave, and the feelings that are there are sometimes easy to forget! haha So I was wondering if next email you would all send your testimony? Please and Thank you! (: I love you all a bunch!! Have a great week!
Love Elder Smith
