Hey family!
It’s always so great to hear from you and get such good updates and pictures! (: A-ROD!!!!!!!! BUDDY YOU SOUND LIKE AN ALL STAR! Buddy, I am so proud of you and the hard work that you have put into become such an all star athlete!! Keep practicing and working hard!! You are such a champ!! I love and miss you a ton! Keep working hard and keep me posted! I love your updates and emails!!
It sounds like the talks went well and everything is going great! It makes me so happy! Things here are also going good! this week was definitely rougher than most! Jelena dropped us because her mom is an AGENCY THEIF, so that was hard. Marcio and the Hiddodi family both had to cancel their appointments because they were so busy. We tracted into a ton of crazy people! We showed up to one appointment thinking we were going to teach an investigator that turned out to be 2 gay Mormons, one of which went on a mission to Brazil, the other was a convert. It was a super sad experience and it caught us way off guard! It’s a crazy story, I will have to tell you someday! It messed me up, but strengthened my testimony for sure. We found out a member of the ward is a liar and she lies about everything! So she was telling us all kinds of crazy stuff! haha Also another crazy, funny story I will have to tell you someday!! And it rained all week and all of our appointments fell through! aahh! So we broke our record of most tracting time ever!! haha It was hilarious because one of the days it just drilled us! haha I honestly felt like I had jumped into a pool! It was way frustrating because people just thought we were stupid and so they wouldn’t listen to us! haha I couldn’t NOT laugh when I looked at our reflection in people’s windows. We looked ridiculous! It was terrible!! But sooooo funny! hahaha We worked so hard and honestly saw like no success!! Well other than this cross-dresser we found that was a YSA turnover, but we didn’t know whether to turn IT over to the sisters or elders? hahaha It was just a crazy week!! I tell you this not trying to whine, or make you nervous, but to set the stage for the weekend! haha So Friday night was when the rain just killed us and we looked like we had jumped into a pool! So all of the streets were pretty flooded, just like in the low spots so there was like more than a foot of water in some places and people were out in tubes floating in it! haha Pretty funny stuff! But we tract all day in it with breaks for meals to try and warm up and get dry. So we are pretty down about it all, but we had one appointment at 8 at night after all day in the rain. We are soaking and honestly too wet to even go in to anyone’s house, so we planned on just rescheduling with these people, if they were even there! But we got there and they were this wonderful Spanish family from Mexico!! They made us come in and sit down, we had them get a plastic bag to put on there chairs so we wouldn’t get them all wet! It was pretty funny. But we had a great lesson with them!! They are so kind and they went and got dry shirts and made us put them on, so we left with different colored shirts than we came with! haha It was soooo great and we are meeting with them again!! I’m so excited for them.
The next day we bought umbrellas and tried tracting apartments. We buzzed from the outside and asked to come in! haha I never had done it, but we actually found tons of great people from it! haha So we got to teach a lot more throughout the weekend!!
It’s so funny all of the crazy stuff that happens and all of the ups and downs that you go through!! There’s a lot of hard stuff on a mission, but the good stuff makes it all worth it!! I’m so grateful for the gospel in my life! I’m so grateful for the amazing people I get to meet and the wonderful experiences I get to have! I’m so grateful for my wonderful family and all the support I have with everything I do!! It’s so good to go through some harder things because it helps me recognize how great my life is!! I love you all so much and I’m so grateful for all that you do for me!!
Dad, Happy Fathers Day!! I just want you to know that I am so grateful for you and all that you do for me!! I love and look up to you so much and I’m so grateful for our great relationship! It’s great to know that my Dad is better than everybody else’s hahaha ! I love and miss all of you a bunch!! Keep up the great work with everything and have a great week!!!
Love Elder Smith!
