Week 14

Hello everyone from Salt Lake City. This week has been a great week, and I had a lot of great experiences. The last three days it has snowed and been kinda chilly, but i'm doing alright.

We've had the opportunity the last two weeks to teach a lady named Karla. I dont think I've talked about her before. She is living with a member (less active) and we were invited over one day to meet her. She first just wanted to practice her english with us, but we told her we couldnt do that, but that there were people who could come teach her if she wanted and that we were here just to teach the gospel. She accepted to have us teach her, and she has been a great investigator. She is 31 but has the personality of a 15 year old girl in some ways. She loves to talk and to joke around, but she has been excellent and keeping commitments and reading and praying. She is ready for baptism. We have taught her a lot of times and she brings up random doubts, but mostly just because I think she likes to see us get frustrated. For example, some of her doubts have been, why when nephi and sam were being beat up by laman and lemuel that the angel only said why do you beat your brother. SHe was upset about the singular brother, and why the angel didnt care about sam. also another one is she complains about how it says men (hombres) when talking about all the people of the earth, and why it doesnt say men and women. So in our lessons we have gotten into the habbit of when we read sciptures to always add in men and women ha. She is funny and has a testimony of the book of mormon and of the church. She would have a baptismal date, except she is leaving to go back to mexico on november 2nd, and then isnt coming back until january. She has told us of a goal she has to be married in the temple and to be baptized, so hopefully everything will work out when she gets back.

This week we also met a knew investigator named Indira. She is 21 and has two kids. We saw her one day walking with her baby and her aunt (who is 25 and a member). We talked to them and they are pretty new in the area. The member didnt know where the spanish ward was, and indira when we asked her if she was a member said, "I'm not a member yet"! It was pretty cool and we've taught her three times this past week. The second time we taught her, it was just me and elder brown because elder mungia had a meeting, so I took a pretty leading role in the lesson. We reviewed and read 2 nephi 31 with her, and then I gave her the baptismal commitment and she accepted. She is on date for the 14th of november. It was cool to be able to extend that and have someone ready to accept it. She does have a problem though, that she is starting a job this week where she will work only on weekends from 10 at night to 4 in the morning. This is going to make coming to church kinda hard, so we are going to try and work with her to change her job and get to church for at least an hour until she can. It is really cool to be able to see how the Lord puts those that are ready in our path though. It all happened because a referral we had wasnt home, then we turned around and saw them walking on the street.

Also this week at one of the dinner appointments i ate tongue. It was funny though because it was mixed with steak and we ate them in little tacos, but at the beginning the lady asked me if I knew what it was. It looked like steak to m, but i figured it had to be something weirdish so I asked her what it was. She told me she'd tell me after. I then found out right before I left that I had just eaten like 8 tongue and steak tacos. They were good, but i dont think the tongue would have been too good on its own ha.

I also had a cool experience one night. We were driving with a guy in our ward who was helping us out and we had an appointment fall through. So we had been going around to our potential investigators houses. It was almost time to head back home and we had time for another referral. We were driving towards one and then we got a little lost and so elder brown suggested that we just keep going straight to the second one we had. We agreed, got to the house, and knocked on the door. We began talking to a lady who let us in. she had taken the lessons before and told us that she found out that she was about to lose her house. She said that everytime something bad happened in her life, we showed up write after. She then also told us of when her daughter died in a car accident. It was amazing to see that we had been directed to help this lady. We shared some scriptures with her and I shared 2 nephi 2 about there being opposition in all things and also the part about the savior. I told her that it was hard, but that the savior is always the one who will help us. He is the one who suffered for all of our pains and he is the one that saves us. It was a very spiritual night, and I was thankful for that experience.

I have a lot of other things that I could share, but I will leave it at that for the week. Thank you all for your love and support. I was able to get letters this week from lots of you and I got a package that the loosle family dropped off at the mission office that I am very thankful for, it was very nice. I always love to hear from you all and find out how your doing. I love my mission and am so thankful for the opportunity I have to serve and for all of the amazing experiences I am able to have. I dont really talk much about the hard things, but thats cause they arent really important, or things that I remember. I remember the good things, and I have so much to be thankful for! I love you all and pray for you, and hope that you have a great next week.

Love,

Elder Smith