Week 18

Well this week was my 4 month mark. Not too much exciting happened this week. I'm trying to get to know everyone again, and its hard. We now cover two stakes and have a ward and a branch. The missionary work is good in the ward but is really bad in the branch, and we just dont have time to work with people and try to fix an area so we'll se what we can do. This last week in my other area we now have 6 people on date for baptism. Everything I did there was building up to this and it is still going. I'm still sad I had to leave there after everything, but oh well. We have some good investigators here. We had a baptism on sunday, but it was for a guy that I didnt really know, but it was still nice to see. There wasnt actually room inside the room so I had to stand outside with some other Elders, but I was one of the witnesses for the baptisms. The reason there were so many people there was because there was also an 8 year old who was baptized on the same night. I'm not sure why they set it up like that, but it was crowded. To tell you a little more and answer some of your questions, we cover two stakes (one ward, one branch). Every night we eat at one of the spanish members houses. Pdays are pretty busy. We wake up, have studies, today we shoveled one of our investigators driveways, then we go shopping, picked up drycleaning that we get done for free by a member, then we usually come email in the family history center in the church, then we have a zone activity where we play basketball or dodgeball or something like that, then we go home and eat, and then we have to be out working again by 6. We used to have a temple day on wednesdays when our pday was on monday, but now we dont have a time to go to the temple except for pday and we have to go before studies which means the 6 oclock session, meaning we'd have to wake up at like 430 to make it..sooo, I dont think i'm going to get to go to the temple. We also need members to take us to that because we cant take a mission car outside of the zone. We have district meeting every thursday at 10 am, except this week we dont have it because we had zone conference yesterday. My companions are named Elder Martin and Elder Meuller. Elder martin is from north caroina and has been out for 8 months. He is the district leader, but he hasnt been one before. His spanish is pretty good, we havent been together long, but i think things syhould be fine. Elder Mueller has been out 16 months. His spanish is good and he is a good teacher. He has a very strong personality and it can get a little frustrating at times, but i think everything should be fine there as well.

This week was good. There are a few people that I am excited for. there is the Ramirez family. It is a mom dad, 18 year old daughter monica, 15 year old daughter Malinda, an 11 year old daughter Mariana, and then a 5 year old boy. We have taught them a little bit. The first time it was just the mom, dad, and the 11 year old daughter. the mom and the daughter are pretty excited about everything and have been reading and coming to some of the ward activities (including the baptism). We went over there the other night and we taught them two separate lessons. We taught one lesson to the two other daughters who hadnt been taught before, and another lesson to the mom dad and mariana. It was kind of funny because it just sort of happened, but there were two lessons going on at the same time, in the same room. We'll teach them all together now though becuase they should all know the same things. Mariana surprised me when we asked her if she'd read. She had read a little bit out of first nephi, but then said, I bet I could read it in 2 weeks. We challenged her to read it in 4 weeks and to mark some things that she liked as she goes through, which she has already started to do. I am excited for this whole family to get baptized soon. They do have some problems though. The dad went in for surgery today. He cut himself really bad at work. He went this morning to get surgery. Thats why we went and dug out their car this morning.

Yesterday was quite the experience getting form appointment to appointment. We walked into dinner at 430 and there was no snow on the roads or anything. We then got a text around 5:00 right before we left and they said that all cars were grounded. We walked out about 30 min later when we were done with everything and it was a blizzard. There was like 4 inches of snow already and it was windy and pretty crazy. There werent too many cars out so we just walked in the roads. It was pretty fun, but it was pretty cold too. I was glad I had the stuff that I did for sure, but my face got pretty numb ha.

A story that is pretty cool that happened this week happened at dinner on thursday. We walk into the house and start talking to the family. They ask who we are and stuff and I brought up that I'm waiting for a visa. He then asked where at. I said Mexico in Tabasco. He said which mission in tobasco, and I said Villahermosa. He then smiled and said my brother is the mission president there! It was literally the craziest thing every haha. It made a pretty good connection though and we had some good talks about mexico and his brother for the rest of dinner and then I took a picture with him and his family. I'll attatch that to this email. He told me on saturday when i saw him at a ward activity that he called his brother and emailed him the picture and that his brother (president) was really excited and knew me and everything. Small world. Also last pday I was pretty down about transfers, thats why my letter was pretty bad, and i'm still pretty mad about it, but i'm trying to get over it. The lady that we live with is also really really nice. She made us hot chocolate and soup and stuff last night when we got in and we talked to her for a while. She is a widow and lives with her son who just got back from his mission, but i havent seen him at home yet. She also has a piano upstairs and I've gotten to play that a lot while i wait for food to cook and stuff, so that has been really nice. I dont really have too much music, but i'm getting really good at playing things by ear. I can play basically any song I can remember how it goes, but that list is getting shorter and shorter ha. Also some more good news about my last area is that Jose wants us (them) to teach him again. I think its still kind of what i said before. I dont know if he'll get baptized soon, but he 'll get baptized eventually. He is trying hard to do what is right and is working hard. He picked up the other elders from the baptism this sunday and so I got to talk to him. I joked around with him about hearing that he was going to be baptized and got to talk to him for a bit which was nice. I gave him a flyer that I found to help him get his GED and also gave him a referral for a place that I found that he could get a job. Hopefully things will start to turn around for him and he'll be able to be baptized. He has done the challenge I asked him to do where he drives off by himself and reads and prays twice now and I asked him about it and he said it went well. I told him to do it again. He'll get his answer eventually in one way or another, he just has to realize it.

Love,

Elder Smith