Last Week's email

Hello everyone.

Things for me have been going very well, and i am learning a lot in my time here in mexico. i think i´d trade you weather right now haha. it is really hot here, and we are out walking all day and we luckily have

an air conditioner in the room but hardly anyone else does, so theres

no way to escape the heat during the day. I am more accostumed to the heat, but it is still really really hot haha.

things here this week went really well except that i got a little

sick. Thursday morning about 10 i started having a pain in my stomach. i kept going about the day as normal exceppt that i didnt eat much at lunch, but it was fine, just hurt, but at about 530 i threw up, and then again at 7. i feel fine now though and everything is better.

the president of the branch here is a paramedic and his wife works in

the hospital here as well. They gave me the medicine and everything

that i needed and helped me out. one thing they gave me is called

suro. its saline fluid and you drink it, but it tastes horrible.

I had a great experience this week teaching the family lopez centeno.

We have been teaching them for some time now, but they have had a few problems and for these problems their progress has been kind of slow.This week we went over to teach them a lot more, and things are going a lot better with them. this whole week we had been planning on

watching the joseph smith movie with them (we have it here, i think it

was elder tanner´s but not sure, possible ill use this one) but there

was always something that happened. one night the power went out.

another night carlos (18 year old boy) had to work, another night i

threw up before we went over, and just lots of things. We went by with them one day a little earlier during the day and taught them a quick lesson. we read with them 3 nephi 27. we read 2 verses each person and me and elder sanchez took turns explaining the parts. It went really well though Anel (17 daughter) and Fransica (mom) were the only ones there. They both are reading the book of mormon outside of our lessons and are praying. It went really well and they understood everything and were excited to learn. chapter 27 talks about the gospel of jesus christ and the 5 things we have to do in this life to have eternal life. faith, repentace, baptism, recieve the gift of the holy ghost, and endure to the end. We talked about how they needed to be baptized and they understood everything perfectly and when we challenged them to be baptized they accepted a date for april 9th. It was a great experience and i´m really excited for them.

also this week, well more yesterday and today I have been praying a

lot to know what i need to do to be a better missionary and how we can have more success in the area. last night specifically i was praying

and felt that i needed to be more humble. I need to focus more on

others and what they need instead of focusing on myself or anything

else. I am learning a lot and trying my hardest and am trying to have

more love for all of the people around me. Also this morning elder

sanchez and i prayed and felt like we needed to be more humble, have a more powerful spirit in the lessons, not have excuses, have more faith and more desire to help this people and that they can be baptized. Also i liked something that grandpa said in his letter today. he said "missed opportunities are the story of life, except for those who learn and apply that lesson early on." I am going to try to not miss a thing in my mission and work as hard as i can so that i can help these people here.

I love you all and miss you very much and hope that everything is going great for you all at hme. things with me here are going great. i

love my mission and am grateful for the opportunity i have to be here.

Ill talk to you all in another week,

love

elder Smith