8-29-11

pictures: hna juana and her family. Ireal, jessica, nora, babies (brian and alison), a picture of me elder green and elder thompson from my mtc district. and a picture of part of my area with all the appartements (valle real).

WEll Hello everyone. This was a really great week and i had a lot of really great experiences. Firstly on monday we went around saying goodbye to a lot of ppl. tuesday i dropped elder hernandez off and then went out with the other two elders in my district for the day. i was able to meet some of their investigators and gave one of them a date to be baptized.

my new companion is named elder michael peine (pine). his name in spanish is paine, which means comb so lots of ppl joke about that ha. He is from salt lake city utah and went to east high school and i know some ppl from there, though he doesnt know any of the ppl i know. he is a good elder. his spanish is a little like the guy from the best two years at times, and he has a lot to learn, but it will be good to work with him. he is excited and a hard worker and obedient so i think everything will be fine. he played soccer in high school and plays guitar, but his personality is a little different than mine, but i think it will be good.

this week there were a ton of great things that happened. Hna. Paula is really great. her boyfriend is a member and we have everything set for her baptism. she is an amazing investigator and our lessons are always really great with her. She lives in a different area than her boyfriend though so well see what happens with that. she wants to be baptized here and we've already taught her everything.

found a new investigator this week named paulina. she is a friend of a recent convert. she is looking for a new church and we taught her once and she came this week to church. she seems really great. the same member also brought her cousin who now has a date to be baptized the 10th. we had 158 ppl in church this week. it went way up! usually there is 100-125 there. we have been working hard, and hopefully it will be able to stay up. we had 5 investigators in church and it was a good day even though a few didnt come that should have.

miracles of the week. we had been teaching a girl named ana for a while. she is really great and has received an answer that the book of mormon is true, but never acted. this week her and her mom said that they want more religion in their life and family and that they are going to start coming to church and hopefully will get baptized. Also this week hno Irael. the husband of juana (got baptized last week) had a great experience. We were teaching the taught jessica and he usually just listens from afar but we always knew he was listening well. this time he blurted out, "i have a comment" he then said "i havent talked to anybody else about this yet because i wanted to wait until you got here." he then said he was think a lot about what we had taught him the other day, and then he went to sleep. he then went on to explain how in his dream he was reading the book of mormon and then defended it when someone said that it wasnt true. he woke up with the feeling that the book of mormon was true. He then turned to me and said, "what do you think that means?" I felt the so happy when he was telling me the story and i knew that it was an answer to his prayers. we are working with him to be able to have sundays off so that he can be baptized. the rest of the family is progrsssing to baptism as well.

yesterday we also were contacting and we said hi to a guy. we usually say "buenos tardes". we walked by and said buenos tardes and he answered. hey whats up guys! (without an accent. thats important because lots of ppl try to do it to here to immitate us ha.) Anyways we talked to him and guess where he is from? PORTLAND OREGON! he lived there and has a sister in beaverton. I was shocked. I tried contacting him in english and my companion was just laughing. i couldnt speak english at all and said half the words in spanish ha. It was pretty crazy though. i havent seen hardly any americans apart from other missionaries and the first one i talk to here in mexico is from portland!

I feel like im forgeting some stuff, but overall this week went really well. i can now work how i want and work hard and we are having lots of success. I am trying to have more faith and trust more in god and that has helped me a lot. I love it here and am doing well, even though it is very hot, and humid. I love you and miss you

love

elder smith