10-31-11

Hola todos,

I hope that you have had a great week. To answer some question things that you had. This will be a short letter but a lot of cool stuff happened. The short things, I found a waterproof sidewalk outside the mission office. I signed my visa again so I’m legal in mexico until the end of my mission. I got to see a few guys from my MTC district which was really cool. They are all doing great as well. We contacted a mom and her kid and her kid was named melquesidec! We haven’t seen them yet and it wasn’t the greatest contact but we have to go for his name ha. Also there is no such thing as Halloween here. Everyone knows its Halloween and likes to remind me about it, but here iss the day of the dead. Dia de los muertos.

There is a lady named delfina that we activated that has been finding a lot of great investigadores for us and she loves to talk. It is always hard to leave cause she’ll talk to herself for like an hour if you let her. One day she had a shirt on that said “little miss chatterbox”. She didn’t know what it meant and I thought it was really funny. Everyone here wears clothes with English but don’t know what it means. We told her and it was pretty funny ha.

We had a cool experience where we showed up at the door of an investigator and they told us they had a death in the family that day. We were able to share the plan of salvation with them and it was a really great experience. i am very grateful for the atonement and for temples. We had our class in church this week on the importance of temples. And that’s the whole plan of god. We live to get a body and be tested, we have to be worthy to enter the temple, we seal our families so we’re together forever, and then we stay worthy and keep helping other people have their families to be together forever until we die.

I had a really amazing experience Sunday. Norma, Yuridia, and Natividad were all confirmed in church. I started crying when yuridia and norma were confirmed. That night we went to their house and watched the testiments. In talking after, yuridia shared her testimony. It was probably one of the most powerful experiences of my mission to hear her. She said how a week before we had found her she had spent an entire night praying to god for help. She is 22 and caring 100% for her 11 year old sister. Working and studying at the same time. She said she felt alone, sad, confused and helpless. She didn’t sleep that night and literally prayed the whole night long. I wont tell everything, but she felt a peace and calmness that the lord would help her. A week later she heard muffled voices outside and came down to see what was going on. She was resting and had a strong prompting to come down. She opened the door and there we were talking to a man working on her house. She felt like she should invite us back. And two weeks later she was baptized and a week later confirmed. She said that two weeks ago she thought it was a coincidence that we’d come, but now she sees that it wasn’t. she said “I asked for you to come”. She then looked me in the eyes and promised me that she would never fall away and that she knows that this is the true church of jesus Christ. I felt the spirit so powerfully and was in tears with her the whole time she spoke.

I am so very grateful for my mission and for my opportunity to serve the lord. I know that the work that I am doing is the most important thing I could possibly do with my time, and that I am being guided by the holy ghost to complete the will of god. I know that god lives and loves us and has very special plans for yuridia and norma and all of us.

I hope you have a great next week. I love you all and miss you very much.

Love

elder smith