Virtue

Hola Hola!

First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BIG SISTER RACHEL! You are getting so old, jaja.  I hope you had a really good day and that this will be the best year of your life! If you will make Christ the center of it there is no way it won't be.

Second, CONGRATULATIONS TO MY LITTLE COUSINS, AVA AND ALLIE, FOR GETTING BAPTIZED! I can't believe you are both already 8. But I'm super proud of you for living the gospel of Jesus Christ and being baptized! 

Also congrats to Daniel Madsen for getting his mission call. Good luck out there Daniel! You are going to be great!

Wow. That is really good news about the soccer scholarship offer to Western Wyoming! That would be super fun to play with Landon again! I would love that. But I haven't prayed or fasted about it, or even really thought about it at all. I would like to take some time to do that... these are big decisions! Let's just hold our horses for a little while and see what happens!

This week was hard. Elder Yac got sick. Really sick. Monday after writing we went back to the house and he fell asleep. He didn't leave his bed again until Friday! Dengue is EVERYWHERE down here right now! I hate mosquitoes. But its OK, the rainy season is now over. So they should all start to die soon. But entonces, I had a really boring week. I was able to go work with some of the youth of the ward a few times, but we lost a lot of progress we had made the week before. It's frustrating to be a missionary stuck in the house.

Besides that my zone is falling apart a little bit. Hermana Randall went home. It was really hard to say goodbye to her. She's a great missionary. Then they took her companion Hermana Zavala to another zone to be in a trio because we don't have anyone to be her companion down here. And last week Elder Moore went to the office to be the new secretary. His old companion Elder Flores is with us now, and we are also in a trio. Super cool guy! But we started as a zone of 16 and we are now down to 13... all three of those things were out of my control, but still we're not doing so hot right now. But this week we are finally back on track and we are going to have the best week ever! 

This week I studied a lot about the quality of virtue. It is one of the attributes of Christ. But I didn't really know how to define it, so I studied it for a couple days. I learned a couple of things that I really liked. Virtue is something that has to do with our thoughts. What we think about when we don't have anything to think about is a good judge of our virtue. It's not just about not thinking bad things, it's consciously choosing to think righteous thoughts. There are a bunch of promises given to those who are virtuous, but my favorite is that we will have confidence in the presence of God! So I've been working on having virtuous thoughts this week. If you guys have some insights on virtue I would love to hear them! 

Oh, also Elder Yac and I had to give a workshop sorta thing for zone conference this week! That was pretty cool. I'll probably remember that for the rest of my life. 

Anyway, that's all for this week! I hope you all remember the covenants that you have made with your Heavenly Father, including priesthood covenants. They are real. They bring blessings and peace. Think about them more and you will realize, or maybe re-realize how important they are.

Love, Elder Smith!