Mi Querido Companero

Hola Hola! 

This week was pretty... SAD!! It was my last week with Elder Yac, mi querido compañero! He has actually been really good at keeping it out of his head, we have worked super hard. But this week the gravity of it kind of hit him, he's going home. But we still managed to have a pretty good week. Let me tell you about it. 

The very best part of my week was an activity we had in our ward to help la obra misional! It was called "La Fiesta del Albedrío" which means "The Party of Agency". The first hour of this activity we just played games and stuff, there were spiritual games, and just fun games. Every time you played a spiritual game you won a white ticket. But in order to play a worldly game you had to sell your white tickets for 5 colorful tickets. It was a lot of fun! Everyone had a blast. But then, the second hour we had a spiritual part to it. We had everyone line up, and one by one we asked them how many white tickets they had. If they had five or more they were accepted in the celestial kingdom, a bright room with plenty of space. If they had 2-4 white tickets they went to the terrestial; a smaller room with just a little light. And if they had 1 or 0 tickets they went to the telestial--a tiny pitch black room. There were lessons given in each room and everyone really learned and felt firsthand the importance of our choices here in this life. It was awesome!

Another cool thing that happened this week was we had Consejo de Lideres. Consejo is always good! But this time something happened that I will remember forever. Ok, to understand this story you have to know that President Bowler is a little like Dad at times. He is super good at focusing in on one thing! So we were all in Consejo sharing what we thought and I had an idea, so I shared it. My idea was good and valid, but President had already thought about this topic a lot and had decided to go in another direction. So he said, ¨NO!¨ pretty sharply. It was shocking to everyone! It didn't bother me, I have pretty thick skin, but if it had been someone else it could have cut them pretty deep. But the cool part came the next morning. President Bowler called me and apologized. He said he had not been able to sleep because he was thinking about how harshly he had rejected my idea. He showed a lot of humility. I respect him a lot. 

And then yesterday was the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. It was so good! I watched it in the home of the family that I saw sealed when I was working with Elder Glassett. It was great! 

Besides that, we went to the beach today. That was pretty dang cool! Honduras is the best! I love it here. You are all invited to come join me any time, jaja! The beach is about an hour drive from where we live here in Choluteca, so we rented a little bus and spent the morning in paradise!

Well that was pretty much my week! I will get a new companion this week, so I'll let you know next week! Please keep praying for Marisol and Jensi, they need it! And I need it.

I love you all! 

-Elder Smith

 Elder Yac baptized a girl from the hermana's area.  It was pretty great!