One of the Most Memorable Weeks of My Mission

Hola Hola! 

This week has been pretty stressful! Full of a lot of miracles, a lot of good and a lot of bad, and overall one of the most memorable weeks of my mission. It started off with me scrambling to get everything ready for the temple trip to Tegus! From contracting buses to getting food ready for three hundred people. It was crazy! 

We did another baleadas sell, and with a lot of help from our ward we got all the money we needed to contract the buses. We contracted five buses! I had two thoughts in my mind: "What if we don't even fill two?" Or "What if way more people come than fit in the five buses?" I was stressing a little! But everything was coming together so nicely that I knew God was helping us out a whole lot! 

So we moved forward with faith and finished up with our actividades that we needed to do. We did a last minute garage sell that ended up being awesome!!! Jaja, it was a whole lot of fun! And we got all the money finalized! Everything was looking good. But then I got sick... I think it is just the flu, but for the past three or four nights in a row I have woke up with a fever of over 100 degrees. But when you are a zone leader with a huge zone activity coming up there is no time to be sick. Jaja, we kept sacrificing to give those people the opportunity to visit the temple. 

The morning of the activity we woke up at 5:00 in the morning to verify everything and to make sure that our investigators came. And we got to the church early. When we got there, there were already a few people waiting to enter the church.  So we entered and waited for all the people. Within thirty minutes the church was packed!!! I have never seen it so full! There were more than 300 people ready and waiting to go to the temple! Just seeing that room full of people was an answer to many prayers! It was amazing.

So we gave a few instructions and left for the temple! Four hours up, two hours there, four hourss back, with a fever of 102 degrees all day... it was a LONG day! But when President Bowler gave his talk the spirit in that room was so strong! It was all worth it. Every activity, every baleada, every prayer, every second on that bus. It was really a huge miracle that everything worked out so well, because there were a million things that could have gone wrong. God was helping us! 

The next day was Sunday, and I slept almost the whole day. Today I woke up feeling super sick, so i just laid in bed all day today too. Please say a prayer for me to get better, Mom! Your prayers are pretty powerful.

Overall it was a pretty good week! I would never want to relive it again. But I learned a lot, and saw the hand of the Lord bless us a whole lot.  I will be thankful for that for the rest of my life.

I believe the temple is the house of the Lord. It should be our goal to be there as often as possible. I invite you to rededicate yourself to temple attendance! 

I love you all so much! Have a great Halloween! Eat some burger beef stew for me! Jaja.

-Elder Smith

Sickness Has Swept Our Zone

Hola Hola!

I'm going to be brief today because I had to write three college application essays for my mom... jaja. So I don't have a lot of time today. But here we go anyway!

This week has been pretty awesome! It has been full of actividades to earn money for our temple trip to Tegus on Saturday. I appreciate all of your prayers on our behalf! We have sold baleadas, tamales, we had a movie night, we had a fiesta night, a futbol night, and just a ton of support from our ward. It has been great! I really love the place I'm at right now. LOS LLANOS IS THE BEST!

Sickness has swept our zone. We have an Elder Mendez In our house on bed rest with this sickness that is like dengue, but like a million times worse! He has to go to Tegus on Tuesday to get some tests done. Hermana Randall is already in Tegus because she's also sick with the same thing. There are just way too many mosquitoes in this country! 

It rains a lot... my camera broke again... it got really wet... sorry Mom!

This Sunday we missed the sacrament because we had to take care of Elder Mendez. But we got special permission to have a Sacrament Meeting in our house. It was awesome! One of the most spiritual I have ever had! 

That's all for today. I love you all! Have a great week!

-Elder Smith

Giant Temple Trip

Hola Hola!

This week flew by! I feel like I was just sitting here like a couple of hours ago and here I am again writing to you guys!

This week was full of interesting things. It started off with Elder Woods, a missionary from my zone, going home. He is probably one of the best guys I have ever met! He finished a month after his return date because he extended! So he stayed with us in our house the last two days before he went home, because his area was about two hours away. It was sad, but happy at the same time, to see such a great missionary go home! It was good to see what the end result of a misión looks like when the missionary has worked hard. But it was sad to see one of our best go home. I will always be thankful for Elder Woods and his example.

Apart from that, we spent a lot of time coordinating with the stake for a giant temple trip with all our investigators that we want to have at the end of this month! We talked to the other zone leaders from our stake and organized a couple of activities to try to raise money to pay for the buses.  And then once everything was in progress we took our ideas and our work to the stake presidency and asked for their help. They were actually kind of impressed and told us that they would be willing to help us out and that they want to make it a big stake project! We are hoping on bringing at least 500 people to the temple! But here is the cool part... we are going to do it on Saturday the 25th of October, and there are about 30-40 people between the two zones with baptism dates for that Saturday! So we are going to have a giant group baptism in the stake center of the temple!!!! It is going to be so cool! But we really are going to need some help for everything to get pulled together in time! A couple of extra prayers for us would go a long way.

Apart from those two things my week was pretty normal. We ate a ton of food! I don´t know why, but everybody from our ward decided to invite us to eat this week! It was awesome.

Stefanie, I'm proud of you for running cross country this year! That is probably the best thing you could have done! Mom I'm glad you are having so much success with your teaching career! And Dad, good luck at state!

I love you all so much. Thank you for the influence you all have had--and continue to have on me!

-Elder Smith

How Great Was Conference!!

Hola Hola!

First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!! I hope it was a good one even though BYU got killed... jaja.

Wow! How great was Conference!!! I felt the spirit so strongly during pretty much the whole thing! I have to say though, President Eyring's talk on Sunday morning was the one that really touched my heart. He began by saying he hoped we would all feel the love of God through his words, and I really did. I was trying so hard to fight back the tears so everyone wouldn't know what a big baby I am. But I ended up having to leave for a second... AND IT WAS THE FIRST TALK OF THE DAY! Jaja, I am now the guy who didn't even make it fifteen minutes into Conference without having to leave.  Way to go Smith... way to go. 

I have been reflecting on some of the messages that were given, and I think one of the most recurring themes that I heard was that we need to care for the poor.  The poor in heart and spirit, as well as finances. I think that's a really interesting thought. Another theme was following the prophet. And a whole lot more. It was just so good! For missionaries General Conference is like the Super Bowl, March Madness, the Olympics, and the World Cup all rolled up into one! It's really one of the best weekends ever! I am  spiritually recharged and ready to go.

Apart from that it was a CRAZY week! It started with Consejo De Lideres. On Tuesday we had to drive up to Tegus, stay overnight and then have Consejo with Presidente Bowler. It was such a great, edifying experience! There were so many great ideas passed around about how we are going to make the mission a whole lot better. I can't wait to see the fruits of these changes! Presidente told us that he wasn't thinking about doubling the success of the mission, but rather quintupling it! (5X more!) That's what I call vision! 

We got back from that and my comp got super sick... he was throwing up and was bedridden for two days. But the work rolled on! We did something called "Attack of the Area", which is when all the elders of the zone show up to one area for a couple of hours and try to find all the people they can that might be interested in listening to the gospel. It went really well and the elders from that area have been taking advantage of all the contacts we found! It also really unified our zone!

Then GENERAL CONFERENCE!  Need I say more?

 Today is the birthday of an Hermana in our zone so we had a party for her this morning! We made pancakes and smoothies, had a water fight, and threw eggs at her head! It was awesome! 

I hope that you all are applying something that you learned this weekend and that you are trying to improve and get better at something. God expects it. Conference isn't for nothin' you know! Pues. I love you all! I hope you all have a great week! Stef, I'll be praying for you at region, run hard! Dad, good luck to your team too! 

-Elder Smith