Familia,
KK - To answer you question, this is my last week in the CCM and I leave for the field next week on Tuesday! I think about you a lot Kathryn and when I read your letter again last week {along with everyone’s} I just started to cry because you are so sweet! Love you Kathryn. And I heard you’re stopping ballet? Now you focus on swimming and piano like every other smith kid before you! YAY
Matty boy - I always knew you were a bad kid getting called in by admin and whatnot... That is the worst I’m sorry bud, hopefully you just told those haters to back off. Fear God more than admin! That was cool to hear about my friends. Give them a BOFM or something for me. I do regret never introducing them; don’t make the same mistake I did!
Mom - I am going to learn Come, Come ye Saints on the harmonica ASAP just because of your emotional connection to it. I love how you can go so in depth with that. I pray for you every night and hopefully you can feel it. Where are you in your studies of the BOM?
Dad - That picture of you and the White House is sweet. Can’t believe that the Secret Service talked to you. Congrats again on the Washington Gas win, I know you worked your tail off for that. The Stake Conference sounded awesome. That is an awesome story about the Macmaster’s. Encourage Matt that that can be him too! Love you dad.
So I'll start off with something that'll make you guys laugh. Remember when I talked about the Homeward Bound song and whatnot and the district whistling it {may not have said that but whatever}? Guess who is singing a solo in the last devotional?! This guy. The one who never wanted to have anything to do with that kind of stuff for 19 years. We have a girl in our district who's CCM calling is the music girl or something and so we are all singing that song and she’s making me sing the first verse of Oh My Father, in Spanish, to the tune of Homeward Bound like that one musical number from the Laguna Beach farewell and then the chorus of Homeward Bound twice on my own. The whole district then sings the 2nd and 4th {then in English} verses with me. That song is following me everywhere I swear! Now everyone sings it in the shower and a guy this morning was singing " BUENAS DIAS BUENAS DIAS" to the tune of Homeward Bound over and over. Classic stuff! That is such a powerful song and a proclaimed tearjerker for the last devotional! I'll have to tell you how it goes. Just makes me miss you guys more but it’s a good thing! We have an Elder Anderson in my District that is a piano prodigy and he whipped together a beautiful arrangement for us.
Our investigators are progressing well. Currently I have 3 investigators = Frederman, Alvaro, and Pablo. Frederman has a baptism date this Saturday and we just have 2 more lessons with him to prepare him for Baptism. I don’t know how that will go; hopefully he doesn’t have any problems that will prevent him from taking that step. He is a fake investigator so hopefully the teacher that plays him will just let it happen. We had a pretty spiritual lesson with him this week. They all are spirit filled but this one more so. We were teaching him about the Word of Wisdom and he was very receptive for some reason. After we were done teaching, we asked him how he felt. He then proceeded to tell us that two days before we had come to his house to meet with him, he had been in a real rut and was drinking a ton and even contemplating suicide {because his mom had passed away recently} and that this whole time he’s known that we are messengers of God. That was one time I wished I could express my feelings adequately, because my Spanish doesn’t allow me to do that completely. But I bore my testimony and he started to cry a little bit. A word about these investigators, they are based on real people and real experiences from the teachers missions, so everything feels so real. I cannot wait to leave in a week and do it for real. If I care so much about these fake investigators, I cannot imagine how it will be next Tuesday. Will you pray for my future investigators? I do often, but could the family do that every once in a while this week? I would appreciate it.
We did another one of those street-contacting exercises this week too. Nothing much to report except I got my first bird! It was so classic Matthew; it was one of those experiences where I wish you could’ve been there because it was so funny. I was the first one out of the gate to go find people to street contact and this motorcycle gang was driving by so I, being the friendly and awesome missionary I am, held up my Book of Mormon proudly and gave them a huge smile and waved like an idiot. Then one of them turned around {he was riding double} and flipped me off like a light switch! I didn’t stop waving or smiling though, killing with kindness. My district had a cow; they thought that was so funny. We only found one person during this session, it was raining a little bit and it was a Saturday so not much was happening. Her name was Angelica and it turned out that she cuts President and Sister Cox's hair and they’ve tried to convert her already. But we shared a short message with her; she accepted the Book of Mormon and said she would meet with the missionaries. People are seriously so friendly here; it is incredible. It is nothing like the US. Everyone wants to talk to you.
I found out why Latinos call us Gringos. Apparently, when the army was in Central America, the only words that Latinos knew were "Green" for the color of their uniforms and "Go" as in "get out of my village". Thus..GreenGos. Gringos. My teacher taught us that and I thought it interesting! It just means white person now so no worries.
Well I only have a week left here and I am trying really hard to learn Spanish. The class speaks, or tried to speak, Spanish from 10 in the morning to 9 at night. I am pretty diligent with it so people, my comp included, get pretty mad at my when I refuse to speak English. But no matter, I know it’s helping me. I have been reading the Book of Mormon only in Spanish now and believe it or not I understand 90 percent of it {except for the Isaiah chapters, actually its a lot like English, no understanding}. A teacher promised me that if I did that I would learn Spanish quicker and its true. I also did the temple session today in Spanish and it was amazing. That was my last temple session as a missionary in the CCM, I really hope I’ll be able to come back while in the field a lot. In general, personal revelation just flows as a missionary, but in the temple it’s like rapid fire: question, answer, question, answer. I love being a missionary.
Something specifically to pray for: that I will be as focused and diligent as possible this last week so that I can give my investigators my best missionary self right off the bat.
I love you my family and I pray for your safety and spiritual wellbeing often. I hope all is good.
Haz lo justo,
Elder Smith
