November 26, 2014 - Learning To Love Rejection

Sorry I didn’t write yesterday, we had to go to guate (the capital) to sign some immigration stuff. We had to wake up at 4 in the morning to be able to do our studies and take a 3-hour bus ride. 4 in the morning is way too early. Anyways, I am alive and mother I hope you didn’t call church HQ to find out what had happened to me!

This week was very different. I learned, as I titled this letter, to love rejection. We knock TONS of doors every day and this week everyone rejected us. It was the worst at first! Elder Raudales has me knock all of doors now and no one wanted to listen to the white guy. In the beginning I was really down on myself and feeling blue but Elder Raudales taught me something really cool. He posed the question: How many people rejected Jesus Christ? In truth, in the end, everyone rejected him. Even His own Father had to leave Him for a time. And as missionaries, we are personal representatives of Him and all He is. So what a blessing it is to be able to feel what he felt! What an honor! It is interesting to see the way the Atonement can change ones self, even thought processes. I repented of the way I was thinking in the beginning and this has changed the way I look at the people. What good!

We are looking for one miracle to baptize this Sunday. Her name is hmna Yenmi She is such an example to me. She has 3 kids, no husband, and works 10+ hours in the heat doing the hardest work ever. She walks the entire day planting sugar cane over acres and acres of land. The sugar cane is the worst. Anyways she is fantastic...but she hasn’t accepted her baptism date because she doesn’t think she has received a definite answer that the church is true/LDM is true/JS prophet/baptism is the right thing for her/etc. We have taught her everything in the book about receiving answers and such but to no avail. If you guys could pray for her this week that would be great.

Elder Raudales is giving me more and more responsibilities every day and I am feeling the pressure! It is good though and I am learning a ton because of that. I knock all the doors, teach the majority in lessons, direct planning, and whatnot. It has been a challenge to learn all of the things we have to do as missionaries but I am progressing.

Random thing. There are a couple active volcanoes around here and last Friday one of them went off! It was so sweet. Nothing crazy, we could just see the lava spewing and such. It was a really cloudy night so we just saw a huge red haze in the distance. I tried to take a picture but the volcano was a dumb and wouldn’t time itself right with my camera. Oh well! It was cool though.

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MATTHEW AND DAD!!! I sure love you guys. I was just thinking about you two and I believe you are my best friends. I was remembering the last trip we went on and how fun that was to spend time with you guys. And how long it will be until that happens again! But we are eternal beings so it really isn’t that long. But I hope you two have awesome birthdays. And if I remember correctly today is your bday matt? The big one seven. I remember it well. I was so dumb then. Here is my present to you two; I am a missionary so I can only give you scriptures to look up. These are the mission theme scriptures and we repeat them at the beginning of every meeting. 3 NE 5:13 and DyC 46:21. They are pretty sweet. And Matt I just want to encourage you to start reading PMG every day if you can as part of your studies. I wish I would’ve done that more. You will be so much better off if you do that. And the whole purpose of that book is to convert the Missionary/member, not the people. If you do this I know you will be converted. But dad will make you do it anyways, I know it (:

I love you guys. Have a Happy Thanksgiving! I will be dreaming of mashed potatoes and turkey.... Eat some pie for me. Tell the family that’s there hello for me!

Peace,

Elder S

November 18, 2014 - Firsts!

Buenos,

Hello Familia! Sounds like this was one busy week as always! Those pictures from the Amazing Race are sweet. Hope you had fun Matt, that was one of my favorite memories! Well done mom and dad on pulling off another Amazing Race, I know that that is quite a task. And how sad about that little boys funeral. Glad for the hope and direction and peace we have. And Kathryn WAY TO GO!  Keep sharing the gospel with your friends. I promise nothing will make you happier.

This week. I titled this letter ''Firsts'' because thats what it was. I had my first baptism, my first talk, gave my first blessing, and other different priesthood ordinances in Spanish. It was awesome. 

On Sunday it seemed like earth and hell were combining against us to stop the baptism but we did all we could, then stood still and watched the salvation of God. So the mission rule is that investigators have to go to church three times before baptism and that constitutes basically just being there for the Sacrament and usually the whole 1st hour. Our investigator was there at 8:45 and church starts at 9:00. So all was good...until he and his cousin left three minutes before Sacrament meeting ended without a word. AHHH!!  We were searching all around for him and couldnt find him. Then, just as sacrament meeting had ended, he walked through the door. So we called President, the Assistants, President Monson, to see if we could still baptize him. We explained the circumstances and they gave us the go ahead. 

The other thing(s). For some reason, two diligent missionaries (US) forgot to turn off the faucet in the font and one missionary, while he was giving his first 10 min talk in spanish (ME), saw water spilling out of the font room and into the hall. This was bad news.... So I hurried and closed my talk and then me and Elder Raudales ran to go clean up. All was well....until we tried to fill the font up again. The water turns off and on super randomly here and it decided to turn off when the water wasn't even to my knees. Whoops!  Elder Raudales said ''You will probably have to perform a miracle in this baptism''. How comforting!  But we did it.  I said the ordinance in Spanish and we had no problems. It was funny because I had to lay him almost completely horizontal to immerse him completely and it was just different. So anyways, lesson learned: when you do all you can in the Work of the Lord, things will work out!

My talk went well too. I think. Who knows what I said! It was interesting how it even came to be that I was speaking.  Sacrament meeting had actually started, and right after the announcements, Elder R stood up and told me that we had to each give 10 minute talks. My mind panicked for three seconds and then I found a couple scriptures while he was speaking and then stood up and said whatever I said. It was about how members can be an essential part of the work. They really are so important. All the converts that the Rio Santiago branch have had in the 3 months that it has been reopened have been through members. Just think about all that GB2 could do with 6 times as many members! 

Random thing. Do you remember Sister Brewster who served in our ward? She has a twin serving in this mission. I saw her at the first change meeting and thought it was her. Small world.

I have had some wonderful spiritual experiences this week. Elder R and I have had some awesome companionship studies. By the way, he speaks better English than some of my friends, I forgot to mention that. We speak Spanglish and understand each other really well.  During one of our studies he was teaching me something and then he paused and stopped for a little while and looked up at me and said ''Do you know why I am  your trainer?''  "Umm no.''  ''Because I am an answer to your parents prayers.''  It caught me really off guard and the spirit bore witness to my soul that that was true. Then we talked about this great and grand plan that Heavenly Father has for each of us and just how perfect everything is.

I have also been thinking about another principle that I'd like to share. The hardest thing in this world is to overcome our selfish selves and trust in another. The hardest thing is to completely trust 100 percent in our Savior. But that is why we are here. To learn to trust that through him we can be perfect and exalted. And the most perfect form of trust? Love. If we love him perfectly, we will always always always keep his commandments. When we trust him with all our hearts, we will have no more disposition to do evil. I have just been thinking about that a lot and challenge this wonderful family to find ways to trust him more. You guys have taught me a lot about that throughout my years. Thank you for that.

Question Answering: I love the pictures. Keep em coming! The church building we attend is just a really small chapel. It has one hall leading up to a decently sized chapel where they do Sacrament and then lining the halls are 5 classroooms on each side and then somewhere in there is the baptismal font in the Relief Society room. Kinda confusing haha sorrry. There are 6 missionaries in my district. 4 elders and 2 hermanas. There are a bunch of missionaries in Santa Lucia - this makes up our zone.  We do eat McDonalds every week. I try to eat pizza more because McDs does weird things to me.  We have a cook that cooks us lunch when we want. She lives 15 minutes away and we walk there and pay her 15 quetz for lunch. She also cut my hair.  Dad, I just want to say I'm sorry for ever complaining about your haircuts. You were a rockstar.  Right now....lets just say the difference between a good haircut and a bad is 2 weeks - at least i hope!  I have not received packages yet.  I'll probably get them at the change meeting which is the first or second week of December.   My body is treating me really good. Stomach good. Back excellent. Just waiting for my legs to get stronger so I can walk like I'm running! You would not believe how fast the missionaries walk. And you guys know me...I'm a turtle and don't like to move fast! And I will be providing zero information on sickness ever in the mission so don't ask that :)   But really, I have been excellent, no problemas.

We had zone conference today. We watched this Elder Holland video that is incredible and you guys should watch it. It's about why missionary work never was or never is easy. Try to find it and show it if you can.  

My comp and I are getting along super well and I am learning so much. He has been a leader for his whole mission and is famous.  

I love you guys so much, have a good week.

Les amo,

Elder Freeman

Elder Smith with the mission president and his wife

November 11, 2014 - So new!

            

Hello my dear Family,

I am happy to report that Week 2 is WAY better than Week 1. I am better accustomed to everything: the companion, the schedule, the food, weather, teaching, not knowing the language, its all better! I am learning to enjoy this time, all of it. My trainer has taught me to enjoy my mistakes, because I literally fail all day long and I might as well enjoy it! I love Elder Raudales. He is the best. Find him a girlfriend (he made me write this). Elder R and I are getting along a lot better and have gotten used to being with each other. We have a funny relationship; we bag on each other a lot but respect and love each other a lot. He is teaching me SO much. He is a master teacher, speed walker, contactor, and missionary. He can get into literally any door and make anyone listen to him. He has taught me how to teach a lesson to people that don’t even want to look at you. You knock on their door (which has a little opening in the middle to speak to people), shake their hand through the opening, tell them that we are missionaries of Jesus Christ and testify that he lives, then you say we are going to pray for you, you pray, then teach the Restoration in 10 minutes, invite them to be baptize, and if they accept we return the next day and teach them more. We had 69 lessons in total this week and contacted 317 people in the street and 78 families. As a companionship, we have to have at least 35 contacts and at least 10 of them have to be families. I thought that was crazy at first but we always get way more than that. Anyways the work is progressing here and we have one baptism set for this Saturday. His name is X and he is 14 and his grandma hates the church with a passion but we have faith that he will overcome that and be baptized this Sunday. Please pray for him. We have a couple other investigators that are progressing but the huge problem here is getting people to come to church. All the men work in the Safra (cutting sugar cane) and they work every single day and no one can come to church. It is interesting but we know that there are blessings that come to people that keep the Sabbath day holy and we promise a lot of blessings to people about this.

Mom here’s a little nugget you will enjoy. This past Sunday was the primary program in the Rio Santiago branch! It was comical to see the difference between the orchestrated performance in GB2 that you put together and then seeing theirs! There are like 7 kids but 5 of them got stage fright. So only 2 of them participated and it was hilarious. It took a whole 15 minutes to complete and this one little child was screaming at the top of his lungs the entire time. But I thought of you the whole time mother and how much you do!

Church is cool because I can understand almost everything that’s going on because we are talking about the gospel. I don’t know if I said this last week but in lessons and things I am pretty good at understanding and speaking. The street and talking in other normal things is a completely different story. I say random things that don’t make sense and Elder R is always very kind and points them out. For example, saying ''Hola'' in the street is really, really creepy for some reason and Elder R didn’t tell me for like 5 days. He is so sweet. Everyone just says ''Buenos!’’  I like saying Buenos. There are other stupid things I would say but I am repressing them I can’t remember... Guatemala aint Spanish class with our old Teacher Dona Julia, Matt!

I experienced my first real Guatemalan rain this week. The first week it rained pretty hard but Elder R said that that was nothing and I didn’t really believe him. But then last Friday or something the Heavens opened! It was incredible. We were doing some service for some family and carrying bags of rocks from their street to the house and while we were doing it, it started to POUR. Like pour. We blew that taco joint and went to another lesson and the road was a literal river and past our ankles. It was so cool. Elder R told me that this was a real rain and that from May to September in the coast it rains like that from 2 in the afternoon to 10 at night every single day. Pumped! I tried using those little feet drier thingies and they kinda worked.

My shoes have been awesome. I wear the Eccos everyday. Not the boot ones but the others that are a little smaller. For this weather and place they are perfect. So comfy and really durable and everything. I don’t know what shoes I will need in the future. We will see as the weather and my areas change.

One thing I have thought about and experienced this week is the connection between testifying and our testimonies. There’s some quote, I think its from Brigham Young that goes along the lines of ''We more often find our testimonies on our feet than on our knees'' that is, we will receive light when we share than when we just ask. I have felt that this week. I have probably shared the first vision 100 times already and as I have been doing so, I have received an increasingly solid testimony that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have established their gospel and church upon this earth with a living Prophet. How awesome is that and what a thing to proclaim! We are so blessed to have that knowledge. ''And after all that has been said, the most important duty is to preach the gospel'' - Joseph Smith.

I hope all is well. Kathryn I heard you are starting tennis! Give it your all sister and get good at it! You’ll probably be able to beat me when I get back.   Matt, stay away from the girls!  Mom, I love you so much, you letters always make me miss you so much and tear up a little bit. Thank you for getting me a Christmas package! That will be awesome. BTW, ask the Roses if Elder Rose (Michael?) served in Rio Santiago. I have heard his name a couple times and Elder R said he served here. Pretty cool. Have a good week everyone and know that I can always feel your prayers.

Love

Elder S

November 4, 2014

Well Familia,

I am in Rio Santiago, Santa Lucia, Zona Costa! When Presidente Markham told me the Coast was my place I was like yes the ocean! It was not to be. We are pretty far inland, about 2.5 hours from the ocean. And it is hot, hot, hot. It has been a struggle to adjust to that.

I’ll just give a quick overview. The ending of the CCM was excellent. We sang our song a ton of times, once even for a nonmember group of people that was visiting the CCM for some reason. Everyone cried. Then we sang it for the Nortes. Everyone cried. It was an awesome experience! On Tuesday we all woke up super early and said goodbye to all that were leaving. Almost my whole district headed off for Coban at 6 am. Presidente Markham, Sister Markham, and the APs came and greeted us and had a little meeting in the CCM. Then we went to his apartment in the city to have some training and lunch. I told them that Steve and Cynthia were my family and they were so excited to hear that! They remember them fondly. Then at 3 I think we went and did splits with some of the mission leaders. I went with Elder Clause. It was fun. We went and taught lessons, contacted, did everything that missionary’s do. I felt like the real deal. I found out that I can get across almost everything I want in terms of Gospel discussions, but normal conversations I am of no use! I am being patient though. The Gospel is what matters is what I tell myself. Something that shocked me was how fast we walk the Guatemala City Central Mission. They are all Olympic speed walkers; it is insane. So I was sore that night to the max. We finished that day, went back to the apartment and they surprised us with pizza. Yum. Then the real thing began.

We woke up at 4 in the morning to head to the Changes Meeting to meet our comps and find out where we would be going. My companions name is Elder Raudales from Comoyaguela, Honduras. He has 21 months in the mission so I will be killing “my dad”. They call all the trainers “fathers” and the trainees “sons or daughters”. Its a little humiliating but I am over it. Elder Raudales is a machine. When they were calling our names to call us together, we both stood up and he made that motion with his hand over his neck like slitting his throat like....get ready you’re going to die. And die I have! It has been so hard. I have never sweat or been so tired in my entire life.

Our days go like this. Wake up at 5:30am, exercise, shower, get ready, personal study, 2 hrs. of comp study, and then 1 hour of language study. If we don’t have another meeting or training, we then go out and eat lunch till 1 or 2. Then we go be missionaries! Our mission goal for this month is a hefty one...400!! They tried it earlier this year and it didn’t work out so they really psyched us up for this one. And Elder Raudales and I are working so hard! Its discouraging at times because I have no idea what’s going on or what people are saying to me but I’m trying really hard to keep my head up and be optimistic!

I am learning to work hard. I am learning to forget myself and do the work. I am learning to defeat the thoughts that the Adversary brings that I cant do the work that I am supposed to do here. I am learning to love people and see them as people that can and will enter the waters of baptism. I am learning to be patient with myself. I am learning how to teach. I am learning that at a beginning of a mission, you are going to fail the whole day but I need to be able to learn and be patient. The Lord is humbling me. And it hurts! But after the refiners fire comes His blessings. A theme of this mission is "You are going to suffer" and I thought to myself at the beginning...yeah right! But it’s true. And that is why we are here, to endure to the end and bring souls to Christ along the way.

Please pray for my investigators, Yenmi, Stephen, Jonathon, and the Familia Pelen. We only have one confirmed baptismal date and we need 5 others in this next week or two to accomplish our goal! So these next two weeks will be nonstop pain but I will endure it well and do what I need to do!

I will learn how to send pics better next week and send more! I love you guys so much and thank you for your kind words and everything that you are all about.

Elder Smith

My first area

Meeting new missionaries in the mission home

Our shower