Week Sixty: 10/14/2014 to 10/20/2014--I've been on this beautiful island for a year already??

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This Thursday marks my 1 year on island. That's super nuts. That's like a man's 50th birthday. I'm old :(. I might as well get measured for my coffin or something. Psych. I've still got 10+ months left but no time to waste! I need to make these months count so that when I get on the plane home I can look back without regrets. 

Also, attatched is a funny picture of me from Yongkang. Rod sent me a bunch. Sigh...

Anyway, lots happened this week. We have a few investigators who are making some good progress. One is Vicky. She seems super prepared and excited to learn and be baptized. We meet with her once a week and she came to sacrament meeting with her boyfriend this last Sunday. She also just has this super optimistic outlook on life already. Her work is pretty rough, but she told us "Your attitude is important. If you look at the lot you've been given and think of it as unfair or inconvenient, then your life will be terrible. But, if you look at these challenges as experience builders and hold out for better days in the future, you can be happy." Pretty profound. I was super impressed and I'm glad we're able to teach her. 

We also met with Brother Cai(the guy with the baptismal goal). He didn't pray this last week. I think he felt a little silly doing it and we didn't really follow up with him, so we took some time yesterday and taught him the role of prayer and the Book of Mormon. He committed to read and pray every day this week. I hope he does. He seems really sincere about learning these things and finding out if they're true for himself. 

We also had this sweet lesson/road trip/party up in one of our secondary areas on Friday. The Elders Quorum President took us up there with his home teaching companion to visit a couple less-active members we have been working with. We shared the message for this month which was about prayer and we also shared about fasting. While one of the members was talking about it, I thought about how when I'm fasting, the sacrament tastes way better. Just that feeling of not having eaten for a long time and getting a little morsel of bread is probably a feeling everyone has experienced. I also thought about the "Daily Bread" videos that Elder Christofferson did(if you haven't seen them, check them out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTlJUuFDlrE&index=2&list=PL7C7E87DF812F1A31 there's 3 of them. They're all GREAT!). So yeah, I was thinking about those videos and that concept that we're so reliant on The Lord for our daily spiritual sustenance. I'm just so impressed by all the symbols that God puts in our life. Maybe it's because I'm kind of an art junkie and I love looking for meaning in literature and art that may or may not actually be there, but I think that God made the world this way for a reason. He made our bodies this way for a reason. It's hard to explain the epiphany I had, but it was pretty rad in my mind. 

I'm so glad I'm a missionary. I'm so glad I can be engaged in this work and even though I feel like I'm thwarted so often by the uninformed or unwise decisions of others, I'm still able to find true joy in my personal relationship with Jesus Christ and through His words in the scriptures.

Love you all!

-Elder Smith

P.S. This week, I did "Be Still, My Soul" at the request of my mother. I hope everyone enjoys it:) 

Week Fifty-Nine: 10/7/2014 to 10/13/2014: Subtle, But Significant Blessings

Dear Everyone,

Elder Smith here. First off, this week was WAAAAY better than last week. I saw lots of great things happen and I think it's because I stayed strong in the midst of my trials and kept moving forward in faith. We met a few new friends, had good experiences with people we've been meeting with already, and saw the work start to move forward. And, it was General Conference, so no matter what happened, last week had to be awesome! 

It started off Monday with Gorilla Ball. What is Gorilla Ball, you may ask? Basically, you play basket ball here:

and you hop around the whole time(this counts as dribbling). You also make monkey sounds, but that wasn't really a rule. it just kind of happened naturally. That was super fun. Here's the team picture:

from left to right: Elder Crook, me, Elder Page(the district leader), Elder Efros, Elder Galura, and Elder Brady(the redhead).

Then, we got to work. I honestly don't really remember what happened Monday-Thursday, but I'm pretty sure it consisted of a lot of finding and contacting. On Friday, we had our Stake's Sport Activity. There were lots of different events and stuff. It felt kind of like a track meet, but less organized and with weirder events. I also got a sweet shirt that says "Super 4 Ward". It's awesome. There's a picture on facebook somewhere, i'm sure. We got to meet a lot of ward members and i realized during the missionary relay race that I'm SUPER out of shape. It was a 4x200 and i was the anchor so I had to run my guts out...almost literally. 

That night, we went up in the boonies to visit an LA. He's planning on coming back to church next week or the week after that, so I hope that happens. We shared a talk Henry B. Eyring gave last conference. It was awesome. It totally addressed his concerns. I have lots of hope for him! 

On Saturday, we watched conference, ate costco pizza, watched conference, then met with this kid who had been pretty much forced by his aunt to meet with us. He had a little interest, but I felt bad for him because his aunt is kind of insane. The gospel could help him though. His main interests include playing video games and messing around on his phone. Unacceptable in my opinion! We'll help him out, hopefully. 

We also met with some other awesome people and one guy even set a date for baptism. 11/22/14. Remember the date! We also got self-contacted by this guy when we were up visiting that LA on Friday. It was the thing that every missionary dreams about and never gets! He was like "Hey, you're a missionary right? I met with you guys a while back but I haven't gone in a while. I keep meaning to go back. When can we meet? Do you have a phone number i could call you on?" Elder Efros thinks he's a creep, but I'm choosing to believe he's super golden! Updates on him next week. 

That's about it! I think my favorite talk was Elder Uchtdorf's from priesthood session. That question. "Lord, is it I?" is one everyone needs to ask themselves. I love how he said we need to avoid the tendancy to think "Oh yeah, Brother so-and-so is really bad at that" or "I'm glad he's here. He really needs this message." Rather than think of other people's faults, we need to ask "Lord, is it I?" and then be accepting of the answer we get. Only then can we help others. "...first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye" (Matthew 7:3,5).

I know that through Christ, we can make significant improvement to our lives. We cannot do that alone. We can try, with some success, but if we want to truly change our hearts and experience light and clarity, we need Christ. There's no other way. I invite all to pray about the messages they received this past conference and gain your own personal witness that those messages are inspiration from God to His prophets, apostles and representatives.

love you all!~

-Elder Smith

Week Fifty-Eight: 9/30/2014 to 10/6/2014

Hello Everyone,

So yeah, it's week 58ish. That's pretty wild. I'm almost at my year on island. This first week with Elder Efros hasn't been full of success. Brother Tang said he didn't want to meet with us anymore first thing Monday night, so that wasn't fun. I'd rather not talk about it too much. I just really hope that he'll act on his feelings in the future. We also had a lot of people set up appointments, confirm, and then have things come up last-minute so that they weren't able to meet with us. I mean, they didn't flat out stand us up and we'll be able to set up another time in the future, but that was still pretty sad. So, instead of teaching lessons, we biked a lot, contacted a lot of people, tried to visit a lot of Less-active members, and made lots of calls. In all honesty, it would seem that it wasn't a super productive week. However, I was able to get to know Elder Efros better, which is good.

Blurry picture Brendan took of a special ring I gave him before he left. I bought it when I was 18 at Seattle's Folklife festival and it's been special to me. I gave it to him with a sappy letter before he left. When he Skyped with us for Mother's Day, he showed me that he was wearing it and that it helps to remind him of his family when he's feeling discouraged. Love this kid.

The two investigators we were able to meet with were Phoebe and Brother Lu. Both of their lessons went well and they are making progress slowly but surely. Phoebe came to her first church activity last night. She didn't talk much, but she still came and brought a friend so that's good! Pray for them. 

The weather is getting nicer. It's nice an cool in the evening now. The day is still pretty hot, but it's not as bad as it was a few weeks ago. We also got an entirely different district this transfer. Every companionship had a change. I'll send a picture another week and talk about them maybe. They're all pretty fun...maybe too fun...but anyways, talk to you all next week! I'm running low on time. 

Love you all!

-Elder Smith

P.S. The song. enjoy. I put in a blank verse so you could all sing along;) "O My Father."