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
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