Elder Smith Photography!

What's up everyone!! It's been a busy good week here in PA! I finally
got to do some cool stuff and the leaves are starting to change so
there's been a lot of pictures this week!!

To start off our week on Tuesday we headed up to the Aaronic
Priesthood Restoration site in Susquehanna, which used to be Harmony,
PA from what I understand! So President Anderson has been trying to
pull strings to get the whole mission up to see the site, and I'm glad
he did because it was a really cool experience! Two other zones went
up with us at the same time and the rest of the mission went up at
different times. So at the site they built this beautiful chapel, and
there's so much white in it and on the outside that it looks like a
cross between a temple and a chapel. The chapel is the building for
the ward up in that area and has the visitors center inside. I don't
know if any of you watched the dedication of it, but even the podium
is white! I loved being inside. We had a few speakers at the
beginning, then we watched a video they made for the site up there. It
is narrated by Oliver Cowdrey and tells his experience. It was really
cool to see the restoration of the priesthood in a different
perspective. Afterwards we took a tour around the grounds and saw the
gravesite where Joseph Smith would have buried their first child, and
the replicas of the houses that got burnt down many years ago! Anyways
I'll throw up some pictures of all of that. It was such a cool
experience to be in the spot where so much history of the church
happened and to feel such a strong spirit! The site took most of the
day because it's pretty far away from our area, so we weren't really
sure when we'd get back to our area. We got back around 7 and ate
dinner, so 8 o'clock we didn't have anything planned out. Elder
Stimpson recently got a pie in the mail he's been dying to get. He
wanted to eat it but he was like "we gotta eat it with ice cream" so
we decided to go get ice cream at the store! While we were at the site
President Anderson told us we need to keep talking to everyone we see,
so we decided to walk to the store and talk with people. Well there's
really not many people walking around late at night in small towns
like this so we weren't expecting much. We were about half way to the
store and I looked across the street and some guy was staring at us,
and I thought "oh crap another crazy person" then all the sudden the
guy yelled "Are you Mormons?" and I was like "Yes we are!!!" So he ran
over and started to talk to us. I don't know if I mentioned last week
that we got this crazy referral for a guy with a baptismal date, but
anyways this was him! The phone number we had for him was wrong and we
didn't have an apartment number for him, so we couldn't find him. His
names Jon, and we were just lucky to be out on the streets at that
moment! President Anderson stresses the fact that there's "no random
thoughts". So next time you have a thought to go buy ice cream, go do
it because it may be a thought from the Holy Ghost and you may meet
someone cool!

Wednesday didn't go so smoothly. We had a solid day planned out where
we woulda taught a buncha lessons, but as things go here in Lehighton,
plans always get cancelled! But we bounce back pretty well! We ended
up going and getting cheesestakes for lunch, which was both of our
first cheesestakes out in the field! It was good stuff but believe it
or not, I'd pick vito's in bountiful over this one. After that, Lori
called us and we went over and cleaned out her stove pipe and moved
some wood for her, and she rewarded us with baja blast! Later in the
day we were supposed to have a branch indexing party, but when we
showed up the wifi wasn't working so they ended that short as well.
That's just how things roll around here, but it's no big deal!

Thursday our plans cancelled again, but we stopped by the Bealla's and
we gave a children's Book of Mormon to Casper and he told me he was
going to be at church, so I was pretty excited about that! We got to
teach Jenny about temples a little bit, we are trying to help her get
there to do baptisms for the dead. Then we got over to the Bakers
again for dinner and a lesson, so the day went better than it should
have!

Not much happened Friday because of weekly planning, but we stopped
by Jeff's and he taught us how to make cotton candy! Then we went to
Bro Devore's house for dinner, and they have so many stories it's
crazy. Sis Devore is from Utah and when she was younger she played
Tennis with guys who are now general authorities and one time she was
on an airplane and sat next to President Uchtdorf. They lived in Utah
until about 4 years ago and moved back here where Bro Devore is from.
They have a son named John who's probably somewhere around 25 and he
has Down syndrome. He is the life of the party! You can hardly
understand him, but usually you can figure out what he says because he
talks about dumb and dumber a lot!

Saturday was a fun day, first let me say Domino's has stepped up their
game. Anyways Bro Fegely (our ward mission leader) took us to meet a
part member family named the Wilcox's. The wife, Vicky is a member and
her husband isn't, but he doesn't seem opposed to it at all. They
haven't been to church in a while because he works construction and
she works a lot of overtime at night so I guess it's hard for them to
get to church or whatever their reason is, but Fegely told her things
will start working out if she just pays her tithing and starts going
back to church. We'll see what happens there! Afterwards we taught a
lesson to Charles about temples, we are trying to get him to do
baptisms as well. Then we had a lesson with Jon, who pretty much knows
everything because he's met with two other sets of missionaries, so we
set him with a baptism date for November 14! We brought him to our
branch halloween party which was a much better turn out than anyone
expected! Me and Elder Stimpson are sick of no one coming to
activities or showing any support, so we got the word out and got a
ton of people there! They did a chili cook-off and everyone really
enjoyed that, then they had games and a trunk or treat for the primary
kids! It was really successful and the branch is planning on doing
more of these social events each month!

Sunday was AWESOME because Casper finally came to church!! So thank
you for the prayers everyone! He came and sat by me and I think he
really enjoyed it and know's it's where he should be on Sunday! We are
making progress! Then we got to teach Sharing Time in primary, which
is great because I'm used to teaching kids now! After church we got to
go give Jenny a blessing, because she's sick and it was great because
she had 3 friends there and we got to teach them about blessings and
hopefully they felt the spirit during the blessing, who knows! Anyways
we finally got to get back to our regular weekly schedule and end it
off with dinner at the Roselers, which is always a fun time!

I'm not a huge fan of numbers at all, but I guess statistically this
was the best week we've had since I've been here! It's pretty exciting
having two investigators with a date and by the end of this week I'm
really thinking we could have four with a date! The branch goal was 10
baptisms this year and they've had 1. There's a lot of work to be
done! Thank you for the prayers everyone, they do help! I can promise
you that prayer works. Everyone enjoy the pictures, have a great week
and a Happy Halloween

Here's me with the Susquehanna River (the one Joseph Smith & Oliver Cowdrey were baptized in)

This one right here is the Hale home. I guess it was luxurious back in the day!

This is the Vistor Center/Chapel

This tree probably saw the Aaronic Priesthood get restored!!!

Here is me eatin' my Cheesesteak! 

That's my cotton candy I made!

and here are some nice pictures of PA!

Investigators!!

So last week my dad emailed me and was asking me if I really had only
one investigator. I guess I've failed to talk about the other ones we
have! In this area we've been trying hard to reactivate inactive
members. Yesterday our Elders Quorum Pres. said we have 199 members in
our branch. 199??? The average attendance is like in the 40-50 range
per week, if that. We are trying to help out branch with member
retention a lot, because our branch isn't really trying to hard with
our new member Jenny, so that's rough, but this branch has potential
and it has the members. They just need to get them to church and keep
the new ones as well. That's why we've been constantly working with
members, especially less actives, but we also have investigators as
well so hopefully I can talk about them a little more!

So last Monday at Family Home Evening with the Bakers, Lori came. Now
Lori is the lady that hooked it up with a baja blast my first week I
was here, so I think she's rad. She's less active so she's one we are
really trying to focus on. It got brought up yesterday that maybe
she'd feel more needed at church if she had a calling, hopefully the
branch follows through with that! After dinner their daughter Brianna
came home with her boyfriend Evan. So I guess the missionaries started
teaching Brianna's last boyfriend, but now that's over and the kid's
dad didn't want him to be taught anyways. So Bro Baker joked with Evan
that if they get any more serious, he will probably have to convert.
He stood there all quiet and awkward while we all laughed, he's a
strange kid. Anyways for my message for FHE I shared a mormon message
where some hipster girl is riding her bike sending spiritual thoughts
along with pictures to friends and family. So I challenged all of them
to share the gospel, even if it's through social media. I was focusing
on Brianna sharing it with Evan. Then Sis Baker said all of her
facebook friends are members, so I told her that doesn't matter
because anyone can use an uplifting message and I'm sure that there's
some less actives that she could help out. I think she got thinking of
a bunch of people she could share the gospel with, Lori was probably
one of them!

Tuesday we had a lesson with Casper and I set him with a new baptismal
date. Now he can only come to church every other week, so I set it for
8 weeks in advance, which is crazy because Elder Stimpson won't even
be here for that, but that's how it rolls since he's gotta come to
church 4 times. I got a calendar for them and wrote what days he will
be with his mom and needs to be at church as well, then I wrote the
day he will get baptized Dec. 6th! He hung it up on the wall and
honestly this kid is so excited, but his environment prevents him from
progressing because his uncle who's against the church likes to have
them on Sundays, and it's not like a 9 year old can get himself to
church. Who knew teaching a youth could be so hard haha! The kid's
awesome though and he's super excited about sitting by us at church so
please please please pray for him and that he will be able to come to
church this week and continue to come. I need all the prayers I can
get on this one. Something cool we ran across was when we went and got
some Mcdonald's for dinner they were having family game night so there
was pretty much a bunch of old people and young mothers with their
kids playin bingo with the Mcdonalds workers, how cool is that?

Wednesday we mowed sister Bealla's forest again. It's not really the
missionary work people have in mind, but she's seriously called us
like 3 times in two days to thank us for cutting her grass and the
yard looks so great and thanks for cutting her grass and we are such
great elders and her lawn looks nice and thanks for cutting her grass.
Haha she's pretty crazy, but she's so nice and she's pretty much
called us every day this week, so we usually just listen to her talk
while we drive or eat lunch or whatever! She repeats herself a ton,
but apparently she's passed out like two Books of Mormon so hopefully
we can follow up on that with our Ward Mission leader and her and see
if those people are interested at all. We headed up to Lansford, which
is pretty far out of our way, but there's a ton of less active up
there, like my boy Dexter Sandy, but of course none of them were home
so the only person we got to see was Bro Putt, who's active and also
crazy, but you get used to that around here. Instead of driving on the
highway we took the backroads because they save miles and the trees
are starting to look real nice! Maybe by next week I'll get a good
picture of all the trees! We finally got to reteach Jenny the
Restoration. I've been here about 7 weeks and this was my first lesson
with her which is crazy because they used to teach her 2 or 3 times a
week before she was baptized.

Thursday was Elder Stimpson's first District Meeting as District
Leader so that went pretty good! We met the two new transfers in our
district. Elder Martinez's  new companion is from Finland, so that's a
whole new experience for everyone, especially Elder Martinez. The good
news is the sisters in our district are getting a long a lot better
with this new companionship than the one they had last transfer. After
District Meeting we went to the Kellars to do service and man I love
going there. They are the nicest people and I seriously feel like they
are my grandparents here! We got to clean out their chimney which was
pretty fun climbing up on their roof and we pulled a lot of weeds out
and fun stuff like that! They also fed us and Sister Kellar pretty
much only makes organic foods because they are the most health driven
old people I've ever met, but they grow most of their food themselves
so it's all really good! Sister Kellar always gives us day old donuts
from the store, and this time she gave us a digornio pizza to take
home!

Friday we had our weekly planning and it took a looong time! But it's
okay because we generally make Elder Stimpson's crock pot mac n cheese
while we plan, so that keeps us going. Later in the day Jeff the Jew
has been dying for me to bring over my ukulele ever since I told him
my mom sent it. Jeff and Mary are so intrigued by it, it's really
funny actually! Jeff brought us upstairs where he has his electronic
drums and he mic'd up my ukulele and tossed some headphones on my head
and we jammed for a few minutes! Any song I played Jeff made it sound
1000000 times cooler with his drum beat. He's a master on the drums,
and I guess Mary is a trained singer so one day we will convince her
to sing for us! Also Jeff loves Celine Dion, I think my dad will
appreciate that!

Saturday we had to drive back to Stroudsburg so Elder Stimpson could
give a missionary a blessing because there's some struggles up there!
So that took up a good chunk of the day. We had our coordination
meeting with our Ward Mission Leader and I pretty much told him it's
ridiculous that I've been here 7 weeks and he's never come out to a
lesson with me. Hardly any members have. So that kinda lit a fire
under his butt haha. For lunch I ate the pizza Sister Kellar gave us,
it was a combo pizza and Elder Stimpson doesn't like vegetables so I
got the entire thing:):):):):) it was so good that I figured it was
note worthy! We had to switch things up again with the Roselers this
week so we told them we'd come Saturday and do service. Our service
was pulling labels off of old can's so we could recycle them haha man
the things people have us do out here! They fed us and we had a really
good lesson with them!

Sunday is where this all gets good! So after church we went back to
the apartment and rearranged all of our rooms so no furniture is
against the heaters on the baseboards or whatever they are. Anyways I
finally unpacked a lot of my stuff and set up my desk so it actually
looks like I live here now, and it's cool because I used a couple cans
of spam for my bookends! Anyways we went to our elders quorum
president's house for dinner. They have six boys and they are all
about 2 years apart. 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 and a new born. The kids are
absolutely crazy, but they pretty much make up the majority of our
primary in the branch! We taught them the Plan of Salvation with
little cut outs and they were really interested and seemed to be
pretty smart too! We went and had another lesson with Jenny, which is
crazy, and we also got our Ward Mission Leader to come out with us so
that was a huge shock! We went in just expecting to reteach Jenny the
Plan of Salvation, but her friend Heather was there so she sat in and
listened and everytime Jenny would start going off topic Heather would
tell her to be quiet and listen so Heather definitely sounds
interested! Jenny's son Christian came in  before the lesson and he
calls us the Cool Dudes and he told me i'm cooler than Elder Stimpson,
so Christian is one of my new favorite kids. He's 12 so he's really
only 6 years younger than me, and he's more mature than most of the 19
year olds I've met here. He wanted to go play football with me so I
told him after the lesson I would play, and I didn't expect him to sit
in, but he did which made me pretty happy because I've been wanting to
teach him for a looooong time! Then right before we said an opening
prayer, a couple that's friends with Jenny came in. The Husband, Sean,
also came in and sat in on the lesson. Then afterwards he told us
about his family and how someone had passed and he hoped they had a
chance after this life to make things right, like yo Sean! That's what
the Plan of Salvation is all about!! So we are going to follow up with
Sean and Heather soon and see if they would be interested in learning
more, and Christian is going to start coming to young men's
activities, which is cool because there's currently only one young
men, so because of our efforts we will have literally doubled the
young mens program in the branch haha! After the lesson I went out and
threw the football with Christian for a bit, but it was way dark so it
wasn't too successful, but him and his sister Ataya were having a lot
of fun!

So there ya have it. We have Christian, Casper hopefully Heather and
Sean as well. Then there's Hailey, who I may have talked about before.
She's the niece of a member and she's been coming to church for weeks.
I think this will be the week we get a lesson with her. This is an
investigator where we could seriously set her with a baptismal date of
Saturday and she'd be ready. Then we got a strange referral for a guy
named John, who was already set with a baptism date. Odd right? From
what we can tell he moved from Oregon, but there's not too much info
on him, but enough for it to be legit. He lives in an apartment
complex, but there's no apartment number on his teaching record so we
are just waiting for him to answer his phone when we call. Then we
have another referral named Elizabeth who we should be seeing next
week or so. Then Jenny's daughter Taylor should be coming home today
from whatever legal problem she had and from what we've been told
she's interested in meeting with us again. Along with our less actives
there's a lot of work to do, it's just coming along slow. Slowly but
surely.

Our p-day today got shortened until 2:00 because tomorrow the entire
mission is headed up to the Aaronic Priesthood Restoration site in
Northern PA, so I'm pretty excited about that! But if anyone writes me
today and I run out of time I promise I'll write back next week!
There's not to many cool things to take pictures with here so I throw
in a nice picture of me and my comrade after a good day of service and
this sick bible cd a member found at goodwill! We have a pretty
exciting week coming up which I'm stoked about! From what I hear
everything's going great back home, so keep up the good work! Have a
great week everyone!

1 Transfer Down...

October 12, 2015

And many more to go! I don't even know how many transfers are in a
mission, but anyways I made it through 1! I bet back home it doesn't
even feel like I've been gone that long! I know I feel like I just
started this journey! Anyways, it was another busy week in PA, so
buckle up and get ready for a good read!

Last Monday we switched things up and hungout with Bro Roseler. I mean
he's a stay at home dad in farm country, and his wife drives their car
to work so I think he enjoyed having us out there. He's just renting
the house and land, so the barn is empty, but it is HUGE! So he let us
in it and showed us around. The thing is massive, and way old and
there's bat poop all over in one corner, but it's like 3 stories tall.
It made me think of all those parties Tyson's family does in their
barn! If this one was fixed up, man it would be a hangout let me tell
ya! Elder Stimpson liked it because there was old tractors in there,
he gets all worked up over farm equipment and trucks hahaha. After a
good fun day with Bro Roseler we went to FHE with the Bakers and
Ulhmans, as usual, nothin too  fun to report there!

On Tuesday we had a referral from Church HQ up in this town called Jim
Thorpe. We never go up there, because it's a distance, but we figured
we might as well do it, so we drove all the way up there, and this
referral was actually outside and she was very very nice. We gave her
a Book of Mormon and she invited us back in a couple weeks when she
knows her husband has the day off of work, so we are pretty stoked
about that! We met up with our zone leaders for Exchanges so I went
down to Nazareth for the rest of the day. We made some stop by's and
knocked on a door, no progress, but it was interesting to see how
Elder Clark did missionary work! We ate dinner with a member family,
who recently moved to the area about a year ago. A family! A whole
family, wife, husband, three kids, every wards dream move in right? So
I asked where they moved from, they told me Lehighton, and I told them
that's my area so we chatted about members and the missionary work and
such! Of course they move out of my branch, them alone would have
probably double the size of our youth. Anyways they were way awesome
and it was my second dinner of the week so I was way stoked about
that! Then we went and visited this older lady who was baptized a year
ago. Pretty much she is huge into political campaigning. Like she's
met Pres. Bush and all those people from that political era, it's
nuts! She's one of the best campaign managers around. She started
being a campaign manager for this guy, who turned out to be a mormon
(the ward mission leader in Nazareth) and she was converted! Now she's
a professional cook, so that's dope, and she has this insanely strong
testimony about the Book of Mormon, because during the time she was
reading it she went down to the Mayan ruins because she loves ancient
history and was like whoa and made all those connections down there.
Then before we left she started talking about cars and she knows a
ton! She's like the coolest old lady ever and I'm sad she's not in my
area!

Wednesday I had a good study sesh with Elder Clark, he committed me to
really focus on breaking down the restoration and making it simple. He
has two guitars so we played guitar a bit and I showed him what I know
and then he told me I could take one of his guitars so that's probably
the coolest thing that happened to me all week! I missed playin the
guitar, and I have my ukulele too so I'm just waiting for a companion
who can play one or the other and we will start a missionary duet or
something like that! After exchanges me and Elder Stimpson went to
help Jenny put together her kids bunk beds, but when Elder Stimpson
was helping her move a week ago while I was on exchanges he lost some
of the pieces so we ran to Lowes to get some new pieces. On the way
back we stopped by Bro Kennedys house to see how he was doin, we
hadn't seen him in a few weeks. Then he was like "well hey if you
wanna stay a little longer I'll feed you dinner". I don't know why I
would ever say no to that, so he fed us pancakes which was my 3rd meal
this week! Then we went back to Jennys to finish putting her bunk bed
together, afterwards we took the tools back to Tom's then headed home!

Thursday we had Zone Training, which was very good this time. We
practiced sharing the Book of Mormon with each other using first the
intro, second using 1st Nephi, then last using any scripture! I loved
it, it was actually fun to try to personally attach someone to the
book of mormon! So while I've been on my mission I've had this idea of
always remembering the missionary purpose, because it's important, but
everyone's different and we all have our own purpose as a missionary.
I know that's what's kept me happy out here and enjoying my mission is
my own purpose. I just want to help people, whether it's doing service
or just being a christlike example ya know? And honestly I've been
questioning these past couple weeks if my mindset is right, but at
this training they asked "Raise your hand if you came out on your
mission to baptize people" no one raised their hands. Then they had us
give reasons why we came on a mission, and someone also pointed out
that the reason we came out and why we stay are two different reasons.
After talking about that, they told us although the missionary purpose
is great, they told us we need to have our own purpose ourselves and
committed us to go pray about it and figure it out, and I was like hey
I've been doing that all along, and I guess you could say my prayers
were answered about me doing the right thing! So it was a very solid
training. Afterwards we got to do exchanges, this time I got to stay
in my own area and be in charge for the first time, and Elder
Underwood, whose a new missionary too, came with me! It was also my
first time driving since I left home so that was awesome, but I showed
him around our area and how cool the Walmart is here, because I needed
to get supplies for an object lesson. Then we met up with Bro Kennedy
to go teach Casper. Now that's kinda what we are dealing with in this
area, we have a hard time getting active members to come out with us,
but less active members are cool with it. How does that make sense?
Anyways we had a great lesson with Casper on the Holy Ghost! The kids
so smart haha he's my little buddy. After our lesson Bro Kennedy asked
us if we would go with him to pick up some food from one lady in the
branch, and take it to another lady whose mom just passed away. So we
rode with him from one end of Lehighton to the other and talked with
him for a while. We got back to his house and we were planning on
heading home for dinner, when he asked what our plans were, so we told
him and he told us we could stay for dinner. Like I said before, why
would I ever say no? So we stayed and had a fourth meal that week
(second in a row from him) and he was pretty much telling me and Elder
Underwood about his past and stuff. Our next appointment texted us and
canceled, which was great because we were having a great conversation
with Bro Kennedy. I guess he almost died in a motorcycle accident.
Like half his face pretty much fell off and the hospital thought he
was dead. So he told us he remembers having this very real dream of
some sort while he was dead, being in this sort of dark cellar, with
few people around, and a light at the end of it. So he went to it and
it was a portal, on the other side was pretty much just a park, people
playing around and stuff. So he went to go through, and a lady stopped
him and said he wasn't supposed to be there yet, and he kept trying
but she wouldn't let him through and finally she used forced to push
him back and he woke up in the hospital with a huge needle sewing his
face back together, and lets just say the doctors and nurses were not
expecting him to come back screaming! So we talked a little about the
spirit world, and Elder Underwood told him to read Alma 40 sometime on
his own and think about it! On our way out, the Kennedys daughter,
Carrie came home and she had a flare up of a sickness she had, so she
was headed to the hospital and we were able to give her a blessing.
Things worked out that day! Then I took Elder Underwood to Jeff's to
finish off the night because it would be the last time he'd ever get
to talk to him and they had a great conversation about scripture in
the Old Testament, so pretty much everything I don't know about!

Friday morning we exchanged back, and it was a kinda a bummer because
that was the last time we'd see Elder Underwood. He got his visa, so
he's on his way to Lyon France right now, which is kinda funny because
Caleb Grayston is on his way to Paris France today too! Anyways it was
awesome having Elder Underwood here for this transfer and being in my
district! When we were in the Salt Lake airport me and him stuck
together and got mcds breakfast even though we didn't really know each
other and then somehow we got put in the same district! Pretty cool if
you ask me! Anyways he's a good kid, he's gonna do great things in
France! So me and Elder Stimpson got our weekly planning all done
later in the day and planned on going to the Roselers to do service,
so we show up and it's pouring rain. It's a far drive and there's no
where around to really go do any missionary work, especially in that
kind of rain, so we just visited with them until dinner was ready and
shared a message with him. There wasn't much we could really do, it
was like we were stranded on the funnest island in the world!

Saturday we had our regular coordination meeting with our ward mission
leader. Afterwards we ate lunch and waited around for Charles to come
pick us up so for a lesson and then we were going to teach him. He
never showed up so we texted him and he told us he woke up sick so he
wasn't coming. COOL. So we called Jenny to see if we could come teach
her and we'd get someone else to come along, but her daughter answered
the phone because she was sick and asleep. EVEN COOLER. So by the time
we got it figured out that our plans didn't work out as usual, our
mail came. Elder Stimpson has been pestering his bishops wife to send
him a pie, and lo and behold the package was from her! We ripped it
open and there was a bag of candy and a pie covered by a pie tin. He
picked it up and it looked like dirt fell out of it, I was so
confused, but Elder Stimpson was just like NO NO NO NO! We opened up
the pie tins and there laid not a Strawberry rhubarb pie like we
hoped, but a large pile of cow poop. We headed over to Tom's to cut
his grass, and then they fed us Pirogies, which are my new favorite
thing! If you don't know what they are, they are like little pockets
of heaven filled with mashed potatoes and cheese and all other sorts
of things depending on what you get! Then Tom deep fried them! Whitney
would love them, as I'm sure any other sane person would! That's all I
want to ever eat and think about now!

Sunday after church we switched things up and went to the Brewers for
dinner. Bro Brewer is in our branch presidency, but he lives out of
our area, down in Nazareth. Nazareth is nice! I almost felt like I was
back in a nice Utah neighborhood. They fed us and we got to know them
a lot better and they are so cool! I wish they didn't live so far.
Then I got to share with them my new favorite object lesson and pretty
much it's mesmerized ever person I've taught it to!

So that's our week, it was a little hard to get things set because of
the two exchanges, but I still felt like it was good! Now we are into
the second transfer here, and I feel like things are starting to roll
along. Elder Stimpson is now our District Leader, so that's pretty
cool I guess. Hopefully this week we will be able to teach some people
we have in mind. Especially the ones who like Elder Stimpson because
he most likely only has a transfer left and they want to get him in as
much as they can! So this week, for those of you heading out on
missions, think real hard about what your purpose as a missionary is
and what you want to accomplish while you serve! I'm going to keep
putting thought into it myself. After a full transfer out here, I can
tell you all I love it. How cool is it that I get to live on my own,
not worry about anything other than the people and just have all the
time in the world to help those people out? It's great! I love it.
Honestly the biggest struggle so far is that I'm probably going to
have to start shaving twice a day, I can't keep my face smooth
anymore:( How come all through high school I just wanted a nice beard
and stache, and now that I can't grow one my facial hair is
flourishing! It's tough let me tell ya. You're all in my prayers and I
hope you all have a great week wherever you may be!!!

Elder Dylan Smith