Here's My Weekly Newsletter Folks!

March 21, 2016

Hello gang! Hope you all had a great St. Patrick's day! I didn't even
know it was a holiday until like 4:30 that day, and I wasn't wearing
green either:( but anyways it's been another week so it looks like
I'll have another email for you all to read!

Monday was quite nice because we forgot to go shopping! Keep that in
mind! We taught Emin and went across the street to check on Joshua. We
talked to him about the stop smoking program we do and he's way stoked
to do it, and then we just asked his wife Ashley if she wants to quit
too and she said she was game to try it! So we celebrated with Tony's
wings afterwards!

Tuesday continues the Walcott adventures... Fred was in the hospital
last week so we were asked to go check up on him. They were pretty
much just chilling in their house because they never go anywhere. Well
Diane lost her keys and her phone! Luckily her phone was right in
front of her, but she failed to look down to find it so she was stoked
when I made the discovery! Fred needed some antibiotics, so out of
nowhere some guy picked up Diane and said "I'll be back in a minute!"
And we were stuck to sit there and "babysit" Fred. Now babysitting
Fred wasn't all too bad because he is like 70 years old and has many
loose bolts in his head. So we just asked him a billion questions
about things and listen to his outrageous answers! She had to have
been gone a good 45 minutes... At least! We were supposed to teach
Joshua and Ashley the stop smoking program but they had company all
day so she was ko'ed when we got there, so we just taught Joshua the
10 Commandments out of the Book of Mormon. Everything always just
makes sense to him. Oh and he also got a job with Geraldo so he's
bringing in cash and tired all the time now... Just like Geraldo haha!

Wednesday we finally got to teach Daniel again. He's so prepared for
Baptism, except he works every Sunday :( We had been focusing on
sharing the Easter video this week. So we ended up in a Christian
Recovery home and shared the video. A few LA's and this homie named
Marvin on the street. Marvin was odd, and super quiet. We showed him
the video and I can't tell if he enjoyed it or not because he showed
no emotion except for the shame on his face when I asked him what his
fluffy white dogs name was and he said "Snowball..." Alright Marvin
you have a nice day! I figured the Green's would enjoy that I met an
odd man named Marvin! We visited Jennifer and Geraldo that night and
they are doing great! Seems to me like they are already trying to get
a bunch of people for us to teach!

Thursday we had a pretty good district meeting but I can't remember
what it was on, then we taught Phoenix which went really well! We
taught Maurice and were really bold with what the next step for him is
and he was very receptive to it. Visited with Sis Benfield for the
last time because she hits her year mark this week, and visited with
Sis Patton and we had this whole long discussion on what prejudice
actually means because she thinks she is prejudice... But she not sure
why? We went to see the MacDonald's and Gavin is still sick and tired
and he wouldn't come down, but we still had a great lesson with the
rest of the family.

Now Friday was rough because everything we had cancelled... Even
President cancelled out training. It was nuts haha

Saturday also was rough because it was a straight day of finding and
it wasn't successful at all. Luckily we got to start the day helping
out with special olympics which was quite fun! We had dinner with the
Delahunty's that night which was probably the highlight! I wore my
glasses that day and the Delahunty's thought I was a different
missionary.

Sunday was nice, I wore my glasses again to see if anyone wouldn't
recognize me again! We confirmed Jennifer and Geraldo so they are
officially members now! We stopped by Corbin and his last week was
pretty busy and stressful so we chatted with him a bit and he thinks
we are the dopest haha. After dinner with the Chatfields we swung by
Joshua's to check up on him. His friend Lee was there so we talked to
him and he seems interested so we hopefully can work with him. While
we were there Jennifer and Geraldo's kids knocked on Joshua's door
held up a Book of Mormon and said "do you want to come to the church
to study this with us?" Great work kids!

So as I was studying this week I came across two scriptures 1 Nephi
1:7 and Alma 18:42. The first is about Lehi and the second about King
Lamoni. Now each of these two men felt the spirit so strongly that
they fell asleep. Whether they cast themselves on their bed or just
fell to the ground. So I think that's why I am always tired on my
mission because I feel the spirit so strongly! Or I just have an iron
deficiency.

Anyways it's been a good week, it was kinda hard at moments, but you
can't expect everything in life to be easy or fun or comfortable. I've
been thinking about writing handwritten letters, so I'll probably try
to start doing that more often, ideally it would be sweet if people
wrote me to get me their addresses, but I know that's quite a stretch
so I'm just going to get incredibly good at finding addresses on
google maps! I hope you all have a great Easter week and celebrate the
resurrection this Sunday. It's a comfort knowing that there's more to
the plan than just this earth life. I love you all!

Here's a picture of the Zone with Pres. and Sister Anderson and our names!!!

Whadda Week!!

March 14, 2016

The Lord had blessed us with a pretty swell week and I'm pretty stoked
to tell you all about it so buckle up!

Monday, after p-day, we got to have dinner with the Herway family.
Anytime they say "let's have a prayer" their 2 year old daughter
immediately starts praying every time haha it was adorable. We taught
Emin although he seemed more interested in a jar of mayonnaise bigger
than his head... We walked across the street to see how Joshua and
Ashley were doing and talked to Joshua about his Book of Mormon
reading and said he didn't keep reading on because he didn't want to
get "messed up". We weren't sure what he meant by that...

Tuesday was very warm so we put on some short sleeve shirts and went
out looking like true missionaries! We did some finding and a lady
recognized us as elders so she had us carry her bags into her home
haha. We taught Maurice although I'm not sure what about, but we
headed up to Joshua's after to teach the word of wisdom and even
though he is not living any of the word of wisdom, he was pretty
understanding of all of it! Regarding coffee he said "yeah that one
totally makes sense because it makes your teeth yellow" like sure
that's good enough!

Wednesday we started with district meeting and did exchanges after, so
I got to have good ole Elder Martinez with me in Morrisville! We did a
little tracting and got yelled at a lot, which reminded me as to why I
haven't tracted extensively in a long time. We did get in contact with
a part member family and a potential investigator who has 10 kids so
we hope to work with them soon! We had dinner with the Harts and they
made a big ole seafood plate that was sooo good! Elder Martinez did
Jennifer's baptismal interview, so me and Bro Massimini stood outside
and talked to Joshua and Geraldo and all their kids! She passed the
interview and Elder Martinez said she was one of the most prepared
investigators he's seen. 🏻 Corbin wanted us over to have a
barbecue, but when the neighborhood found out they all showed up and
he ended up throwing a large scale cookout, he wasn't too happy about
all the freeloaders. But we got to go inside and teach him, which was
fun because me and Elder Martinez teach really well together. We
taught the restoration which can be such a powerful lesson and invited
him to be baptized on April 16th and he's way stoked about it!

Thursday was Zone Conference so I got to drive into New Jersey and
it's a pretty nice place! Zone Conference was great. President
Anderson talked to us about being smart with our finding and using
members and not just going out and tracting because that's too easy
and yields less success. Our Assistants gave a great talk on the
sacrament. We teach all of our investigators about the sacrament, but
as missionaries we worry too much about others and we need to slow
down and focus on ourselves during the sacrament each week. After Zone
Conference, Sis Patton signed up to feed us and since she's single we
brought Bro Massimini. We were all pretty worried about what she'd
feed us, but she cooked a full thanksgiving dinner that wasn't too
bad! Of course the dinner came along with some crazy conversation.
Some crazy Indian lady stopped us before we went into our apartment
and talked to us for couponing for like 20 minutes so I'm pretty much
an expert on it now.

Friday morning we started setting up the church for Jennifer and
Geraldo's wedding. A lot of work was put into that! We taught Phoenix
about the Book of Mormon and he thinks the Book of Mormon is great now
haha he's progressing quite well. We had a lesson with Maurice and he
just told us about Mosiah 4 for an hour, but we were outside so it was
nice. With Sister Benfield we taught about the Book of Mormon
answering "questions of the soul" then headed to teach Nyema. Holy cow
I still can't understand him and he has some crazy good questions. He
analyzes these scriptures and pulls out things that I'd never see. We
had dinner with the Pray's that night though and they are still my
favorite people just incase if anyone's wondering.

Saturday was the big wedding so we headed over to set up for it and it
looked great! There was a lot of member support and a bunch of non
members came and got exposed to the church! Even Joshua and Ashley
came and he was stoked to finally be at the church. We left early so
go teach some lessons, some of which cancelled, but we made the best
of it and stopped by Bill. We went back to clean up the chapel then
down to Corbin's. His family was sick so we just chatted with him
outside, but he said ever since he's been meeting with us he could put
a smile on his face!

Sunday was great although I blame daylight savings for me being tired
and none of our investigators showing up. We were in and out of
classes because we had to fill up the baptismal font. I don't know why
but I've never seen a baptismal font that actually fills up correctly?
It's always a struggle with the drain or the water not staying warm.
Anyways after church we got to have the baptism for Jennifer and
Geraldo! All this work and they finally made it to baptism! I remember
coming to this area, seeing them in the area book and Elder Johnson
saying "they can't really progress because they aren't married", but
we did it! Obviously the spirit touched them and told them buying a
house can wait, right now what was important was baptism which
required them to get married first! After church we visited Bro
Benkert and watched him paint, he was so excited when we told him we
had a baptism haha he makes us feel like missionaries are superheroes.
We had a pre dinner with the Hludinski's. Their kids found our
instagrams and were having fun with that! We drove out to the Topham's
for dinner so I was pretty stuffed! Afterwards we were supposed to
have a lesson with Joshua, but Ashley didn't know where he went so we
showed her the new Easter video "Hallelujah"

Which brings me to this, all of you should go out and watch the new
Easter videos the church put out and go share them on Facebook or
whatever you use because they are fantastic. It's such a good reminder
that because of our Savior, this life isn't the end. We can live
forever with our families, which is so important to me because being
out here for a little over 6 months made me realize how important they
are to me and how much I miss them. I think you can access the videos
through Mormon.org and they are worth your time! Things are going well
here, we now just have to get our investigators to church and confirm
Jennifer and Geraldo next Sunday! I love you all and miss you a bunch.

1) Short Sleeves!!!
2) Elder Martinez made me take this picture I swear...
3) The Zone at Zone Conference!
4) Jennifer and Geraldo's baptism!

What a Sick Week!

March 7, 2016

Hello everyone who reads this newsletter!!! I hope all is well and
your not getting sick like I am!!! It's been a "sick" week, but you
still gotta get work done even if your a missionary!!!

Monday started out pretty nuts, remember how my investigator Joshua
was homeless?? Well we finally got a text from him and met him outside
a pizza place. He'd been walking around for 2 days straight so we
hooked him up with a slice of pizza while he told us all his problems
going on with his wife. He said we were his only friends who actually
had his back, poor Joshua;( we made sure he had a place to go and a
full belly and we sent him off and told him to check in every few
hours!!! The rest of the day was the usual emailing and whatnot, then
we had dinner with the Bartholomews and taught Emin.

Tuesday started the sicknesses. Me and Elder Johnson joke because
we've been comps for like 2 months and he's pretty much been sick in
some sort of way the entire time. I got to watch a ton of Mormon
messages though!! We went and taught Carla and she's doing well. We
just read the Book of Mormon with her and encouraged her to keep
reading. She likes to take and read it at dialysis. We had a chance to
teach Maurice and the guy hasn't been to church in weeks, he told us
things kept going wrong with his and his families health and all this
stuff and it just wasn't a good time. We told him that there will
never be a "perfect time" to go to church, we always have struggles.
The Lord will provide and take care of his family while he's gone for
3 hours. We had dinner with the Pray's which is something we always
look forward to! They made Cap'n Crunch French toast!!!

Wednesday was another day of sickness and unsuccessful finding. That
night we did have dinner with Jennifer and Geraldo and talked to
Geraldo about temples and what not! They are the best haha and they
just love talking to us! We left and went right across the street to
Joshua's for a lesson. We read from the Book of Mormon, and it's just
so cool how much he loves it! Oh and he worked out things with his
wife and he's back home so no worries about Joshua!!

Thursday we had zone training, so that took up a good chunk of the
morning. Afterwards we went to Jennifer's to get some stuff lined up
for the baptism. When we pulled up Joshua leaned his head out the
window and said "Yo Chapter 5 was dope!! I'm just gonna go ahead and
read chapter 6!!!" Haha he's the best, especially because Chapter 5
isn't that dope compared to Chapter 4 when Nephi cuts off Laman's head
but hey the spirit is working strong there!! We visited with Bill and
before we left we got a text from Corbin, who just lives down the
street, to stop by before we leave. We walked in and he said "Hey I'm
getting married tomorrow at 2 and I want you guys to be here!!" So
that was sweet!! We had a lesson with Sister Benfield, and another
outrageous one with Sis Patton! She said something crazy about
Catholics praying to Mother Theresa for blowing up??? We don't really
understand... But we visited the MacDonald's and Gavin has mono so he
was asleep when we got there:( poor little fella

Friday we went and visited one of the sisters recent converts Paul.
He's an older guy but he runs every day so he's in way good shape!! He
loves art and it's all over his house!!! We talked to him about
temples and temple sealings. He's solid, but he's still super Catholic
hahaha. We went to Corbin's wedding. It was just in his living room
and it was way short, but good!!! We walked out and Corbin said "I
decided I want to stay with your church." So we are like sweet we've
hardly taught you anything?? And he said him and his wife want to do a
bigger wedding in a few years and he wants to do it in the church.
Little does he know that we usually do not marry in the church, so we
gotta teach him about temples ASAP!! After that and a visit with Bro
Benkert, we taught our new investigator Phoenix and surprisingly he's
pretty solid? He loved the restoration and recognized after Jesus
Christ we were in an apostasy! We gave him a Book of Mormon too and
he's so stoked!! We decided we are going to take it real slow, get him
a huge testimony of the Book of Mormon, and have him love the church
then we will drop the law of chastity on him!! We had dinner with the
Delahunty's that night and they are so odd haha but it's the best!! We
finished Friday with a lesson with Christine. She took her driving
test a week ago, but she failed because she turned right when they
said left;)

Saturday was rough haha we taught Maurice and it went well, and every
single thing we planned to do that day cancelled except dinner. We
tried everyone, even our backups backups backups and there was no
success. So we tried finding on the streets, the mall, and nothing.
The highlight of the day was we got Chick-Fil-a with the Chatfields!!

Sunday was pretty average, I mean it was good meetings but none of our
investigators came. We suspect they were out partying the night
before... Geraldo passed his baptismal interview though so he is on
track to be baptized on the 13th!! This Sunday!! That took a good
chunk of our day, so we went to the Chatfields for dinner haha they
are the best and we went to see Orin. Well Orin decided to cook for us
so we got back to back dinners it was rough!! Orin's friend Michelle
was there again and it was funny because they started going off on how
annoying JW's are, then Michelle started telling us how much she
respected Mormons so we gave her a Book of Mormon and headed on our
way to Book of Mormon study.

Well that's pretty much our week! Our investigators are doing well and
we are both getting sick, each day it got worse but I didn't care to
capitalize on that lol, but it's okay we will be fine in a few days!!
Hope you all have a great week everyone!!

1) Christmas in March!!!
2) I think it's a groundhog

Gerald Ford didn't do anything for me

February 29, 2016

Hello everyone! As you can tell it's been another week since it's
Monday again and yes my week was full of missionary work so it looks
like it's time for me to write it all down again!!

Monday was pretty much full of nothing because we don't have the miles
or money to go do anything fun so we just relax while our laundry gets
washed at Bro Massimini's. Usually we just email but I hit the 6 month
wall where you start to get forgotten about so we are trying to think
of ways to make pday more fun. We had dinner with Jennifer and Geraldo
and their family, they are so awesome!! I'm lucky I get to teach them.
We went to Corbin's but his family wasn't there so we decided to put
off the basic lessons and we gave him a Book of Mormon and chatted
with him.

Tuesday started with a good lesson with Carla. She's progressing
really well, but each time she gets set with a baptismal date she gets
sick so we are going to teach her consistently before we set her with
another date. We had some good ole cancelations and it was a downpour
so we decided to go walk around to find some people and stuff. We did
go to this guy named Matt who said we could come back next week so
that's cool!! The sister's recent convert Mardi wanted us to come over
to teach her son, Stephen. Well let me tell ya, Stephen did not know
we were coming and he wasn't too happy. He's got some anger problems,
so he ran upstairs and started cussing and slamming doors hahaha, but
to make it worse he calmed down and came down and Mardi started
calling him a 2 year old which made him mad and he ran back upstairs.
The whole situation made me kinda mad. You don't force the gospel on
anyone. Anyways she's a little nuts and she made us stay to listen to
her problems so we were way late to our dinner appointment. The good
news is we had dinner with the Asay's and they are the happiest people
ever so it made it all better!!!

Wednesday we taught Joshua and set him with a baptismal date! We are
stupid and set it for April 2nd so we realized after we'd have to
change it, but he was super stoked!!! He's the best. We visited Bill,
and he told us all about his new girlfriend, who turns out to be his
new doctor! He talked about marriage and her kids and then we asked
when he'd be seeing her next and he said "two weeks when I go for my
appointment!" Oh Bill!!! We taught Maurice, and he hasn't been at
church for forever so we are putting a big focus on the sabbath day,
and sacrament. We decided we will keep teaching it until he shows up
to church. Sometime during the day Sis Patton called us and she always
calls us about the strangest things and I love it!! This time she said
"ya know what I want to tell ya? I've been thinking about this for a
while, Gerald Ford never did anything for me!" She went off on it for
a solid 20 minutes, so I agreed with her and said he never did
anything for me either, probably because I wasn't alive yet, but all
in all Gerald Ford didn't do anything for me or Sis Patton!!! We
visited we Geraldo to follow up on the quit smoking program. The
program claims if you follow it to a point for 7 days you will quit.
Well Geraldo followed it for 2 days and then just decided he was done
smoking and hasn't smoked since hahaha he's a boss! He asked me to
baptize him too!!

Thursday Elder Johnson was feeling really sick with some sort of
Migraine and he didn't have anything prepared for district meeting so
we did a co-district training on the Book of Mormon. After District
meeting we were walking around our apartment complex and a guy says
"hey can I ask you a question?" Well you just did so sure man. He
asked us if we lived around here and stuff and we introduced
ourselves. He got super confused why both our first names were Elder.
So we explained that Elder was a title and he was like "no way I used
to see things like monks and elders on tv! I didn't know they were
real!" So I think he thinks we are some sort of Shaolin monk or
something. His name is Phoenix by the way. He said we should hangout
sometime and Elder Johnson was like well here's our business card
thinking he'd call us in the future when Elder Johnson was gone, but
no he called us no less than 5 minutes later to set up an appointment
that night!! We taught Jennifer about Temples and she had a ton of
questions, but she so excited to go. We visited with Sister Benfield,
then Sister Patton! Our last appointment cancelled so we could fit
Phoenix in. He lives in our apartment complex. So we walked over and
knocked on his door. We heard a little running around and then all the
sudden music started blaring!! We went on in and he had all this
incense burning and whatnot. We ended up teaching him the plan of
salvation while he was vaping and he loved it and thought it was
awesome! The only thing is he told us he's bisexual so we've got a few
tough lessons ahead of us haha. We rewarded ourselves with some
chicken wings from Tony's afterwards haha

Friday was less eventful, we visited Bro Benkert and watched him
paint. He's actually a pretty well known painter and no one knows how
to paint like he does, which he thinks is ridiculous because his
method is not hard at all!! We had a nice Book of Mormon study with
Nyema which talked all about repentance and baptism, but we can't get
him to understand that baptism needs to have the right authority. We
snagged some food at Wawa after, and for all of you who don't know
what Wawa is, it's pretty much a very nice gas station that sells
awesome sandwiches! The best part is you order it from a touch screen
so you can make it how you want it! Anyways we went to teach Corbin,
but his family wasn't there again. He said forgiveness is really hard
for him, so we told him to read 1 Nephi 7 when we leave, when Lamen
and Lemuel tie up Nephi on the boat. He also asked if we believe God
answers our prayers and we both bore testimony that he does. Corbin's
the best haha we invited him to church, he said he'd think about it
and right after we left he called us and said he'd go!

Saturday started off with a short notice baptismal interview down in
Pennypack, another lesson with Maurice about the sacrament and he said
he really wanted to be at church. One of our investigators Orin had us
over for dinner around 3:30, but the food wasn't even ready until
4:30ish. It's funny because Orin's parents were members and he loves
the ward and the people so he makes threats all the time about
becoming a Mormon. And he also thinks me and Elder Johnson are the
coolest people alive hahaha. We went straight from there to another
dinner appointment with a member. She was running late too so we got
there around the same time and she picked up pizza and I was stuffed
by the end of the night!!

Sunday was just great!! Corbin and Carla both came to church, along
with Jennifer and Geraldo, but they come every week hahaha. I never
realized how much I know about this church until I listened to the
sacrament talks with Corbin in mind. We haven't even taught the
restoration and the speakers in sacrament mentioned the temple
multiple times. He had a few questions for us haha. We walked into
gospel principles and the subject for the week was "Sacrifice" and I
just prayed Corbin didn't think we literally did sacrifice hahaha
Luckily Bro Massimini always teaches well, and Corbin had some great
input. Priesthood was great and Corbin said he loved it. So many
people talked to him and he was asked if he had a family, he said he
did and they would be coming with him next week!!! Man it was awesome.
Later that night we ate dinner with the Dyott's and we took a plate
over to their neighbor whose wife recently passed away and he told us
we could come back this week to visit him!! At Book of Mormon study we
got to finish the good ole blue book. Moroni 9 is a huge bummer, but
each time I read Moroni 10 I just feel like my life is on track ya
know???

Overall a good week!! It's been a blast and things are goin here. The
only bad news is Joshua texted us and said him and his wife separated
and she told him to leave so he doesn't know when he will be back:(
keep him and his wife in your prayers!!! Sorry I don't have pictures
this week, but it is what it is ya know! Hope you all have a great
week!!!

Elder Dylan Smith