Final Thoughts

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit-
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,

As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a fellow turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out.
Don't give up though the pace seems slow -
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than

It seems to a faint and faltering man;
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor's cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out -

The silver tint in the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It might be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit -
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

Ralph Acosta

Monday, April 22, 2013

How's everything going? I told dad last night that this email would not be long and to not expect a whole lot. I don't really know what to say. My emotions are great at this time and it's hard to put what I feel into words. I know this will be one of the hardest weeks of my life. Mixed emotions will probably consume me. But I'll write it all down and one day we can read it together. I am grateful for the opportunity that the Lord has given me down here. I haven't been the perfect missionary. But I have worked hard for Him. I've done it all for Him. To help Him fulfil his purpose. I know the mission doesn't end here. This is only the beginning. The real mission begins after. When all the rule books are put away and all the unique time that is given to us is gone to study the scriptures. I have really never felt this close to the Lord before. I don't remember what it is like to not be close to Him. That could be because I don't want to remember the way it feels to not have a close relationship. I know He loves us more than anything. I'm anxious to give my homecoming talk and express these feelings in words so you can all feel them instead of read them. It's going to be emotional. I can't believe it's all coming to an end. I love the mission. I really do. I have never been one of those missionaries that has dreaded the end, but not that it's here... It's sad to expect the fact that it will end one day. But bring on the next challenge. One day at a time, diligence in all we do and "never being lazy or slothful".

 

Last week, I had the chance to baptize another person! Her name is Karin Yulisa. She is a really cool girl. She had several sets of missionaries work with her. Even to the point when we told people she was getting baptized they didn't believe us. They all know her and it seems as if her time just came! It was cool to be able to be apart of that. I feel like I knew her before, she could be one of those I knew before this life and she was just stubborn and waiting for me to come along. Haha. I'm glad I didn't miss the chance. This next week that is coming we are hoping to finish with 4 more baptisms and another family. That would give me 8 and 3 baptisms this month to finish the mission. That'd be a good way to go out. I hope it can happen! Pray for me to have strength to keep on truckin'! I'll see you guys in less than a week. Take care. Be safe. Don't do anythign I wouldn't do. You are all beautiful people.

Love you!

P.S. I just read this email. I'm retarded. Get me into an english class ASAP.

Monday, April 15, 2013

que harían si escribiera este correo en solamente español? Me imagino que harían trampa y usar google translator para poder traducir el correo. Está bien :)

I'm going to be honest... I like to speak in spanish. I feel like I've gotten pretty good at it. You guys will have to be the judges of that when you come down here. I can't believe you'll be here in like 2 weeks. What the eff... I don't even know what to do with myself. I am beside myself right now trying to control the emotions. I'll be honest. It's super weird. I commented to Eric and Jason that it feel like I've only been gone for a couple of months on like a scout camp trip. And now I'm going to come home. I feel like I'll do the same things I did when I used to get home from those trips. Run to the shower and take a long warm shower haha. But I'm excited. There are a couple things I would like to do before I get released. We'll see if I have time to do them or not. I'm excited about everything, though. I'm not like the other missionaries that get super depressed when their time comes to an end. I'm sad that it's ending but ready for the next set of challenges in life. We'll see if I'm still ready for them when they are occuring haha. But trust in the Lord and all will be well. I feel that is the key. It's so easy to forget that because there are soooo many distractions that help us to forget the Lord. Satan is very good at what he does. He has a long time of working against us and now he has even more firepower. How hard was it in the time of Moses to tempt the people? I imagine a little harder with less temptations. But for that reason the Lord says, "many are called, few are chosen". We just have to be the chosen ones!

This last week was a little bit of a struggle. I worked hard because there were a lot of interviews to get done and a lot of work to do. I was thankful for that. I mostly just spent the week with Elder Pereyra. He's a friend I've found out here in San Felipe. San Felipe is one city but there are 8 missionaries here in the 2 wards. He is in the other ward but lives like 10 minutes from my house. He's a cool kid. We went around putting baptismal fechas and doing interviews. We were able to baptize 2 famalies in my area this last week! We did it!!!! I was super excited about it. On Thursday we had a wedding and on Saturday we had the baptisms. I have pictures but I don't have an adaptor to send them so you'll just have to wait to see them. It was really cool. I worked hard to set up the baptismal service so it was a good one too. The only problem was that I didn't plan for the 3000 little girls that were crying and everything. But it was still a good service. This week we should have 2 more baptisms. I'm still working out here. I don't want to be a missionary that just stops doing everything because he knows his time is ending. I will probably get a little lazier with time but I"m going to try to not do it! Haha, it's not in my plans to do it.

But... there is still a lot to do to get organized for your trip down here. I need to call you guys again and nail out the details. Or do you trust me to get it all taken care of? I'll take care of you guys. Don't worry.

Oh... last night the sister missionaries that live here in San Felipe called us at 12:30 and said.... Elder Smith there is a scorpian in our house come over and kill it!! I was super tired and so I was like... um... I'll do it tomorrow. Then they get all hystericle so we went over there and found it. It was a pretty big though! First I trapped it with the end of a broom so it couldn't move and then I released it a little bit so my comp could get a good look at it and he nailed it with a shoe. It was pretty intense the whole process. Then we had to look through the house for another one. We ended up getting home at 1:35ish. It was pretty intense haha. But I had never seen a scorpion before but that's what they look like. Cool eh?

I'll talk to you guys next week... Next Monday will be the last time I write... :OOOO

Have a good week!

Monday, April 8, 2013

Are you getting bored of my emails yet? Be honest haha. Okay. Well... this last week was a good one. I have started getting a little bored of my companion. I'll be honest. It's kind of been a struggle but I've learned to adjust and do things his way and just go with it. But I feel a lot of the reason we aren't having success has been his lack of ability to let me work how I want. But that's okay. Last week we did divisions 4 times and I hardly saw him. I worked very efficiently. Finding new people to teach. Putting baptismal fechas. It was good. I went to 2 different areas and found a bunch of people for the missionaries there to teach. In my own area I was able to do the same thing. So it was a good week. I had fun at the same time. You gotta mix fun and work I think. Or you won't have a good result. If you just work work work you'll get worn out and your work will gradually start getting worse and worse and eventually you hit rock bottom.

Quick question? How's my perra sadie? Is she still alive? Does she miss me? What if she doesn't recognize me when I get home? 2 years is a long time...

Anyway...

For the most part we worked on finding new people to teach and inviting a lot of people to come to the conference. That was our focus for the whole zone. Get 140 people to the conference. We fell like 70 people short I believe. But it was a good turnout. The problem is, is that hardly any members showed for the conference. How is it that you can have leaders like we do and not go and listen to them? Some pepole just don't understand how cool it is to have a living prophet. What does that mean? That means we have somebody like Moses on the earth. It's frustrating. Oh well. Many are called, few are chosen.

In my area we had a lesson with a family on Saturday night with a guy who has a hard time with his job. He works like 7 days a week right now. We went with a man in our ward who is currently excommunicated but is an awesome guy. He knows a ton and is really powerful with his words. He went and challenged the guy to not to work and to put his trust in the Lord. Well, he went to the conference :) him and his whole family. He's the only one in his family that isn't baptized. But there is like 15 people that live in his house haha. So we took the whole family. There are just a bunch of little girls. Like 10 little girls. But it was cool! We went with them again last night with the same guy and just kind of let him loose the challenge the family. It's so much better coming from somebody with experience than a 22 year old. If all goes as planned, we tentatively have 5 baptismal dates for this weekend. We'll see how it goes. The zone is also living up to it's potential. If all goes well this weekend we will have 26 baptisms to start the month. With 2 weeks to baptize 25 more and hit 50. That's something that will never be done here again. I know that it's only for the mercy of the Lord that we're having this success. I have thought long and hard about why and we attacked the problem and started remembering the Lord in our missions and areas and we started having success. I know it's only for having the Lords hand that we're having this success. So we'll keep leaning on him.

I'm anxious to see you guys. It's getting so close. I'm grateful that the Lord has put all this work on my plate so I don't miss and opportunity! Keep working hard out there guys. Don't forget the Lord. Alma 37:36-37

Have a great week. Talk to you soon!

Monday, April 1, 2013

So... I'm running a little behind. I had to do a few things before I wrote and now I'm pressin... But that's okay. I can type fast. The Lord has blessed me with the ability to type fast.

So this is a picture of the stone that I want to buy all of you. It is a carving of the dream that Lehi had. It was found here in Guatemala several hundred years ago. It's very cool. It comes with an explination of what everything means. It's a cool gift that we should all have in our houses as Mormons. It's a great way to talk about the gospel to those who are not members of the church. It'll be a good tool for us to use as a family. That's my sales pitch. How'd I do? I'm practicing for when I get home haha jk.
 

 

But this last week... oh my heck... it was freaking nuts... there is so many weird/cool traditions here in Guatemala. Let's see...

Tuesday was the only real day we had to work and we worked hard :) we have a few families that are progressing but this last week we lost contact with them completely because of the rules of the week.

On Wednesday I had to give a class to 50 missionaries about how to challenge people to get baptized. I learned a lot. I hope the people I taught were able to learn. I gave a 45 minute class 4 times in a row and then wanted to shoot myself. The last class was a draggggg haha. But I think it was the best one. There are more participacion. But yeah. That was fun. In the afternoon it was pretty crazy. A tradicion here is they make these life size dolls and call them "Judas" then they run through the streets with noise makers and make a ton of noise and dance in front of the houses. They keep dancing until they get a piece of bread or money. Haha. They do it all night long. It was interesting. It was fun to see, though. I wanted so badly to get a picture with a Judas but my comp wouldn't let me get one haha. Oh well. I took a picture of a Judas just not with one. We stayed in the house and played soccer in my house haha.

Thursday and Friday we were stuck in a church all day long reading the New Testament. Goodness gracious. I have never been so bored in my entire life. In my entire life. Mom remember when I would always say to you, "Mom I'm bored!". This last week was nothing compared to the boredom that I used to experience in our house because nobody wanted to play with me :( haha. But that's okay. At the same time it was fun. There was just way too much reading in a short amount of time. I never want to open my bible again. But at night we played soccer all night long. It was like a party. It was hard to feel like a missionary. But we just followed orders. They told us we could play haha. The worst part was I slept in the clothes that I played soccer in. Super sweaty and everything. Then on Friday night we played again and I sweated a ton again and then slept in the SAME clothes hahahaha. I've learned nothing in the mission have I? Then on Saturday I am sure I smelled worse than Jason we went home and I enjoyed a nice shower. What a blessing it is to shower and smell good. I actually think I'll come home with this stench that will take weeks to get off of me. Everyone will wonder wtfreak is that. Oh well. Saturday we were super tired so we took a nice nap until 3 and then worked all afternoon looking for people to invite to church. A lot of people go to the beach on Saturday and in my zone we have the luck of having a theme park that everyone goes to. Nobody was home on Saturday. And yesterday everyone was sleeping and recooperating because it's a heck of a week and most everyone gets the week off of work. It's a pretty crazy week. But fun at the same time.

Today we have a zone leaders meeting at 1 o'clock. They're taking away one of my last pdays. Que mala onda. But it is what it is. I've had plenty pdays :D 3 more after today then I'll see your pretty faces. I hope you all have a great week. I don't have time to write anybody back. I'm sorry. Grandma. I love you guys I hope you have a wonderful week. Natalie, Eric, Jason, Annie. Have fun this week. Stay out of trouble. Read your scriptures, say your prayers, and be smart. Mom and Dad... don't do anything I wouldn't do.

I love you! The church is true.

Elder Smith

Monday, March 25, 2013

5 more emails after this one... :O that's weird. I'll be honest. I love you all very much. But I am getting a little bored of always writing you emails! I'd rather just see your faces!! But that's okay. I can hang in there for 5 more weeks if you guys can. A few of you have jumped ship already haha. That's okay. I'll forget about you one day too :D jk.

Well... this last week was.. different...

The mission office is doing a lot of things different lately and they are just foolish. It bothers me the way they are getting things done. I'm the type of person that likes to take a little more time to take decisions and but have it be the right decision. I don't like to take detours when there are shortcuts. Some people don't understand how to think of both sides of the situation before making a decision. How will this affect me? But also, how will it affect them? You gotta play both sides of the chess board if you're going to win. Oh well. I'm going home haha. But they didn't tell us the transfers in the zone until Tuesday night at like 8 o'clock. The transfers meeting was Wednesday at 8 in the morning. It didn't make sense to me. But that's okay. That's one of many things they've done that has been questionable. Oh well. Don't judge Jordan.

On Wednesday we had a fun day running around showing everyone their new areas and everything. 4 new areas opened up in the zone. We got 11 new missionaries. Which is fine. We just have to hit them hard. On Wednesday night I called my MP and asked him if he would come to our zone meeting the next day and he said that was fun. So I tried to prepare a good lesson from the zone. I sat up thinking for a while about what I wanted to talk about. I decided to talk about the type of vision that we have for the zone. I talked about the two visions that were presented in the beginning of everything. The vision of Satan and the vision of Christ (Moses 4:1-2). The vision of Satan was that we all got everything the easy way, that we walked through life like robots and got everything hand fed to us. The vision of Christ was that we would have everything. We could have the ability to know right from wrong, we could make mistakes, we could have trials and triumphs. That we would know that when we put our hand in a fire it burns us. That was the vision Christ had. It wasn't an easy vision and he knew what it entailed. That somebody would have to make the ultimate sacrifice. He volunteered for the plan. His vision was great. The vision of Satan was weak and pitiful. I told my little sheep that our vision must be like the vision Christ had for us. I thought that it went well. There was a scripture in 2 Corinthians I think chapter 4 that said the things that we can't see are eternal. The vision that we have for ourselves is eternal. How do we see ourselves? Then after that my MP came in and kind of gave a good lecture haha. One of the things he said was that if our desire was not to reach the celestial kingdom then we should go ask for our records to be erased from the church because for members of the LDS church there should be nothing less. It's a little harsh right, but it's the truth. Why do we want less when we know we can have more?

On Thursday I did splits with an Elder named Elder Paine. He is a cool guy. I had a lot of fun with him. I was able to be more of myself and enjoy the time of the mission. At night we had to run to another area and do an interview. It was more of a try to rescue the baptism because the 2 elders that had established the baptismal date both had transfers and left the area so we had to go and try to rescue. We weren't able to do it. Oh well. I told the missionaries not to go back to that house of the family because the other 2 elders had been working there for like 2 months.

But yeah. That was pretty much the week. We have some good investigators progressing right now. It looks like we should have 3 families for April. That gives me some hope. I had almost lost all of my hope a coule weeks back haha. But we're going good.

This week is holy week, it's easter week and here everyone just goes nuts. They want to lock us up in the church for a couple days and not let us go because it's pretty dangerous I guess. I'm going to try to get out and take some pictures. I don't think I'll ever experience it again, I gotta take advantage of the situation! I'll keep you posted on that. But yeah. Next Monday... I don't know if I'll be writing. We have transfers as zone leaders. My comp it appears could be heading out. He's a good kid. I'd miss him. A little :) but I'm anxious to get to April so we can get to May. Work work work... I don't like sitting and thinking about how much time is left because it only seems like there is tooooooo much. So I just try to forget the count. Anyway. Love you guys. Talk to you soon!

Elder Smith

Monday, March 18, 2013

I don't have a lot of time. I've spent too much time reflecting on what my mission president sent me.... I don't understand still but that's okay. I've picked myself up a little bit. Gotta give it all I've got right now. It's hard but there wasn't anything harder than the atonement for Christ. This last week was a week of... not working haha. I went to the temple again on Tuesday with a family that got sealed. That was really cool. I was a witness of the sealing. I had to sign the paper and everything. I kept thinking that that document I signed was the most important document I had ever signed in my life haha. But it was cool. I really enjoyed my time up there. Then on Wednesday it was a normal day and we worked. We had to drop a few more investigators because they just weren't progressing. So that sucked. On Thursday I headed up to the capital. Guatemala City because there was an elder that had an interview in the Peruvian Embassy and his companion is heading home on Wednesday this week so he didn't want to spend the last few days of his mission in an office waiting so I took the initiative and went with him. We got there on Thursday and there was a mix up in the office so we had to wait until Friday to have the meeting. They took us to a hotel and we stayed there all day. But I think I might have found a place for us to stay on Thursday night. It's like 3 minutes from the airport. It's no 5 star hotel right. But they will drive us to the airport in the morning and it only costs like 25 bucks a person to stay the night. So it's not terrible. I mean for guatemala it 's a lot but we're white :) haha. We got back late Friday night and then we just relaxed in my house. On Saturday we had a tough moment. I went to the office and found out that every other zone in the mission is having success right now except for mine... ugh that made me even more discouraged. But we made some plans and we're going to work hard these next few weeks. I feel like I need a new comp. I love mine. He's a great guy. But I need to change it up and give it a go with somebody else up here. I know we can change this around and leave this zone in a better state. But it's going to be hard. Sunday we were able to go out and find some new people so that was good. But my comp and I basically decided that we're going to start over from scratch with the people we had. We're doing the same thing we did like 3 months ago when I got here. But we'll give it a whirl. I'm going to work hard. The Lord has something planned for me. I wish I knew what it was. But then I wouldn't have the learning experiences. I love you guys. I gotta head out. Sorry for the quick email. Have a good week!

Elder Smith