Families are Great!

Dear Family, Jen, Phillipe, Cousins, Friends and Everyone,

So I don't have a whole lot to tell you because I talked to you yesterday, but I loved seeing you all, and I was glad to meet Tanner and big Carter, I will have to meet Owen on Mothers Day! Sorry to Ben and Tanelle and Ky and Jeanell, I would have loved to see you but I am also glad that you went to Church. I wouldn't be a very good missionary if I had kept you from going to church, I was shocked at how much all the kids have grown, I am pretty sure you are aware of that seeing as I said it like every two seconds but wow!!! Jens and Garrett especially!! You are men!

We had a great Christmas, I think I told you, but I will tell you again, we woke up and tore into the presents, then we went to church and we sang for the Christmas program then we spent the afternoon talking to our families and eating with our investigators and members! It was a very merry Christmas!

This week when we were at zone conference for Christmas, there was a moment that someone shared a Christmas story and they talked about a family finally being reunited for Christmas after several years, it made me realize how grateful I am for all of you, I didn't need presents or money or candy or anything like that, the greatest gift that I could have was to know that my family and friends were rooted in their faith in Jesus Christ and to know that my Heavenly Father was watching over them. I am so grateful for this present of 2 years that the Lord has given to me, there was a second yesterday when mom started talking about picking me up and about where I was going to live for college and I realize that the time is counting down on my present, I will never be able to thank you enough for allowing me to go on a mission, I will never be able to thank the Lord enough either, I love the Lord and I love you, I feel like the unprofitable servant that King Benjamin spoke of, because I will never be able to thank the Lord enough for what he has given me, it is the largest debt ever, I do 1 thing and he gives me 10, I do one more thing and he gives me 10 more! It is not fair but I am grateful!

What a blessing it is to have a family in the gospel of Jesus Christ and to have a knowledge of his birth, life, death, and resurrection. He was born of Mary, he did live and die and he lives again! It is the good news of the gospel! I know it to be true with my whole heart. I love you all and again I hope that you had a very merry Christmas!

Love Elder Smith

Merry Christmas!

The weather has started to get pretty chilly, I can't complain it feels like it should have in the middle of november, and we still have lots of sunshine, it is just brisk in the mornings and at night, and once awhile in the afternoon it starts to get hot under a sweater and jacket, so things are pretty well. Everybody has a runny nose because it is the first time this year that it has started to feel like winter. The houses and apartments are have lights up and the whole town is lit up, they have brought in merry go rounds and rides for all the kids just like they did in carcassonne and in perigueux.

Me and Elder Baret are getting along great, we laugh alot and I would love staying with him in Aix. He is always happy and always joking about something, it is good. It is hard for me to work with and be "downers". So Elder Baret and I get along great, constantly playing tricks on each other and goofing around a bit. He is also a mega soccer fan, and that is what I have been waiting for, he play soccer every p day and we got an activity with our investigators and members and we had a pretty sweet soccer match on saturday. I loved it.

So this week we had quite a few setbacks and things but at the same time we finally got to see some fruits of all the labors we have been putting in this transfer. I'll explain, This we started out with a phone call from President Murdock informing me that I will no longer be driving, I was bummed out but there are worst things that happen in life. Then we went on an exchange with nice and I got to see lots of members and people that I had tought it was super cool, I also got to see my Homie G Elder Brough in nice where I had served with him. Thats was great, then we had some bad news, I had the unfortunate chance to send a missionary home early, Elder Mutamba, a great missionary, he was supposed to finish in 2 weeks and had some great baptism set up and he tore his achilles tendon, He was super sad and we took him with us and then set him home with some Elders that had to go to geneve for the office. It broke my heart to see him like that and it made me realize how precious my mission is, he is only going home 2 weeks early and it was very understandable, and if it had been a different missionary it would have been different, but his sadness is what killed me. I hope to see him back at BYU. Then we got home and the missionaries in marseille called us in a overwhelmed state, they had to move from their appartment and they had had help from other elders and stuff but then they were all alone and they were beat, so we cancelled our stuff for half that day and went and took them to lunch and helped them get back on their feet. AND THEN after all that we had the ward christmas party, it was great, we had been encouraging members to bring their friends and we had been inviting lots of less actives and at the party there was 25 non members and 7 less actives, we took lots of appointments and this week we are going to teach 4 or 5 of the families with their friends!!!! The activity was a blast, we had games and a dance(we didn't stay for that part) and a meal, there was a trivia game that they played with the missionaries and a good time was had by all!

Lots of great stuff happened and lots of rough stuff happened but now we are looking at a great christmas and some very promising blessings! I am excited to see you all and to talk to you on skype, I think that I will call at about 9 o'clock in the morning on christmas utah time, that is 5 oclock france time. Sorry if that is too early, but we are going to be a little bit booked on christmas and that is the best time, hope it works! we will be with members that have skype, I don't remember passwords or whatever so I will call right before and get the username and password of one of you like last time.

I love you all and I wish you a very merry christmas!

SEE you next week!

Love
Elder Smith

HOLA!!!

I excuse myself in advance for the shortness of this email, 1 I don't have that much time to write because we spent way too long playing soccer today and 2 because I don't what to tell you.

We spent a lot of time looking for less actives and trying to find families that have children that are not baptised, we ate lots with members and we invited them to invite people to the christmas activities, there are lots of members that have been inviting lots of people and I think that we are going to hit the jackpot pretty soon here. at the beginning of this transfer we were praying to know what the Lord wanted us to in our area right now and we both felt like we should work close to the members and their friends and families during the hollidays, it hasn't brought forth as much fruit as we would have liked but we are going to keep going because we felt that it is what needs to be done.

We did get to see a little fruits, we got to teach the boyfriend of a young adult this week and he has come to one of the activities, he is not very believing and I don't know if he will progress but it has been good for the member to really get share her beliefs and values, we also met a less active sister and that has a daughter that isn't baptised, we have an appointment this week to teach her and I think that she has tons of potential, she is very cool and I have lots of faith for her.

We spent some time knocking doors as well and we are still hunting for a family!

I love you all and I am doing well! get your questions ready and we will talk on christmas!

Have a great week!

Love

Elder Smith

ps I got a package with some scocharoos!!! and a bunch of wrapped presents from mom! it was great except I didn't have the patience and I opened up one of the gifts because I could tell that is was a nerf football, we loved it and then loved it a little too much and it is stuck behind the washer, we are going to have to do something impressive to get it out

ps our baptism got pushed back because our investigators are not quite ready, greg and nicholas are progressing and we hope to see them baptised soon!

Bonjour!

This week we traveled a bit and spent lots of time trying to contact some less active members.

We took the list of all of the members of the ward and set the goal to invite each of them to come to the Christmas activity and that has proven to be quite a challenge. We have to look in the white pages and talk to lots of people in order to find some of them. It gives a chance to talk to lots of people, because we are just there asking them if they know someone, and then we bring up the gospel and invite them to hear our message. It has taken lots of time and we haven't yet seen some of the fruits that we are looking for but we have hope and faith and are excited to invite all of these people to come to church with their friends and such. There is lots and lots of potential with partial member families and less actives. people that have gone through the temple but have fallen less active and they have children that are not baptised! There is gold but it is kind of delicate to get to it, we are trying our best to really focus on the ward and on getting familes established and headed to the temple.

We also went to Lyon and had a meeting with President Murdock! I love that man, he is so inspired! I could sit and listen to his teachings all day long if I was allowed to. We spent a lot of time talking about how to get all of the investigators that we have to actually get baptised, because in the mission right now we have lots of people with baptismal dates but that are having a hard time staying strong and not pushing back their baptismal dates, it was really great. We are going to try our best to get as many of these people as possible baptised and headed down the right path. In Lyon I got the chance to see Elder Duncan, from Nice, and Elder Claflin from Aix. It was great! (Elder Brough, from Nice is also back into the zone and I will get to see him in 2 weeks, I'm stoked!)

Besides that, it was a good week, a little tiring, it seemed pretty hard to get out of bed this week and hit the work, I don't know why but I was kinda tired, but I am excited to get back to work and bust up aix this week with Elder Baret.

Thanks for the package mom and the singing card. haha you know how much I love those cards.

Have a great week and good luck cleaning up after the huge storm, I hope that I will recognize our house when i get back.

Love
Elder Smith