Monday, March 12, 2012

Sometimes I have no idea what to put in the subject line!

Dear Family,

This past week went well, we have a zone conference in Geneva and then I did an exchange with Elder Bishop who is serving Yverdon in Switzerland. We had a blast, we were in the MTC together and he is super funny. He has fire red hair and is from Wales. We did quite of bit of finding and all in all we had a great exchange. The rest of week we were getting ready for this week of conferences and working in our own area. We didn't have much happen in our area but we did start teaching Chiara again. Chiara is a ten year old daughter of a recent convert, she was going to get baptised about 6 months ago but her mom had testimony struggles and the baptism got put off. This sunday we went and taught them because things have calmed down and her mom is again strong and at church every week. I know that Chiara will be baptised but her mom is very very very hesitant and that makes Chiara nervous. Chiara loves coming to church and she is there every week and has even expressed a desire to be baptised, so we are going to try and show her mother, Giovanna, that baptism is only the beginning and it is the most important thing that Chiara can do in this moment of her life.

Saturday night we were porting in a small neighborhood where we had been finding many families at home. We weren’t having much success engaging people in conversation, so we decided to start asking people about their families and how they’ve found happiness at home. Shortly after, a man opened the door and we started by asking him about how he had constructed a happy family. His response was, in short, that he had failed and that he was recently divorced. It could have been a disaster of a contact, but instead we took the opportunity to testify about the Gospel and how we had seen it help those around us with family difficulties. The Spirit was strong, and we talked with him about our optimistic message for a few minutes before leaving. Though he decided not to invite us back, we had a very spiritual conversation and we left him with a high opinion of the Church and its teachings. Our attitude and our testimony truly do impact those around us, even in our small exchanges and short contacts with those we testify to daily.

I am writing from Toulouse right now, we woke up and took the plane this morning. We have 2 conferences to do here this week and then we have a conference and an exchange in Bordeaux. We will be back in our area by saturday and we already have some good appointments set up and should have some people (like Chiara) with baptismal dates. Life is good and I can't believe that after this week will be doing transfers again. This mission is going TOO FAST!

I love you all!
Elder Smith

PS Thank you for the card Dad, Mom and Jodi, I opened the singing card and started dancing immediately and then after the music stopped I read the note in the card that had predicted that would dance in opening the card. The office elders and us laughed pretty good about that. You know me all to well.

Q & A
Where was the ocean baptism?
Bordeaux.

What has happen with the people found/taught on exchanges?
The family in Toulouse was taught for about a month and had baptismal dates and was coming to church but then decided that it was too hard, and the lessons have stopped with them

The man in Montpellier is still being taught and things are going well

The family in our area went on vacation and we are going to see them this weekend

I can't remember if there was others that I spoke about but there are a couple answers

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