I don't know where to start. By far one of the best weeks of my mission!!!!
I did 2 exchanges this week. One with Elder Brough, one of my favorite elders in the mission, and another with Elder Mayer, a french missionary that lives next to germany. The exchanges were fun and I learned alot and really enjoyed the missionary work with these two elders. I loved my time with Elder Bennallack as well. I don't how to explain how much I loved this week, but I am going to share with you 2 stories. 1 Story was one of the most miserable moments of my life and the other was one of the greatest!
Lets start with the Miserable Moment.
We had a member that told us that her brother might be interested in the gospel. "Cha-Ching!!!!". Getting a legit referal from a member is great, and often leads to baptism, and to even make this better it was a family. The one down side.......They live in the middle of nowhere, not almost in the middle of somewhere, THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. We decided to look up a less active sister that lived in the same corner of the middle of nowhere and to try to find them both. We got on our bikes (ps we got bikes last week) and headed to Riberac. According to my navigator skills it was about 30 kms away and should take about an hour to get there on bikes. So off we went, we were a little late getting out of town and we left Périgueux at about 2:30 in the after noon. We get out of Périgueux and life is great!!! 2 Elders rolling through the french country side headed to find a "golden family" we are so excited that we are racing and laughing on the bikes, we are strolling through the hills next to the river and we come around the bend and what do we see?? MOUNT TIMPANOGOS!!!!!!!! I don't know why it wasn't on the map because this thing was only about a meter shorter than Everest, alas we go up the hill and we are dying. Sweating, legs burning, thirsty and looking like the prodigal son. We finally made it and road down the gently from the hill into a nice valley, again life was good, and.......another one. alas we climbed again a massive hill and came down into the middle of nowhere. We bailed on the less active sister and headed to the referal. We had only gone 25 kms and it took us 2.5 hours and I was wrong the less active was another 15 kms away not 5 kms. We taught the family. Dud. Not interested and I had they sorest bum EVER!!! and again we turned back and did it again, in the dark with just little lights on our bikes while buses and semis buzzed us in the pitch black forest night. We got back home, absoluetly exhausted at 8:45. Without a doubt I prayed for about an hour while we road back that I would kill my greeny. As miserable as this sounds, we found ways to laugh alot and really felt the spirit at times. I myself kept thinking about the Savior as we carried his cross alone up a much more difficult hill.
Now for the other story.
Heavenly Father loves us. This story is a story in progress. On Tuesday we contacted a young man named Jonathan, who was extremely interested. He has now been taught 3 times, come to church is being baptised in 20 days, brought his mom and brother to us as well and they would all like to evenutally be baptised! He is the definition of Golden. He had his testimony in 2 days and was disappointed that he had to wait 3 weeks to be baptised, him, his mom and brother have all been praying to find the Church of Christ and they all have felt the spirit of the church and are extremely excited for baptism. I have rarely felt the spirit so strong in my life as we engaged Jonathan to be baptised. He accepted without hesistation, and asked if we could teach his family. The week end he is even going to the region YSA activity in Bordeaux with members he just met. He is 22, studing computer animation and plays the guitar and sings and has the same personality of Trent. He is offically my new best friend while I am in France! He is so cool and a very distinct answer to countless prayers and fasts of missionaries and members.
The Lord took great care of us this week. We suffered and we also rejoiced over a new family that has been searching for the truth. I love this work, and I do feel that I have done anything worthy of these blessings. I love my Savior and I love my Heavenly Father. I felt the power of many of your prayers as we struggled on wednesday night and I as well felt the answer of many of your prayers as we have been able to teach Jonathan. This work is true. The Lord Lives. The Father Listens and the Spirit Teaches. I know without doubt these things to be true.
I love you all SO MUCH!!!! I got Moms and the Poulsons Valentines packages and I loved them all. I especially loved the cards from Jens, Ellie, Tate and Drew!
Have a great week!
Elder Smith
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