December 14, 2015 Email

Hey Fam! Hope all is going well for ya!

This week we ended up having several great miracles happen for us. We have an ASL investigator who has met with missionaries for quite a while but never got baptized. We met with him earlier this week and had a lesson with him and committed him to baptism. He accepted and will be getting baptized on the 6th of January. We are stoked because my companion, Elder Funk, will be baptizing him and he will be doing it in sign. That's so cool! Then on the 10th I will be confirming him as a member of the church. I won't be able to do it in sign, but it's an experience that will be remembered forever. Not too many missionaries get to have a chance to work with someone that's ASL so I'm thankful to be here for it. 

Another miracle we had happened Sunday. We were greeting people at the door the former Ward Mission Leaders wife came over and let us know of a little girl who wants to
be baptized. We went over to where her and her father were and talked with them about what they want to do. The father is a less-active member and heard his daughter wanted to get baptized so he will be returning to activity while we meet with her. So within the time I have left, we have a potential of baptizing two people before I leave.  That is a miracle in its self.

The rest of the week was kinda the same. We met with one investigator who has been struggling with a couple different things in regard to commitment in the invitations we leave with him. We have another appointment with him and his girlfriend on Wednesday so we will see how that goes. Sunday brought some crazy rain and wind in the morning.  When I went to get ready for church, I looked out the window and saw something like a typhoon right outside. Wind gusts were probably around 20 mph with very heavy rainfall. I was hoping it would be like
that for most of the day, but it ended up stopping just before we left for church.

So, that's all for this week. Hope you all have a wonderful week and I'll talk to you soon.

Love

Elder Mitchell Smith

December 7, 2015 Email

Hey Fam! Hope all is going well for you guys back home! The time here has been good and tough at the same time. We have very few investigators to work with in the area and we have contacted almost all our potential investigators as well with no success. One good thing about the area is that there's usually a good opportunity for
service most mornings and throughout the day. One service activity we did involved herding sheep and moving a horse so that was something I hadn't done on the mission till that point. The members love being able to feed us and are engaged in missionary work pretty well. This week we had a couple of lessons and ended up doing a lot of running around. One day we ended up driving 102 miles trying to contact people.

Well that's all I've got for this week. Hope you all are having a great time and hope to hear from you soon.

Love

Elder Mitchell Smith

November 30, 2015 Email

Hey Fam! Sorry for not emailing earlier in the week. Things have been crazy here in the new area. Transfers happened and I went up north into Anderson area to finish the mission. I'm serving in the Cottonwood Ward and am greenie breaking a new missionary, Elder Funk.  The ward members here are awesome and love helping out in the work as much as they can. The area work wise is something of the same thing as my last area but is still going good. Not too many investigators but plenty of less-active members.

Thanksgiving was a great time here. In the morning we went and did some service putting up a fence. We all had a helping in it and it was great to get back to some good fencing. After that, we went and had thanksgiving dinner with the former Ward mission leader and his family. They actually ended up having all the missionaries in the zone show up there. Several missionaries have served in this Ward before and they loved being there for dinner. We had a great thanks giving and I hope you all did too.

Love, 
Elder Smith

October 20, 2015 Email

Hey Fam! The week here has been good. We worked quite a bit with some YSA members for a majority of the week. It's always a struggle to have to work with them because they are either in school or at work during
the day. They also go out on the weekends so that's always tough to work with cause they are never around then. We are still working with some former investigators and they seem to be doing much better with how they are taking the lessons. We had a great experience last Friday with a recent YSA convert member and her family. Her grandma, who is a nonmember, was falling an aspen tree to get fire wood for the winter.  It fell properly, yet when she started cutting the wood with the saw when the fork of the tree whipped at her and broke her shin bone just
above the ankle. From the pictures we saw, it was WAY bad. She had gone through surgery already by the time we got there and it seems like it will heal well. The member, who is the granddaughter, had contacted us asking if we could give a blessing to her grandma. Her grandma had heard of blessings before and she had asked for one. We got there and gave her a blessing. She felt such relief from that blessing and felt she would recover well.

Priesthood Blessing--A blessing given by a Melchizedek Priesthood holder, by the laying on of hands and by inspiration, to one who is sick or otherwise in need of special counsel, comfort, or healing. If the blessing is for the sick, consecrated oil is used (James 5:14-15).

It was great to be able to do that since I haven't been able to do that since Oroville, which was about 7 months ago.

Well, that's all I've got for you this week. Hope you're having a great week and having fun!

Elder Mitchell Smith

October 14, 2015 Email

Hey Fam! Sorry I haven't been emailing lately, p-days are always crazy. This p-day was particularly crazy because it was transfers. My companion and I are both staying together for another transfer and I'm stoked for it. It's good you all are doing well back home. It's a good thing Parker got cleared from his concussion, I'm sure he would not be happy if he was out for the rest of the year.

The week here has been good. We have had some good work turn up for us and it is going well. We have been working with some former investigators and hopefully they will keep up with their commitments since that is what they struggle with. We have also been trying to work with a less-active list for the YSA but it doesn't seem to be
pulling up much. There have been quite a few fires recently here but the winter season is coming up soon. Hopefully we can get some good moisture so we can get more water for this drought. 

Aside from that we have been doing good and have been working quite well in the area.

Well, that's all I've got for you this week. Hope you're having a great week and having fun!

Elder Mitchell Smith

September 29, 2015 Email

Hey Fam! It seems like you guys are crazy busy with everything in the letter. With work, sports, and the mission to get ready for; that would be very over bearing when it all comes at once. Give Parker my wishes that he will recover. My current companion got a concussion in his last area. Since that, he has to be cautious about the activities we do. 

This week was pretty good for us. We have been working on some lists that the ward and branch gave us. We have been working with less-active members most of the time since the area has come to a near halt with investigators. It's not fun, but they choose not to have a desire to change or make those commitments. As we all know, you can't change someone that refuses to allow it. The district meetings, I hear, seem to be good with the few we have had. It's definitely weird being on the other end of the stick when I came to meetings, but it's good for me. It gets me even more out of my comfort zone. 

This weekend is General Conference and I am pumped. As members were bearing testimonies on it Sunday; I had the thought occur to me, this is my last General Conference in the mission field. It made me wonder, "What all is to happen this Conference and what can I learn more of?" I hope whatever is in store is very meaningful to me and to others. 

Topics from the October 2015 General Conference:

activation                                            addiction                                             adversity (9)

agency                                                 Apostle                                                Atonement (8)

Book of Mormon                                charity                                                 children (2)

Church callings (3)                              Church leaders (3)                               Church meetings

Church membership                            Church organization (2)                      commandments (3)

compassion                                          conversion (7)                                     councils

courage (3)                                          covenants (2)                                       dating

death (2)                                              disabilities                                           discipleship (3)

divine nature (6)                                  education (2)                                       example (2)

faith (9)                                               family (5)                                            fasting

financial management (2)                    friendship                                            grace

healing (2)                                           Heavenly Father                                  Holy Ghost (8)

hope                                                    humility                                               Jesus Christ (16)

Joseph Smith                                       joy (3)                                                  kingdom of God

light                                                     love (5)                                                marriage (2)

missionary work (2)                            morality (2)                                         motherhood

obedience (6)                                      parenthood                                          patience

plan of salvation (8)                            prayer (2)                                             priesthood (3)

profanity                                             prophets (6)                                         repentance (6)

revelation (3)                                       righteousness                                       Sabbath (5)

sacrament (5)                                       safety                                                  scripture study

scriptures (3)                                       self-control                                          service (5)

spirituality                                           standards                                             temptation

testimony (3)                                       trust                                                     truth (4)

women                                                worthiness (2)                                     young adults

The mission has been a struggle; but it has changed and blessed me in ways that I could not have imagined in my entire life. I am so proud that Stockton is deciding to serve. It makes me wonder how the Lord can bless him as he serves with honor and diligence. 

P-Day yesterday was awesome and fun. We had to plan the activities and we did a reincarnation of Zombies. We had some good responses and some complaining, but the complaining usually just came from one or two people so it wasn't terrible. 

Well, that's all I've got for ya this week. Hope you all have a great and easy week and I wish you the best!

Love

Elder Smith

September 21, 2015 Email

Hey Fam! Hope your all doing well!

This week was a pretty good week for us here. This week we had some good service opportunities with several people. We helped several members and a few less-active members with yard work and household maintenance with some doors. Our mission president is having us go to dinners and share the Family: A Proclamation to the World as a thought for families in the area. We had some great experiences with it and recently not so good. We had dinner yesterday with this member family that is really cool and had a good bond. We shared this with them and it struck a very big nerve with some of the family. They had gone through a lot with there father and it was very harsh and bad for them. We will have to see how this whole situation will go but I think it will all settle down and we can see the light of things. 

Full Text of The Family: A Proclamation to the World

https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation?lang=eng

Aside from that, we have just been going through the motions of trying to get more people to teach. 

Hope you all are having a good time and I wish you the best. 

Sincerely

Elder Smith

September 15, 2015 Email

Hey Fam! Sorry I haven't emailed the past couple of weeks! We've been playing all these crazy games on pday that I hardly have any time to respond to emails. I can send a clip of what it's like a lot when we as a zone play ZOMBIES!!!💀💀💀 It's pretty crazy hectic when playing it in real life rather than in the games. 

The weeks have been slow here. We finished going though this list the ward gave us of members without home teachers and visiting teachers again and had some of the same results as previous. We have a new list from the branch of those who are less-active or inactive completely. We will hopefully get some of those names found and try to work with them the best we can. We have several people who have been falling through on commitments so we are work mostly with less-active members to try and get them reactivated and possibly get some finding done through them. We've been going over Preach My Gospel with several of them and it has been going great so far with the progress. We got the chance to participate in a Mission Prep Class with the youth in the Colfax Ward. It went very well and had lots of good responses to questions and found out several of the youth are planning to serve a mission when they are ready. Other then that, there really hasn't been too much going on since the area slowed down a lot. 

Well that's all I've got for ya this week! Hope you all are having a great time and are keepin on!

Love

Elder Smith

September 2, 2015 Email

Hey Fam! Sorry this is later than usual, we had transfers and everything was just crazy all over. We had transfers come in and I am a district leader for what is now the "Northern District" which consists of the three companionships in the northern part of the zone. My new companion is Elder Acevedo who is another Samoan kid. He is also half Mexican but his Samoan shows more than anything. We actually met at the temple in March at the full mission temple trip. He is a great worker and is tons of fun. 

This week has been pretty good for us here in Colfax. We have meet with several people all throughout the week. Many of the people we contact have been through a list of members without home or visiting teachers the ward gave us that we might keep busy and also help organize the less-actives in the ward. We have found several people who have no interest in the church, do not intend to return to the church, and those who claim to be either excommunicated or had their name removed. We have run into nice people when we go out to find the members but unfortunately don't seem too interested at the moment. We also encounter a lot of false addresses as we go through the list to find these members. We did get a hold of a potential investigator that has agreed to meet with us this week. We will be stoked for that. This morning we contacted an investigator who was on date for baptism to confirm an appointment with her today. She had told us that she felt she needed more time before she could commit to joining the church and was crazy busy to schedule to meet us. So, she had dropped us.😞 We will still be visiting her every so often, but she won't commit until she feels comfortable. 

Well, that's all I've got for you guys this week! Hope all gets well with grandpa and I wish the rest of you the very best of the Lord.

Love,

Elder Smith

August 11, 2015 Email

Hey Fam! Sorry this is later than usual! We went on a crazy cool hike yesterday and accidentally ended in taking a wrong turn on the trail. I'm sending pictures in another email to you guys. 

It's good to hear from you guys! I will keep praying for him and for the rest of the family as well. Definitely let me know when Stockton gets his papers and when he will open it!

This week has been pretty good for us here. We have had great success with getting contact with people and getting in to help them. We have done several service opportunities throughout the week such as log splitting, moving, yard work and various little things. The goals we set for this week have been most of the way met and it is awesome. Elder Shapiro and I have both been working diligently and with what we have to work with. One lesson we had on Saturday was very good and interesting at the same time. The investigator has been meeting with other faiths and has received some anti-Mormon doctrine and has been studying it. It's a bit of a struggle talking with him because he thinks we are there to contend with him on doctrine when we aren't. In the end of every lesson we go out respecting one another and having questions answered. Sunday was the toughest time for us. We have been trying to reschedule a time to visit a returning less-active that we have been putting back all week. We went through a huge hassle and running around to try and get it done. Finally, after all of this fuss and buss, we got to meet with her and had a great lesson. 

So that's my week for you. Hope you all have a great week and talk to you next week!

Love

Elder Smith