March 3, 2014

Hey Family!!

Thanks for all your emails and prayers. They spiritually uplift me! I´m very blessed to have a family like all y´all.

This week was good!! It was a Little stressful but good! Celebrations are going on and its CRAZY. Its called Carnival. Our Street is one of the main streets and it was full of just party party party party. And everyone was DRUNK AND HIGH. All that smoke...WHEW. I was feeling a little light-headed myself!! I´ll send pictures :)

We had a misión tour this week and Elder Teixeira and his wife spoke. It was AMAZING. I was so spiritually fed!! It was really quite interesting because at the beginning he encouraged the spanish speakers to learn english and he kept on going on about that, how he learned italian, German, english, etc by Reading the BOM in english and his native tongue. Well, I had this overwhelming feeling that I needed to learn to speak another language! (not now...spanish is enough--after the misión.) Later, I talked to hermana fowers and she said, what? he didn´t ever say that. hahaa! It was awesome. He also really focused on us living what we learn and with him, we studied page 18 and 19 of preach my góspel. it was sooo amazing!!

We have been trying to have our investigators have a desire to read in the book of mormon and lately we´ve been Reading stories with pictures and using a principle. For the past 2 weeks, we´ve been using the story of the Anti-Nefi-Lehitas burying their weapons and applying it to burying our weaknesses or smoking, etc. Its worked really well and they love it, too. They felt like they could actually apply what they are reading in their life. It was awesome! Plus most of them learn by sight than Reading so its worked out better.
We´ve also been trying to spend less time in lessons so that we can have more time for anything else. It´s worked well and its better to leave with the spirit high then not. We find that our lessons are better and our investigators more interested, too.
We have new investigators and they´re wonderful! The first one is Steven and he´s from Ghana and he´s sooo interested in the message. He said he´s looking for the truth and we taught lesson one with him and he really liked it. He said he will be baptized on the 29th, if he feels prepared. We´re very excited for him! Our other guy is Steven. He was born in Costa Rica and lived in New York most of his life. He was hit by a car 3 years ago while on vacation here and he has a lot of problems physically now. He also said that he´s looking for the truth and he has soooo many questions. We think he´s been talking to Testigos de Jehová because he keeps on asking about the certain ammount of people that will be saved. He´s been reading and we feel that we´ll have a fecha very soon!!

I´m so grateful to be here and to be serving the Lord. I am truly blessed!

I love you all and am so grateful for your full on support. You are always in my prayers.

Love you!

Hermana Smith

-ALL the hermanas on the islas! I love all of them. they´re my best fwends.

-Carnival outside our window. its like Halloween and marti gras (spelling!?!?)

-me. and carnaval.

-carnaval. the music was so loud our Windows and doors were shaking. we almost had to slide our beds into the kitchen!