April 14, 2014

Hey family!! 

Things are super duper here in las palmas. We spent a great pday writing letters on a bench by the beach. 85ºF. i got to tan my white knees. HAHAHAHAHAAA!!!! ok i really did think that was funny. 

We had a spectacular week in paradise. I´m having a jolly good time with hermana Caballero. did you know her last name means gentleman? Sister Gentleman. Haha!! But its all good and i ABSOLUTELY love having her as my companion. She´s a lot of fun. Of course, she doesn´t speak english real well but we get by with my dictionary. mostly me though, cuz i understand spanish. there are just sooo many isms in american english that you can´t translate it. its really funny cuz i´ll wake up and immediately start speaking in english or whenever i´m in a train of thought i start speaking in english and she just starts laughing. hahaha its realy funny. she´s a beast at soccer though. creams all the american football elders here!! hahaa!

Anywhooo, our week! We were able to meet more with Juan, the street lesson from last week. He had completely read the book of mormon and was in the guide to the scriptures. All studying it. He said that he needs to read it again to understand more. Hahahaa, we were sooo shocked!! It´s really easy teaching him because he takes everything in so quickly and he always asks good questions. He told us he will be baptized when he has received his answer; says he doesn´t want to jump into something and later leave it. Honestly, the only problem with him is that its difficult for him to come to church because sometimes he takes care of his 95 year old mother. He is ALWAYS willing to meet with us and talk. Sometimes i have to pinch myself to see if i´m dreaming. 

Kalman, our hungarian friend, is progressing and he´s smoking less each time we see him. He really is a great guy. He has a lot of trials, like no home, sleeps on the beach and more. But he is always positive about everything. His baptism is on the 26th and he´s preparing for that day. 
Though we could never meet with him this week, Alex came to church and literally the first thing he told us was that he wants his last lesson with us this saturday and that he thinks he´ll have either the 25 or the 26th off for his baptism...!!!! He´s progressed soo much and Las Palmas will be so blessed with him in the ward. He´s going to be a great leader!
We met with Yasmina and we finally have been able to teach one of her kids!! The youngest one, 8 yrs old. We taught her how to pray and Yasmina says she wants to start FHE in her home with nightly family prayers. WOW. Plus, they ALL came to church!! The WHOLE family!! With her boyfriend! We were truly blessed yesterday. They liked it, but obviously its still very new for them. 
We had a big challenge this week. We met with Polo, who was baptized but not confirmed and he told us that he had smoked. It´s hard when you´re investigators aren´t truthful at all but we just got to love them. We can´t help them if we dont love them.
We´ve been trying to visit more members to give them challenges. Hermana Caballero had the 21 day plan and we´ve been planning to give them to a couple of members and their family. We met with one young family from brasil and it was really wonderful. They both felt really good about it. They´ve both served missions and they told us it felt good to be doing missionary work. They also said they felt attacked when the missionaries would ask for references so i´m glad that this approach is easier and better for them.

We had a ward activity and we were able to get into pday clothes and i learned some soccer skills. i´m really good at blocking things because of basket ball, but thats really all. We had a great success and were able to get new investigators from it. 

I really do love the mission. It definitely has its up and downs but i really am so blessed to serve these canarians. We were able to talk with Sasha´s family last night, Pino´s family and Loli (?) and her husband. It went really well and we´ll be seeing them soon:) we were able to talk to them about the restoration and they were really open about it. Pino asked a lot of questions about what missionaries do and why. They sang us some canarian songs on the guitar and we sang Nearer my god to thee for them. It went real well :) 

Well, family!! have a good week. hermana caballero just told me that we talk to our family next month and i completely forgot about that!! (not that i would ever forget mothers day....) talk to ya later!

Hermana Smith

Hey speaking of Easter and this lonely missionary. She would love to receive an easter basket with easter goodness!!! AHEM. *cough* *COUGH* HINT·HINT.