McKinsey returning home and speaking

Hello everybody.

McKinsey will be returning home on Aug 29. She will be speaking in our church services at 11:00am Sunday Aug 31. 15782 Farmway Rd, Caldwell, ID.

You all are invited to attend. We will be having an open house that afternoon that you are also invited to attend.

We can't wait!

Love,

Ken and Vicky

August 11, 2014

Hola familia! 

how´s the week going?? hope all is swell and well. This weeks been hot hot hot and i´m ready for air conditioning. 

Our new companion is Hermana Mattson! She´s a sweet thing from Oregon and she actually had a birthday on thursday! we made her breakfast in bed and we ate lots of sugar that day :D She turned 27! she´s going to be an engineer. quite interesting! We´re having a lot of fun with all this. Honestly we haven´t had any problems of being in a trio. We´ve always heard these horror stories but we´re doing great and Hermana Mattson is such a sweet missionary!! She came with a strong testimony and its so sweet to hear her bear testimony to the investigators! Literally, its the best thing ever. She has no fear, honestly, and tries to do her best. We´re very lucky to have her as our companion. she helps me remember the little things that are important. 

We had an amazing lesson with a man named Francois and he wants to get baptized! The spirit was so strong in the lesson and at the end he prayed!! This was our 3rd or 4th visit with him and he was always ashamed to pray in public but he prayed at the end of that lesson! It was such a blessing to be in that lesson. 

Man, its weird to think that all of this will end in a few short days. Hermana Hansen wrote me to tell me that i just needed to have fun and thats just what i´ll do :) obviously, we´ll still follow the rules (duh) but i´m gonna eat my heart out with all this nice european food! AKA pastries, ice cream, chocolate, etc. ¡VIVA POSTRES!

Love ya! 

Hermana Smith

August 4, 2014

Hey family! 

happy birthday dad! we celebrated by eating peanut butter and eating homemade oreo ice cream. we enjoyed it a lot ;) 

I´ve been showing off all my sobrino pictures and they all say oohhh and aahhhh. its quite adorable :) 

Also, are you excited?! we have another baby!! you´re all uncles and aunts and grandpas and grandmas again! We have a new baby missionary! 

yep! We´re training! Quite exciting. A breath of fresh air. 

But it was a good week! We´re really starting to get around well with the area and especially with the investigators. We´re still cleaning out the old and bringing in the new and life´s just great. We are very blessed to be here in Alcalá, serving these people. My areas are definitely sacred grounds to me.

Something we´ve been discussing a lot was our manner of being as missionaries-whether serious, cheerful, etc. And we came to the conclusion that we needed to use the example of the Saviour, but also of our mission president. President Jackson is this super happy and goofy guy and we all are smiling around him. we just can´t help it!! Sometimes, with an awesome mission president like him, we´d think that the leaders would join. We have heard many stories of leaders using angry words or yelling, etc. and we obviously don´t appreciate that. Something i have learned that there is noooo excuse to be angry (in most occasions) and we should always smile and love. I´ll be taking that as a goal for these next few weeks and for the rest of my life. Its a really good Christ-like attribute. 

Well family i love you!! thanks for your letters!!

love, Hermana smith.