Visiting with members and less actives

Dear Family,
Well this week has been a really good time. It was kind of interesting because we didn't meet with any investigators or do service. All of our time was spent visiting with members and less actives. Quite a few of the less actives have family that are active and I really hope we can help them in getting these people to get back to church and praying. On Tuesday night we had another dinner with the brother Ferrell and we went with the zone leaders. They happened to be on exchanges that night so the new Elder was Elder Murula from the Congo. He had only been out for about a week so it was pretty fun to be around a new missionary. After the dinner Bro Ferrell took us into his cousins room and showed off a collection of LOTR swords that his cousin had. I thought it was pretty great so i took some pictures. Wednesday we bought some sweaters since I have been getting a little cold and then we went to see some members throughout the day. Thursday was a really good day because we had interviews with President Wall. In my interview we talked a lot about how the mission is and then just life stuff. President Wall is a great guy and just makes you feel like a million bucks when you talk to him. Near the end of the day we went to see a less active who just complained to us about Republicans and Romney. I had a really hard time but I had to just grin and bear as he lectured us for about an hour and a half. It was quite the lesson! The rest of the week we just went around to a lot of member and less active homes and tried to find more people to teach. We were excited to see progress in some of our less actives since they had started to read the Book of Mormon more regularly and start to see their desire to come back to church grow. Quite a few of them were nervous about coming back to church mainly because they just feel like the people who are active will look down on them for not having come to church for so long. We are trying o get members in the lessons with us but is kind of a struggle. We got a call from the second counselor on the Bishopric on Saturday night asking me to talk on Sunday so I gave a talk yesterday about member missionary work. It made me really glad I did speech and debate so that I can talk without much preparation. We went home teaching with the bishop last night and it is just funny to be around him. Bishop Brown is only 28 and is studying to be an actor so ya. Today we are planning to go out to eat with the missionaries in our district so we are looking forward to that. Things in Kenner are going really good and Elder Porter and I are having a good time!
Love Elder Smith