Stake Christmas Party

Well this week was mostly full of service and only a few lessons. The service that we have been doing is working in a members home remodeling a room that they added on to their house. We have been working on it for a few months now and other than like one thing that needs to be done we are finished. The coming week is going to be similar to last week because we have some service lined up that might take a while and we also have lots of meetings for Christmas and most of our members are leaving so we wont be able to visit with them. The most interesting thing we did this week was go around to the houses in the neighborhood around the church and invite people to the Stake Christmas party. They sent us out two hours before it started, so we weren't expecting much success and also we were missionaries so most people would just say no without us saying anything haha. It was raining like crazy so we just had to have fun with it. the Christmas part was pretty interesting and not a lot of people showed up. About half of the people who show up to events the church sets up are missionaries. In church this Sunday we sang in the Choir and so that was really interesting and I hope the Ward was able to tolerate us singing. We didnt have much practice at all. right now our best bets at anyone to progress is he part member families in our area and so we are trying to reactivate the members and teach the nonmembers. Its going to be an interesting week so hopefully we can keep up good spirits! Today we are planning to go on a bike ride on the levee along lake Pontchartrain. Were hoping it warms up some more so we can have a nice ride. We met some incredibly nice people this week but they just arent interested in learning about the church. The hardest thing we have to deal with is the lack of education in some of the people we teach creates a barrier for us to make sure they understand everything. But also the people who are educated seem to know for themselves and wont listen to two inexperienced young men. We are getting excited for Christmas especially to call home. Well I know the church is true and that Christ is my Savior. When I rely on him everything seems to work out. Well family keep smiling and have a very merry Christmas!
Love, 

Elder Smith

Foggy Lake Pontchartrain

Dear Family,
This week was just about the same as every other week except that we saw fewer people and did a lot more riding of our bikes. So, I will just talk about some notable events that happened this week. First off, on Tuesday we were in charge of the Family History Center and one lady showed up to make a Christmas gift for her brother in law. She wasn't a member so, it was a really good experience to be able to help her find so much information and help out as best we could. She really appreciated it because when she was leaving she offered to buy us pizza, we had already eaten so we just said we were full. On Friday Brother Ferrell took us to chik filet and when we were leaving the mall he tried to spin cookies on the wet parking lot. It was pretty wild because he has a massive truck and we just had quite the exciting ride. On Saturday we went to the temple with Bro Jennings and after he took us to eat at the cracker Barrel. We watched the Christmas devotional on Sunday then watched it again Monday with Bro Jennings. We've rode our bikes so much this week and just kind of struggled to see anybody. The people that we met with were most of our usual's that aren't really progressing and everyone else wasn't available. We are hoping this coming week will be better especially because we have a little bit more open schedule than last week. Its starting to feel more like Christmas and the only thing thats missing is family and snow! haha I'm doing well and working hard! Sometimes we want to get discouraged with things but the easiest thing is just to remember all of the good things instead of the bad. Most of the time when we aren't happy with the way things are going or are discouraged we just are focusing too much on the negative and not enough on the positive. I have found out that the positive always outweighs the negative. Well I love and miss you all and hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!

Love Elder Smith

Thanksgiving

Dear Family,
Well this week really flew by.  I was really surprised by how cold it got! I have been so used to being able to ride around in a short sleeve shirt that I didn't really know how to handle the cold weather.. especially on bikes. Thankfully we were able to go buy some warmer clothing and now we feel much better prepared for some of the inevitable cold weather that we will have. But I really shouldn't be complaining because it sounds like ya'll are going to have some really cold weather in the next couple of days! Below freezing weather sounds miserable! On Wednesday we were able to visit with a less active sister who has a nonmember husband. She said that she put on Facebook that she just loves it when the missionaries come by and she said they always come by right when she needs them. Her mom had "liked" the statement and the less active sister has started to really have a desire to change her life and try to get back to church. Her goal right now is to, in the near future, be able to go to the temple and hopefully get sealed to her family. We have been really excited to see her progress and we hope one of these days she can start the habit of coming to church. Another thing that happened Wednesday was that we met with our Vietnamese lady and she gave us loads of interesting food to take home! She gave us a bag of Oriental noodles a couple bags of beans and a huge box of tangelos. WE gave the oranges to one of the members and he definitely appreciated them. We got a referral for the Mayor of Kenner Mr. Mike Yenni and we emailed and called him so hopefully in the next little while we can hear from him and see if he wants to be taught. Apparently some missionary was sitting next to him on a plane and talked to him and got his information. We have been really excited about that and it has definitely gotten some of the ward members a little more excited about missionary work.Our Thanksgiving was interesting because we didn't have a real Thanksgiving dinner. It was dirty rice, stuffed mirlitons, green bean casserole, cornbread dressings, meatballs, creamy corn, and macaroni. We also got some leftovers which was really good and had a pretty good day. It was sure odd not being around family for the Holiday, but it wasn't  too bad. Well, other than that, our week has been pretty uneventful. We are trying to find some new people to teach and have definitely been blessed with how many referrals we have gotten. we have found a couple through tracting but we really need to teach some people that are invited by members. Whoever we teach is most hesitant to come to church because they do not have a friend or someone they know o help them out and answer questions. We try the best we can but it would just work better if the members invited people they know to be taught by us. We were talking about that in coordination meeting and we feel like the missionary effort in our Ward is split in half with the missionaries teaching the peole we find and the members giving people Book of Mormons and sharing scriptures but never inviting us to teach. So that is something we are going to try to work on. We also decorated out apartment and it looks pretty sweet haha. Well that's all for this week and I love and miss everyone! Keep smilin!
Love Elder Smith