Dear Family,
OK, so first off, I had an interview with President Wall this week and it was really really good. We talked about some of the new goals we are having for the mission and he told me some details about transfers and then answered some of my questions. At first we talked about how Elder Perkins had stressed urgency for our mission as well as having more faith to find. So, pretty much we need to be more urgently trying to find people which is something I could really work on, so I'm glad we have some advice from President and some good instruction. After that President talked about transfers and said that he is probably going to put two new Elders in the Jefferson Ward and that Elder Porter is most likely going to be moving somewhere else. I think he is going to transfer to the new area in Jefferson that President is going to open up. So this means I will be staying in Kenner and will be getting a new companion. I'm pretty excited about it and I hope that I can see some cool things happen over the next couple of months. After that he told me that the reason I am here is to strengthen my faith because the soon to be coming future of the church is going to be the toughest it has ever been. That was pretty intense but it really does feel like things are going to change quite a bit in the world. Most of the rest of the week we did just about the usual visiting some of the less actives we see and inviting them to church we did a little bit of tracting and had a few new things that we were able to do.During the day on Thursday we met with Joshua and when we got to his house he asked us if we wanted to go for a bike ride. I thought it was going to be like a super long bike ride so a prepared for the worst. It ended up being just a short ride to the levee and then we sat down on the grass and just talked. It was really peaceful and it was nice to be in a place that we could easily feel the spirit. During the time there he said he would come to church with us on Sunday if we would go to mass with him sometime. we accepted and looked forward to Sunday. Thursday night the ward had a volleyball night which was pretty fun especially since the ward members had invited a few non members to play.they seemed to really like the church and hopefully we will be able to see them again. We would have tried to meet with them but neither of them are in our area. We stopped by the church on Friday morning to help Mo clean and we ended up being there for quite a while. The building has had rats in it so we were trying to clean up the kitchen and just over all do a really deep clean. Saturday was pretty normal, we saw Billy Taylor and he talked to us about his time in the air-force being a Russian translator. He had some pretty interesting stories and he wanted to talk to us so much it was hard for us to leave. Sunday came along and we got to see Josh come to church and he seemed to really like the service but he still is pretty hesitant to accept what we teach and is having a really hard time accepting the Book of Mormon. We are trying to just get him to read and pray about it and when he does I think he will get many of his questions answered. So, this coming week should be very nice because the weather is going to in the 70's and we already have most of our nights scheduled and are getting fed which is always really nice. the biggest news for the coming week will be that Mardi Gras has started so we are figuring out who we are going to go to a parade with. I think we get to go to only one and we have to go with members so that's what we are planning for. We will being going to mass on Sunday as well so it should be pretty interesting to visit my first Catholic service. Well that's just about it, things are going pretty good and like always I'm excited for this coming week.
Love Elder Smith