Looking up!

Dear Family,
So this week has been the best week as far as progress and new exciting things go. We were able to see a part member family come to church and prior in the week managed to get a baptism date set with the Father in the family. After sacrament meeting they had lots of questions and seemed to us that they really could feel the Spirit as everyone in the Ward bore testimony about the Restoration and to me it seemed like each testimony had something that the Father needed to hear. The whole family was excited for this week and we have set up appointments with them every couple of days. Its been really amazing to see this explosion of enthusiasm and we have just felt wonderful about their decision. Along with teaching this family we spent lots of time trying to find new people to teach, going through old investigators that other missionaries had taught along with knocking on a good number of neighborhoods. We are also getting excited, for in about two weeks from now, Elder Perkins from the first Quorum of the Seventy is coming to visit our Stake. So that should be pretty exciting. Apparently the missionaries in my zone ( New Orleans zone) have been invited or volunteered ( probably the latter) to sing at a Martin Luther King Jr celebration. We will be having choir practice every Saturday, so that seems to be something that will be a bit different. The weather here today is quite unpleasant and tomorrow is probably going to be about the same. The good news is that it should only last a couple days and then be back into the sixties. We have a baptism in the Ward this Saturday so we are starting to make preparations for that. The sister missionaries are the ones who have been teaching the young girl and the rest of her family is less active and starting to come to church. One really sweet thing that happened this week was a less active member who we visit occasionally gave each of us 50 dollar gift cards to a nice restaurant so we have been looking forward to eating there. We have been getting fed way more and generally now have a meal appointment every night. We seem to have had just a really great week and now we are hoping we can keep the momentum up and have another good week coming up! Our only concern is the super cold weather!
Love Elder Smith

  Dear Family,
This week was quite slow. Many of the people that we generally visit were too busy due to the holidays and it rained the entire day on Saturday. We did manage to meet a new person that we were pretty excited about and we are looking forward to next week and meeting again. The Sisters in our ward have a baptism coming up in the next couple of weeks so we have been trying to help them out as best as we can. They are teaching the daughter of a less active and are just trying to get the mother to go to church so that her daughter can get baptized. The sisters are getting really nervos about it and we are just hoping they dont get too stressed about the whole thing. We are now looking forward to Mardi Gras and the beggining of craw fish season. It seems like there is a holiday or crazy event happening at least once a month. the members are getting pretty excited for craw-fish season and they almost seem more excited for that than they were for the past few holidays we had. I guess thats really all thats been exciting about the past week nothing really has happened since Wednesday. The coming week should be pretty good!

Love,
Elder Smith

Dear Family,
Well, this week we have been pretty good! We have done quite a bit of service and have had a lot of meetings. Tuesday we had a Christmas devotional put together by President and Sister Wall. It was just a nativity story but from the Book of Mormon instead of the New Testament. They fed us and gave us all little Christmas gifts so it was a pretty fun time. Wednesday and Thursday we spent our time at the Reitz and were putting a peel and stick wood floor down. We had quite a bit of fun and they sure appreciated all that we have helped them with over the past few months. On Friday I went on an exchange with one of the zone leaders Elder Provost. We were in Harahan seeing some of the people they have been teaching. We had a pretty good time and met some very interesting people. That night was the Ward Christmas party and we were very surprised by how many people showed up. Saturday we had district meeting and then went to eat as a district. District meeting day are usually really good because we all go to eat together at one of the hole in the walls and enjoy the different food! We visited a less active in the evening and while there I got pooped on by a bird. It was pretty annoying and just reminded me of when I got pooped on by a seagull in Kindergarten. Oh well. while we were visiting with him his elderly neighbor came over and gave us all these huge pears that she said she got in the mail. She wanted to tell us about a time that she hired a lawyer to help her with something who turned out to be a Mormon and she just said he was a hoot. It definitely cheered us up to see someone who likes us and just really made our day. Last night was kind of a bummer because it was really rainy. Church was really good and pretty much every member that is going to be in town during Christmas has invited us over. But most of all im excited for Wednesday! Merry Christmas everyone!
Love Elder Smith

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