Dear Family and Friends,
Hello everyone I hope you all had a good week. Julia I hope you have a Happy Birthday on Thursday--enjoy your ice cream cake. Spencer who is gone now, I hope he has fun on the Jamboree. I can't believe it has been 5 years since I went on the jamboree.
Okay so this week has been really crazy! First, I now have 8 months in the mission, Yay!! Time sure does fly when your having fun and I had a lot of fun this week. Okay so last Monday for P-day we went paintballing. It was the funnest P-day I've had in the mission. We got permission from President so we didn't break any rules, if you were wondering. So my whole district went and there are 10 missionaries and so we played two teams of 5. Well it was a super fun activity and we are going to do it again next month.
Well Tuesday night was really crazy. Okay, first of all this month, the mission cut out about $30 from my companion and me. This month we have also started working in the outer parts of the area because we basically have knocked every door in the center. So this means that we have had to use a lot more buses and taxis. So I have run out of money this month and I only have enough for buses and taxis. So Tuesday night after we finished a lesson I decided to go to the ATM that is just around the corner from our house. Well, I pulled out some money and we were just about to turn around the corner and we heard something that sounded like a gunshot. Well I've heard this sound a lot, but it's usually a car or a motercycle backfiring . . . but I always say, "Sounds like someone got shot!" So we turn back around the corner to head home and there are two guys running down the street and one of them starts shooting at the other guy right in front of our house. Elder Vallejo and I stay back around the corner and wait for the shooting to stop. Well luckily nobody died and when we walked back to our house the cops were arresting the guy with the gun. So just think, if I wouldn't have run out of money, I wouldn't have had to go to the ATM and if I hadn't gone to the ATM, we would have been right in front of our house when the shooting started and someone (AKA my companion and me) could have gotten hurt. So it just goes to show that the Lord works in mysterious ways to keep people safe.
We are also having lots of success in the area. We aren't going to baptize anyone this month, but next month we should have at least 5. We are working with a lot of less active families that have children who aren't baptized. We are working on reactivating those families so thier children can be baptized. Also we are finding lots of old investigators that the missionaries who were here 3 years ago were teaching. We found one lady named Anasicilia. The missionaries were teaching her and even put a baptisimal date with her and her son, but then the area got closed. So now we are teaching her again and we will probably put another baptismal date this week or the next. Also we are teaching 2 young girls who are friends of a member here. They come from families with lots of problems and they themselves have problems with drugs and other things and they are only 15 years old.
So thank you for the package and the suit, Yay it fits me. Also thanks for the journals, I'm going to put a picture of the baptisms in the journals too so I will probably give them to the members this week or the next. I love you all sooo much and I hope you all have a wonderfull week! Love, Elder Smith
