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| I can still pound it! |
Dear Family and Friends,
Wow thanks for all the letters this week. It took me about 30 minutes just to read them all. Thank you Aunt Paulina, and Caroline, and Grandma for the letters. I’m also really excited to see everything this coming Holiday Season. Speaking of holidays, Mom in one of your letters you asked about Halloween. Well here in Costa Rica there are a lot of super suspicious people and so basically Halloween is considered to be a holiday celebrating Satan . . . which is totally different from how we view it at home . . . Halloween was one of my favorites growing up.
Anyway I hope you all had a lovely week. I’m glad to hear that you are all keeping busy. The best way that I’ve learned to not get lazy is to just stay busy, busy, busy. Landon, I’m glad to hear that your playing Jr. Jazz and I know that your not the most aggressive kid out there, but just keep practicing and you’ll get better. Start watching more basketball (I don’t know when basketball season starts, but watch it.) Julia don’t worry that your coach got mad at you for going for the ball, at least you’re trying hard and that’s all that counts.
I think that the Christlike attribute that I have developed the best in my mission had been patience, because there have been some times where I have wanted to get after people. Especially when I was a zone leader and missionaries didn’t want to do anything but be lazy and not try to help the zone out. But in those moments, I would calm myself down listening to Stormlight by Precious Waters and thinking of an effective solution that didn’t include losing my cool. Dad, keep up the great work and thank you so much for the sacrifices you have made for our family and even though I didn’t always make it easy, I’m very grateful for all that you have and keep doing for us. Mom I think that I need to thank you the most, cause you are basically the only person who has written me every single week for the last two years and I love you letters, mostly cause they are very detailed and tell me what is going on back at home and with the family. Thank you very much, oh and thanks for that picture, cause it was very funny. BTW lax training begins soon and I can’t wait.
So yesterday was a very good Dia de reposo. In church there were a lot of foreigners in attendance and actually I got to translate the whole sacrament meeting for an older gentleman. Translating is a very mind-boggling experience because you have to pay close attention to what is being said, process and translate it in your brain and then say it out loud all as it is happening. So when you screw up, you just have to keep going on, kind of like you just keep going on if you screw up playing the piano during sacrament meeting. It was a fun experience though. One of the people who talked was an foreigner who is on the High Council and he gave a great talk. He talked a little of how we can gain more faith through constant Scripture study and prayer. FYI it is a lot easier to translate from Spanish to English when a foreigner is speaking. Also President and Sister Canga who are part of the temple presidency came to our ward and bore their testimonies because they are going to be finishing up their temple service here. They are really amazing people and actually after church we ate lunch with them. Every Sunday we eat lunch with the Familia Fernandez and they are temple workers and so they also invited Pres. and Sister Canga to eat also and so it was fun to chat with them for a while. They are from Argentina.
So this next week is going to be really fun, because I’m going to be going to La Campiña to do a few baptismal interviews and then Elder Jessop, one of my ZLs, is going to be coming to my area to do divisions with me. Divisions always make the week go by faster and they are always full of awesome, spiritual experiences. BTW last week they changed up my district. Before it consisted of ten Elders, which wa the biggest district in the mission and just a little bit smaller than one of the zones that we have here. But now it is my companion and me and the elders from La Campiña, who are Elder Stevens and his hijo Elder Cuellar. Well I love you all y espero que tengan una linda semana!!!!!!
¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡Les Quiero Mucho!!!!!!! Love Elder Anthony Smith
