Man! It looks like a lot of fun this last week! I’m so glad Addi got to go to the concert! I wasn't surprised at all to see Megs and Katie there. Haha They've probably been camping outside the event center since I left on my mission! They are crazy! I was so excited to hear about Meg’s mission call. She will be an AMAZING missionary. As well I was laughing super hard at the picture Chan emailed me - “Three less lonely boys haha!
So I wanted to thank you all for your emails and pictures. And for your great words of wisdom, Chan. I’m gonna take the advice haha! Thank you for your great testimonies! And I’m sorry you kids have to go back to school! HAHA THAT STINKS! Love you guys!
So we had an awesome week this week. Pretty busy though. There’s not much new that has happened since I emailed just a few days ago, but we had an awesome week at church. Our big family came again and are doing great! They are getting a lot of opposition from the grandma, but are still doing super well. We still need to work with her. As well our girl Sabrina came and LOVED church! She fit in so well with the other kids there and was just glowing afterwards. She is a super special girl and we are super excited for her. She has completely been taken in by one of the member families and she practically lives there now. We have been sooo blessed with these great people to teach.
So I don’t remember if I told you this, but according to the mission, the “north”, Corpus and Sinton, don’t baptize. No one wants to get transferred up here because they all think that it’s too hard to baptize. President even jokes around and calls it The Land of Desolation. But things have changed so much! Our zone is being blessed so much and teaching sooo many great families. I got to go interview one of the families yesterday that live up in Beeville and it was amazing - A family of 8! The parents are members and 5 of the kids are baptismal age. Such a cool story about how the parents fell away and after 20 years of complete inactivity, they said a prayer for God to help them get back to an LDS church. The next day the missionaries were walking down the street and saw a big scary looking guy with a beard and tattoos and the Spirit told them to go talk to him. Now just a month later, next week all the kids will be baptized.
There are so many stories that have touched my heart and strengthened my testimony. I don’t know how anyone could forget them, or say that it was just coincident, because there are no coincidences. The Lord is very involved in even the finest details of all our lives.
So here’s my bit of "wisdom" if you wanna call it, for you guys. It’s something that has been on my mind a lot. It’s the principle of a testimony. We were told by Elder Shwitzer from the 70 that a testimony can never be stationary or stay the same. I’ve been thinking a lot about that and have decided that EVERY second of the day our testimony is either being strengthened or weakened. Everything we do either increases our faith and our Spirit or it destroys it. It’s never stationary and we can never just fly to Mexico and sit back on a lawn chair and say, "I’ve finally got my testimony right where I want it." So I’ve been thinking about everything I do throughout the day. Everything I say, every thought that goes through my head, every joke I make, it effects us. ALOT! And the question I’ve been asking myself is "Is this gonna make my testimony meter go up or go down?”
I know that everything you guys are doing is making it go up!! Cus you’re a perfect family!!! haha But I thought I would share that with you in hopes that maybe that question will pop into your mind right before you do something crazy at a Justin Bieber concert haha! (Mom!)
Haha I love you guys all so much. I’m so grateful for your testimonies and for being soo great! I love you all!
Have a great week and ECHELE GANAS!
Love Elder Smith
