Wesley's Letter 6-3-13

Hey Family and Friends,

I’ve got big news. This will be my last full week to serve in my mission so I thought it would be appropriate to share my testimony that this mission I’ve been serving has been by far the most significant event of my life. I’ve never before had so many perspective changing occurrences. If we compared those first 19 years and these last 2 years of my life I feel like I have had more significant and defining moments in these last 2 years than in all of the other 19 years combined.

This week we had been looking for some people that some other missionaries had been teaching, that had moved into our area. The other missionaries had given us the reference to where the people had moved to but not the exact direction, so we went looking in vain, and unfortunately we didn’t find their house.

Then about 3 nights ago we were on our way home after a long day and a guy in a van pulled up next to us and tells us that he had been looking everywhere for us, and that his wife was deathly ill. He told us to get in so that we could go and give her a blessing. Normally it’s a bad idea to get in some random guys van but this time we saw the sincerity and fear he had in his eyes. So we got in and he took us to his house.

It was a little plywood 2 room house with banana trees in front, with a small light bulb hanging in front, illuminating the dirt porch, flickering with mosquitoes and moths that were dancing all about it. When we went inside and we found a moaning, sweating figure hunched in her hammock with a blue moist towel on her forehead. The man said that she had been sick for 2 months but only just that day had she fainted and the fever had progressed to the point where she couldn’t even sit up or speak. They had gone to the hospital but they couldn’t find a cause for the sickness. So the man had gotten real worried and figured if anyone could save his wife it was God. That was when he had decided to look for the missionaries. After searching for about 2 hours he found us walking to our house.

So for the blessing he asked his wife to sit up, but she couldn’t even manage to move her shoulder and she just kind of moaned. For the blessing my companion anointed her head with oil and from there I put my hands upon her head and gave her a blessing. I don’t remember all of the words but roughly I said that "...according to and through the faith and diligence that you and your family have in preparing for making higher covenants with God, He will strengthen your debilitated knees and raise you in this same night..."
After finishing the blessing we asked the man his name and found that they were the very people we had been looking for. We left them a chapter to read in the Book of Mormon and we made an appointment for the next day to see how things were going.

The next day when we arrived and the same lady that we had given the blessing to answered the door 100% healthy, almost as if she hadn’t been sick at all. We all sat down and we asked them how things went. They said that right after we had left they started reading the scriptures and praying. While the husband Enrique and the sister-in-law Daivis were reading, the wife Marley stood up with no evidence of having been sick at all.

Then that same night we taught them the doctrine of Christ and all 3 of them now have baptismal dates for the Sunday after I get home.

In the mission, stories like this aren’t out of the norm. But I realize that getting home things like this will never happen again with such a constant occurrence and so I’m so very grateful for my time here, to not just be sitting on the bleachers but to be actually participating in miracles. I know these things are true because in these 2 years of putting it to the test I haven’t seen any evidences of it not being true. Every time the gospel is put to the test it always delivers.

I love you all and I’ll see you in 10 days,
Elder Smith

Wesley's Letter 5-27-13

Hey, so guys, this week I gave what was my last talk in a Spanish speaking ward in the mission. I felt it went pretty well. I pretty much could have improved it but I got a lot of compliments for it so that was nice.

Yeah, so in prep for me coming home my comp and I went shopping. I bought some sweet new shirts and everything so I am going home in style!

My comp and I have been working real hard. I’m sad to say most of the baptisms we were hoping for are most likely not going to happen because a lot of people are living in unionses libres. But no biggy there’s one more kid I’ve got my hopes on to be the last baptism for the mission and actually seems interested in serving a mission so that’d be chill.

This time the pictures loaded faster than I could write plus we just switched to a different Internet cafe because the other one was pretty cruddy.

Even though I might not be able to be here for every person that I taught to get baptized, I still am very grateful to have had the opportunity to serve for these 2 years and be able to serve as a harvester and a sower (1Corinthians 3:6-8) I’m just happy to have been able to participate in this work. I know the seeds planted in this mission will bare many fruits in future generations to come. There’s a saying that goes you can count how many seeds there are in an apple, but you can’t count how many apples are in a single seed.

I’m outta time g2g,
SMIT

Wesley's Letter 5-20-13

Hey Family,

How are we all doing? I'm doing fine. We had a pretty productive week, actually one of most productive weeks since I've been in Chetumal. Just this last week we found 17 new investigators and have quite a few progressing. I might not be able to be here when the majority get baptized but at least I will have done my part.

In terms of some super spiritual stories, this week we haven't had too many. All of the people we've been teaching have been having more of a gradual progression.

Mostly this week we just went around contacting references. One interesting thing is that my comp and I thought our hair was too long so we went and cut it so I'll be going home with a real short cut.

Holy crud the suns been burning bright these last few weeks and man am I tan! Every day I put on sunscreen but it really is a merciless on slot.

This week also a member took us out to lunch and guess where we went? To the zoo. It was pretty sweet, It's acually a pretty legit zoo.

If you wanna know something crazy I just got my real itinerary and I'm flying from here to Houston then at 11ish I'm going to San Diego in a boeing 373 and am arriving at 12:47 in the afternoon, which is pretty legit because most missionaries that go stateside, due to lay overs, get home at eight or nine. But I will have pretty much all day to do stuff, cool beans.

Welp I g2g. It's been fun!

Love you all and see you in 3 weeks.

Wesley's Letter 5-13-13

Hey famers how are things going?

It was super awesome berries talking to yall yesterday. I’m glad I’ll get to see you all in a month. Things here are going pretty good. My comp and I have been working pretty hard but with the summer heat waves coming in, almost no one wants to talk to us because they’re all stressed out from the heat, and all we want is to come in because we dying of heat outside haha!

So amongst the interesting things that have been going on here is that most of the people were teaching are living together and not married so we're trying pretty hard get all of their paper work together. So that is really the only thing holding us back here from baptizing. One of the guys I’m teaching right now is actually a member but his girlfriend isn’t, so they need to get married before she can get baptized and they’re almost ready. However, what makes this case interesting is that the guy recently had a stroke and it was pretty serious, but he’s getting better. One of the side effects is that he has kind of the same thing that Drew Barrymore had in the movie “50 First Dates”. Every night when he sleeps his mind erases almost all of his memories from the day before.

One night while he was out of it, he took his ID and other important documents for the wedding and hid it. Then the next morning he had completely forgotten where he had hidden them. So the next day we just went around his room looking for it and that was when I put that mascot mask on that he had. The family later found it but they had to do some looking haha! They hid the documents from him so he could not do that again.

Sorry, I’m all outta time.

But I love you,

Elder Smith

Wesley's Letter 5-6-13

Hey family,

So yep, I’m officially in Chetumal. My new area is called Morelos, and the Ward’s pretty in terms of being an interesting area, it’s not really but there is quite a bit of work, which is good. I should be finishing my mission baptizing.

The zoo is in my area, which is pretty cool. Another cool thing is that there was a baptism this week. Her name is Mari Cruz. We're going to marry her brother and his girl friend this next week and baptize them also.

So, I still don’t have the phone # yet for you but I’ll get it for you. Actually this time their going to let us do the call by Skype so I’m not sure if you’d rather do that because we can now either way. I’ll get a phone number for you if for some reason Skype doesn’t work because the internet connections here are usually pretty bad. But don’t worry I’ll figure it out by at most Friday. the phone call is going to be at around 4:00 on Sunday so you’ll know by that time I promise.