Elder Wesley Smith's Letter # 8-August 12, 2011

Como estan! Voy a escribirles sobre mi semana y que ha pasado...

Entonces this week has been probably one of my favorites so far, for one, thanks Mom and Dad for those donuts and Brummers if you’re reading this, super thanks for the pie it was soo good. You're way too nice to me. Tell jean Paul and Grace I say congratulations!

Also, this week I found out I got my $250 ticket taken off so whooo that’s like 50 more cali burritos I can afford when I get home! Another cool thing is I got to go to the Mexican consulate this week, for my visa, all the way to Salt Lake and that was a pretty awesome bus ride. And even better than that is that I got MY TRAVEL PLANS!!!!!!

So here’s how its going to happen on Monday, August 22, I wake up at 6 to take a shuttle to the Salt Lake airport and then my flight leaves at 9:55 and we arrive at Mexico City at 3:00 and my next flight for Merida leaves at 5:05 and I arrive in Merida at around 6:50 so whoop whoop I get to have a lay over in Mexico City for 2 hours so mom and dad you really should send me a go phone with international minutes so I can call you during that time, or at least have dad send me what he thinks is the best idea for me to call you guys because he’s pretty good at the whole traveling thing.

So, if any of my friends or family who are reading this if you want to talk to me one last time for possibly 2 years you should go to my house at what ever time 3 in Mexico City is in San Diego’s time and we can have one last sayonara!

I promise I’ll be happy to hear from you, so all of those of you who have written me thank you, and those of you who haven’t I’m disappointed, nah you're still alright but I do wanna hear from you guys more. *Cough* Brian, Nigel, Garrett, Karch, and etc. haha but seriously.

I heard Karch and Tucker got their mission calls. Tell them I am super proud of them. I didn’t hear where exactly in Brazil Tucker’s going and I still don’t know if Karch is Spanish or English in Fort Lauderdale, because if its Spanish there are quite about 4 other elders on my floor that are going Fort Lauderdale Spanish speaking.

The sacrifice you guys are making is 100 percent selfless but I can tell you right now, as hard and discouraging as it can be, it is worth it and it has already changed my perspective on life in general for the better. As it stands I’m still only in the MTC, but I promise the people in our missions are worth it ,and we are called to our specific missions for a purpose, I’ve heard plenty of cool mission call stories so, I’m going to share one I heard from one of the many devotionals. I heard this from a Mission President’s wife, when they were serving in Colombia.

There was a young man who was waiting on his mission call, but it didn’t matter, he knew he was going to Japan because he was already fluent in Japanese and that was where his father went. However to his surprise when his call came it said Colombia, Bogota Spanish-speaking mission. He knew that that could not be right so he resubmitted his form to the First Presidency; they reviewed it and decided that he definitely needed to serve in the Bogotá Mission. He was extremely disappointed but he still went with it. While in Bogotá he was horrible at Spanish and wasn’t getting a single baptism, he was still 100 percent sure his mission call was wrong. One day about 22 months into his mission he still hadn’t gotten a single baptism and was extremely discouraged. While at a train station an old Japanese man walked up to him and in Japanese asked him if he knew about this book and handed him a book of Mormon. And in Japanese he started telling him how he was a missionary, the old Japanese man invited this young missionary back to his home that evening. When they show up to this old man’s home they found about 65 Japanese family members and friends of this old Japanese man, all sitting and waiting to hear this missionary’s message. All of who couldn’t speak Spanish. The young missionary found that this man had received his book of Mormon from a missionary in Japan. He showed the missionary the testimony written inside of the book. To find out to his astonishment that it was his father who had given the old man that particular book of Mormon over 30 years ago. And ever since then, the old man had moved to Colombia, and has been teaching his family about what he had read. But he had no idea where to find the missionaries until, the day he saw this one missionary who coincidentally knew Japanese. The old man and his family were all eventually baptized.

Ever since I’ve been here I’ve heard probably about 30 stories that have the same underlying theme, that mission calls are not just for the convenience of where missionaries are needed, but are calls by inspiration on where the people need that particular missionary. And if you don’t get a single baptism or if you get 100 just know the most important convert you get is yourself. I’ve already concluded that if I don’t get a single baptism, my mission would still be the greatest blessing in my life so far, because the knowledge I’ve already gained from it is really truly priceless. And as long as some one is slightly closer to Christ’s example that’s all that’s truly important to me.

Well, that’s about all I gotta say about that,

I love and miss you all more than all of the Elder Smith’s in the MTC,

Elder ESMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT

Ps I can’t really think of any you can send me but thanks any way, one more thing, tell Dad to ask if any of the other Smiths were in the MTC, because I swear I recognized someone here from that family reunion in Zion’s canyon and this person also coincidentally had the last name Smith. Sooo bye

Wesley's 7th letter (8-5-2011)

Hey this is the 7th letter whooooo, I wouldn’t know unless looking at the date because the days just kind blur together here.

So, good news: I feel I understand all of the conjugations (in terms of understanding where they go and how they work) for Spanish now and although I’m still a little slow at responding and putting sentences together, I feel I can understand everything the teachers say. From here it’s all just getting used to grammar and vocab. So, I’m pretty much fluent, until I get to Mexico and get creamed! But watch they’re probably going to send me Mayan speaking so these last 2 months won't mean anything haha.

So they have Google maps on the church website. I can look at it here and its crazy because probably 85% of all the villages and towns in the Yucatan have Mayan names instead of Spanish, so I really do think the probability of me at least learning some Mayan is pretty high.

One other quick thought is that: just before the 2012 thing my companion is legitimately concerned about there being riots in the streets and chaos. My theory on that though is that people may get scared of the world ending and if they do they’re gonna want to give religion a second thought, so we're gonna get a lot of baptisms, but kind of for the wrong reason. Another theory is that, Mayans don’t really think the world is going to end and it just turns out there wasn’t enough room on the circle for more dates than 2012. Oh, actually the final theory is that I solve an ancient puzzle at some Mayan temple in the jungle and save the world! But, when I go to tell people about it they will be blissfully unaware that anything happened. I’ll be ostracized and live the rest of my days as a hermit. So just a heads up if the you’re still alive on December 21, 2012, you know who to thank. 


Hey, if any of my friends on facebook are reading this, I really would love to hear from you, I think you’d be surprised just how difficult it is to leave all your friends, family, and worldly things behind for 2 years. So even if its just a news letter saying what’s happening in your life I promise will read it and I promise it’ll make me super happy, even if I don’t have time to write you back I promise I do read and appreciate every letter I get no matter who it's from. 



I only have 2 1/2 more weeks in the MTC until I’m thrown into a foreign country for 22 months, and I couldn’t be happier. So my newsletters should be getting real good in about 3 weeks, so be sure to be reading them.

I still haven’t gotten my visa but I should be getting it next week and I can’t wait for the drive to Salt Lake and to see the world again.

I think I’m going to end every news letter with a cool quote of some kind. I forgot who wrote this but...
"Mind is the Master--power that molds and makes, and Man is Mind, and ever more he takes the Tool of Thought, and shaping what he wills, brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills--He thinks in secret it comes to pass; environment is but his looking glass”

I know dates sups profound breh
. Wow, its incredible how much you miss worldly things when you can't have them haha.

I miss and love all of you more than all of the letters in my Aztecan mission presidents name (Netzuacoyotl Salinas) there’s one for ya mom haha!


Your Mayan missionary, Eldere Esmit

Elder Wesley Smith's letter 6 (July 29, 2011)

Que tal! voy a escribir todas, las cosas que me pasaron esta semana. Entonces, this week was sad because all of our friends from the district left on Monday so gym isn’t half as full as it used to be, and now the dorms are way more reverent...lame.

As of next week were going to be the most experienced district in our dorms. But this Wednesday we should be getting 2 new districts in our dorms and that should be fun to hastle the freshmen, its kind of funny thinking that we will be the most experienced district here at the MTC because we’re kind of like 8th graders thinkin we're the crème of the crop, the top dogs, but in only 2 weeks or so are we going go to high school and learn how “nobody” and inexperienced we are.

In terms of other things that have happened here at the MTC, there have been a few funny developments. Its seems every day we come up with some new game to mildly amuse ourselves, each one stupider than the last. One of our more recently developed games is called vent ball, where its similar to basketball but instead we use a ball a little smaller than a tennis ball and the goal is to throw it in to a vent just above the door in one of my district member’s rooms while people are defending you. Its actually pretty difficult to score and I think were gonna stop playing because its pretty dangerous.



One gross thing, is that there was a kid in the district next to ours who forgot about a banana in his room for about a month and a half, so by the time he found it again the banana had liquefied in its peel, so much that as you turn the banana you can see the bottom fill up and the top empty out thin enough one could use a straw if one wanted to. It was pretty disgusting to say the least, but anyway this kid said if he can make 50 dollars off of it he’d eat it or more or less drink it. With every person on the floor pitching in he made it pretty easy. So I have it on film of this elder drinking a liquefied banana smoothie, it kind of reminded me of a gogurt but less thick, I’m amazed he didn’t throw up because I almost did. 



You know the phrase “you don’t know something good till its gone”, I think that goes for about all worldly things to me, I miss all my family, friends, toys, TV, the beach, etc. But the people of Mexico are worth it. That in no way means I’m unhappy here because I’ve never been able to find so many truths and learn so much about religion.

When I read scriptures now they really have, each one of them, infinite depth. I never realized it until I was here. When I was younger I would often be upset to think that someone could base their life on what a book says, but what I didn’t realize is that it takes a humble mind with open doors, to allow the spirit of truth to shed its light upon you. The scriptures are written in such a way that a child can understand the stories, yet it takes a wise man with intent to understand the meaning. Even Jesus taught in parables and I feel it is the same for most of the scriptural stories, most should be understood with metaphorical significance more than actual literal interpretation, not to say they didn’t happen, but to say more that they have been written for our learning, because the scriptures are more for our personal growth and spiritual maturity than to tell us the literal genesis of earth.

There is my rant of the month if I had more time I promise this would have been 4 times as long haha. I love you all so much but I’m outta time. 



Ps every one write me more letters!

Wesley's 5th letter (July 22, 2011)

Como le va! Good news, today is MTC humpday so I’m now half way through the MTC! Everything is good here it’s my favorite day of the week, Pday, the only day I have time. When you don’t have time, time becomes a beautiful thing!

So, I’ve been limping around a lot lately, because I sprained my ankle pretty bad yesterday playing basketball. I was in a game in the gym, you know doing work on the court, when I got passed the rock, and I was running out and a kid from one of the other courts adjacent ours was doing the same thing and ran into me. When we kind of stumbled and I semi caught myself and twisted my ankle, but halfway down as he was stumbling he accidently stepped on my ankle, thus giving me the limp I have today. I’m just glad I didn’t break it.

About half of my zone in my dorm is leaving on Monday for Paraguay and Argentina so I’m syked for them, but sad at the same time because I had just barely become good friends with some of them.

We’ve committed 2 of our teachers to baptism in our mock lessons so that’s happy news. No one else in our district has any commitments so its kind of a big deal because, the teachers really do try to make it hard on us. Even though we suck at Spanish, they try to reenact people from their missions who they baptized. The first person we committed was a strong Baptist, training to become a Baptist minister, and the other was a devoted atheist, who lost all faith when his wife left him and his son died. Even though they are not legit baptisms and they’re just acting, its cool to see how much it really becomes real and how much we begin to care about these people, and organize our lessons around their personal needs. The new curriculum in the MTC isn’t just to get baptisms, but to train us to learn from the individual, and what we can do to bring them to a better understanding of Christ’s love.

It’s a mutual learning based curriculum, we learn from them as much as they learn from us. That’s why when I get home I hope I have a thick Spanish accent and not remember English, serial necisarrio que padre tranducira por yo. Sorry I’m still working on subjunctive I am still pretty bad at Spanish not quite sure if that’s right.

The scripture I think I want for my plaque is mosiah 12:21-22 wait about a week for me to say for sure.

No hay muchas cosas to talk about, one cool thing I want to pre-warn you about is that while I'm flying out to the mission field if there are any layovers I can make calls. We should figure something out for you guys to send me depending on how my flights are. I should know my flight schedule around 2 weeks before I leave. So get ready to send an international phone card like the day I email you.

Oh yeah, thanks for all the awesome packages I’ve gotten. You guys rock!

I got those Krispy Kremes, the gold fish and every thing, too awesome!

I feel bad it’s taking so long to write everyone back it’s just I have soo little time for anything so I’m super sorry, its pretty sad. So just expect all of my response letters to be sent out on Fridays, so if I get a letter from you on Monday you’re not likely going to get a letter back for a while. So I’m sorry

Wesley's 4th letter (July 15, 2011)

HOLA.

Thank you all so much for all the wonderful letters and "dear elders" I’ve been getting, all those drawings from the primary kids were awesome! And thanks for those packages. I love the photo book I got. I really do love reading about every thing that’s going on in the real world, we don’t hear any news, I’m pretty sure an atomic war could have started and we wouldn’t hear about it. I’m not gonna front, as awesome as sitting in the class room is I would kind of rather be in the mission field. But I’m still happy as I am. I have a lot of time to just ponder things. Now I’m like super profound and stuff, honestly after spending so much time with no distractions. I think this generation is going to be a lot more learned in terms of receiving information from the internet, but a lot less wise, because they have too many distractions, and don’t go out and experience the real world.

But sitting in a classroom for 16 hours every day is kind of unbecoming of wisdom also haha. But it has been helping my Spanish, every time you think your getting better at the language they throw some sort of new rule at us that completely undoes every thing we’ve learned, but I’m still doing pretty decent at it.

So, I forgot to tell you last week that I’m in an expirament group and we have a completely different curriculum than any other missionaries have had, so they are going to see how we do it the field. For instance, the teachers rarely spoke English even on the first day. On the second day we had to teach an investigator in Spanish while barely knowing any. We always have at least three progressive investigators (teachers pretending to be some one from their mission) who don’t speak English and they don’t speak English to explain Spanish grammatical rules, which is pretty frustrating.

2 nights ago we did our first annual tie trading convention, and I got to trade 3 of my missionary mall ties for cooler ties now I have some diversity in my collection and depending on what mood I’m in now I have a tie that matches it!

Ever since I’ve been here I’ve already lost a lot of muscle mass and that’s kind of a bummer. But any ways I’ve been playing soccer every day for gym time, and I’m pretty bad still but I’m learning. I kind of want it to be my sport when I’m older. Oh yeah, I’m the champ at the shuffle board game but its like no big deal.

Sorry, I can’t really think of any thing else to say so this is this weeks news letter, wish there were more exciting things in the MTC.

Wesley's 3rd Letter (July 8, 2011)

Buenas Tardes, como le va!

Sorry, I really do wish I had more to write about but the in MTC not a lot happens haha. I really am sorry but it’s hard to reply to everyone’s questions. I really do miss all of you SOOOO much but I really am always short on time so that’s why I am bad at replying. I’ll at least be able to read your letters if you do the “Dear Elder thing. PLEASE DO THE "DEAR ELDER" thing. IT WORKS SO MUCH EASIER. I really don’t ever have time to read emails and I don’t know any one’s mailing address so dearelder.com works the best, because being here there really is just 3 modes: studying, eating, and sometimes when I'm lucky sleeping,. Even on P-day we still have like 5 hours of classes. Once I’m in Mexico I guarantee I’ll be able to email a lot more. 



So we did the math and these are some of the statistics of how much time we really have, we spend 62 hours a week just in the class room, on top of that about another 12 or 13 hours of devotionals/other churchy things and in the end it equates to about 1 hour of time at the end of the day not directly used for studying, but more for showering, brushing teeth, writing in journal, etc. Although the classes and stuff aren’t that fun that doesn’t mean I’m discouraged or not having fun!

My companion is way sick and we get along pretty well. The same goes for my district. Here’s everyone’s names Elders: White, Nebauker, Alley, and Grindstaff, they are all going to Equador, Elders: Boberg, Metcalf, Kienhenz, and Price are all going to Mexico City East Mission. Elder Wadsworth, Ball, Germaine and I are going to Merida. They all have distinct personalities that make classes and the over all MTC way more awesome sauce! We quote Will Ferrals's version of Harry Carry all the time.

The longer I’ve been here the more I’ve come to realize just how the simple things can keep ones mind entertained. As of last week we’ve started a saltshaker shuffleboard tournament during lunch times. As it stands I’m in the championship match, so keep me in your prayers! But don't worry too much because Elder Boberg doesn’t stand a chance.

In terms of useful sports I’ve been playing a lot of volley ball and a lot of soccer during gym so hopefully I won’t get too killed by the local kids when I get down there. Haha. 



Just last night we found a movable panel in the ceiling of our room and there was a hidden annex filled with bottled messages from our rooms past occupants, one of the messages is even from a group of elders going to brazil in the 1980s ha-ha. 



Hey mom thank you so much for that package you sent me every thing in it was delicious the sad thing is is that those toffee thing you send me melted and tasted weird haha so actually because the MTC feeds us such fatty food, I don’t think sweets are the best idea. Next time you send gold fish send them by the carton because those are worth their weight in silver here.

Maybe a list of my friends addresses, because I want to know what’s up in the hip world. Tell every one I really do miss you all sooooooooooooo much, and tell the nieces and nephew I miss them a lot too:( 


PS hey friends write me letters or I’ll disown you when I get home, no I won’t but I will be sad for the next 2 years.

Wesley's second letter (July 1, 2011)

SUP FAMILY AND FRIENDS,

I REALLY MISS YOU GUYS SO SEND ME MORE LETTERS! But right now I'm just chillin at the MTC with only 30 minutes to type my news letter, so I'll try my hardest to put as much in as possible. The days are going a lot faster and now they're starting to mesh together. As far as Spanish goes I'm doing pretty well, I've earned the nick name amongst my district as "Mr.fluent" which is pretty awesome, in fact we've been doing so much Spanish I'm having a hard time speaking good English now. Its amazing how much Spanish one can learn if they're forced to study it 14 hours a day, ha! I'm still pretty bad though so I'm kind of at the point where I'm bad at both languages. But ya I really do love Spanish. They make us give lessons in Spanish and its pretty tough but I am still enjoying myself.

Its amazing how when you have no other options available the simple things in life become the most entertaining. Some of the guys who have been here for 7 weeks were struck with cabin fever had a rock-paper-scissors tournament needless to say it was the lamest thing I've ever seen. I had a hard time sleeping in my room with the muffled echos of their chants and excitement reverberating off the walls and the back of my eyes, with the madness creeping in on me. I just hope I don't get that desperate for entertainment 5 weeks from now, ha. One other thing is that the food here has gotten better I cannot tell if they're serving better food or if I am just getting used to it, ha.

Sorry mom but it does not let me upload photos to their email so I think I'm just gonna have to send you the memory card in the mail. Sorry I wish there was more to talk about but lets face the facts, not much happens here at the MTC. I really do miss you all!

Your Mexican missionary,

Elder Esmit