Sup Famers,
How are we all doing on this fine méridence ev'n?
I just barely got back from doing laundry and grocery shopping for the week. Looks like were on a heavy generic brand "Asucaradas" cereal diet, whoop whoop, nah. You’d be surprised, besides all the cereal, I have become quite the master chief here. The way I make my habanero omelets, lips be moistening and fingers be get'n bit'n.
Any who, so on my way here today from washing clothes and buying groceries, my comps and I (I’m in a trio right now) were getting on the bus heading back towards the offices. I had just barely gotten on and suddenly I noticed the bus starting up and the door closing while my comps were still outside. I was like " Hey why didn’t you let them on?" he said that “they had taken too long getting on." So, I was all like "let me off! I can’t leave without my comps, and he just kept speeding up and said "pay me first... ¡Ya que subiste paga me primero y te dejo bajar!” For those of you that don’t speak Spanish that means "you already got on the bus, you need to pay me before I let you off” needless to say we had only gone like 10 feet when he told me that, so I got a little mad and told him to stop the bus, but he was refusing to until we had gone like 5 blocks! I had to get off so I gave him 2 pesos instead of the 6 he was trying to get out of me and he finally let me off. I had the last laugh though because I had dropped one of the pesos on the ground so I knew he’d have to go fishing for it. That guy was a perfect example of the extortion that sometimes exists around here.
This week’s been pretty chill-i-pepper! We’ve been teaching a lot more lessons and over all a lot more people have been progressing. In fact we should have quite a few baptisms this next week. Best-case scenario 6, maybe worst like 3. The reason why is because the person we were teaching is super ready with her 2 daughters, but she’s not sure if her husband will let her. Her husband does NOT like us haha, so everyone keep your fingers crossed and pray.
Our investigators have been having a lot more real intent on knowing if all of this is true or not, and because of that the spirit has been a lot more strong during the lessons. Everyone recently has been telling us that everything we tell them has been like we’re mind readers. The stuff we tell them is like a premonition to what their following question would have been. Until people have basically told us straight up, "I NEED TO BE BAPTISED"
Anyways I love you all and I love the letters and packages I get.
Much love,
Smitty
Ps Mom please send me a skinny blue tie for one of my good Mexican friends.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Wesley's Letter 9-15-12
Hey Famers,
I’m sorry I’ve been writing soo little recently, but don’t worry this will longer.
Things are going well here. We’re improving the work right now. Everything is actually looking up for us to have a lot of baptisms for the next few weeks.
It’s been pretty crazy this last week because Elder Alonzo, a Seventy, has been going all around the mission telling us how we can improve and stuff. A new Elder showed up in the middle of it all of it so while President didn’t have time to find him his trainer, he hung out with us in the offices. And because my old companion was training my new one and on top of that another missionary got sick and is having to stay in the offices for a while, we became officially the largest companionship in the entire mission. There were 5 of us, but two of them left for their new areas today so now it looks like we are a trio, Elder Barrow and Elder King and I. They're both from Texas.
One kind of funny story is that while were in the middle of eating on Thursday I got a call giving me the heads up that the Seventy and President Salinas were heading to the offices that afternoon, after finishing taking pictures at a zone conference, so I realized that the offices were a huge disgusting pig site, so after eating I went screeching back to the offices making everything beautiful by cleaning up trash and picking up thrown clothes. After all of that got done, I was rushing with all my might because I knew if they saw me there cleaning I would of gotten worked, being the one now in charge of the offices. After about 10 minutes of speed cleaning I ran back to the area. I just thought it was kind of funny because afterward President complimented us on how the Seventy thought everything was really clean. (Just the offices themselves were pretty ugly haha.)
It’s been cool seeing all of the progression in my area. Yesterday we had a huge ward activity for Mexican Independence day and it was pretty cool. We brought about 15 investigators and they all liked it a ton. It was all super Yucatecan themed with all the little kids running around in their upiles and Guayaveras. They cooked about 15 kilos of meat, making some pretty good tacskis. Just over all a cool experience.
A cool spiritual experience is that we as missionaries really do have the authority to promise blessings. Yesterday we promised this one lady she would get a specific response to her question. Her question was if she should keep her baptism a secret from her family or not; including a secret from her children. We told what she should do, (to tell them) but also told her that if she read from the Book of Mormon and then prayed about it she would get her question answered. She prayed and then that same night had a dream of her being with her recently deceased sister who tells her to go and help her two children because they were falling away. Then the next day she said that while she was making breakfast for her kids and thinking of her dream both of them randomly came running up and hugged her and said they loved her. Cool eh? We have her baptism planned for this next week.
Mom, I loved my package. Those cookies were soo good and the new shoes are the best! Yesterday was the first rainstorm of my entire mission where my feet didn’t get wet.
Love you all tons,
Smith out
I’m sorry I’ve been writing soo little recently, but don’t worry this will longer.
Things are going well here. We’re improving the work right now. Everything is actually looking up for us to have a lot of baptisms for the next few weeks.
It’s been pretty crazy this last week because Elder Alonzo, a Seventy, has been going all around the mission telling us how we can improve and stuff. A new Elder showed up in the middle of it all of it so while President didn’t have time to find him his trainer, he hung out with us in the offices. And because my old companion was training my new one and on top of that another missionary got sick and is having to stay in the offices for a while, we became officially the largest companionship in the entire mission. There were 5 of us, but two of them left for their new areas today so now it looks like we are a trio, Elder Barrow and Elder King and I. They're both from Texas.
One kind of funny story is that while were in the middle of eating on Thursday I got a call giving me the heads up that the Seventy and President Salinas were heading to the offices that afternoon, after finishing taking pictures at a zone conference, so I realized that the offices were a huge disgusting pig site, so after eating I went screeching back to the offices making everything beautiful by cleaning up trash and picking up thrown clothes. After all of that got done, I was rushing with all my might because I knew if they saw me there cleaning I would of gotten worked, being the one now in charge of the offices. After about 10 minutes of speed cleaning I ran back to the area. I just thought it was kind of funny because afterward President complimented us on how the Seventy thought everything was really clean. (Just the offices themselves were pretty ugly haha.)
It’s been cool seeing all of the progression in my area. Yesterday we had a huge ward activity for Mexican Independence day and it was pretty cool. We brought about 15 investigators and they all liked it a ton. It was all super Yucatecan themed with all the little kids running around in their upiles and Guayaveras. They cooked about 15 kilos of meat, making some pretty good tacskis. Just over all a cool experience.
A cool spiritual experience is that we as missionaries really do have the authority to promise blessings. Yesterday we promised this one lady she would get a specific response to her question. Her question was if she should keep her baptism a secret from her family or not; including a secret from her children. We told what she should do, (to tell them) but also told her that if she read from the Book of Mormon and then prayed about it she would get her question answered. She prayed and then that same night had a dream of her being with her recently deceased sister who tells her to go and help her two children because they were falling away. Then the next day she said that while she was making breakfast for her kids and thinking of her dream both of them randomly came running up and hugged her and said they loved her. Cool eh? We have her baptism planned for this next week.
Mom, I loved my package. Those cookies were soo good and the new shoes are the best! Yesterday was the first rainstorm of my entire mission where my feet didn’t get wet.
Love you all tons,
Smith out
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Wesley's Letter 9-8-12
Sup Famers,
Sorry this letter still won’t be as long as I would like it to be because I don’t have much time. But here’s some super sweet news, my new companion is named Elder Barrow. He is from Texas and he’s a pretty funny guy.
Other cool news is that I am now the office leader or the district leader in the offices and is pretty chill sauce. Any way so this last week a lot of crazy things happened. The distribution center in Mexico ran out of pamphlets and agendas so they never sent it to us on time, so a lot of the mission is running around without pamphlets and it was probably my biggest blunder.
Don’t worry the work is going golden!
Because I’m out of time I’ll end with this wisdom.
An ounce of help is better than a pound of preaching.
Later,
Elder Smith
Sorry this letter still won’t be as long as I would like it to be because I don’t have much time. But here’s some super sweet news, my new companion is named Elder Barrow. He is from Texas and he’s a pretty funny guy.
Other cool news is that I am now the office leader or the district leader in the offices and is pretty chill sauce. Any way so this last week a lot of crazy things happened. The distribution center in Mexico ran out of pamphlets and agendas so they never sent it to us on time, so a lot of the mission is running around without pamphlets and it was probably my biggest blunder.
Don’t worry the work is going golden!
Because I’m out of time I’ll end with this wisdom.
An ounce of help is better than a pound of preaching.
Later,
Elder Smith
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Wesley's Letter 9-1-12
Sorry Mommy the juicy letter I promised you last week won’t be quite as juicy as I might have promised.
So here’s this week: it’s been pretty hectic as usual, working hard in the offices and improving office space moral and productivity haha.
But in my area we’ve been finding a whole lot more people willing to get baptized, so after a no-baptism fast of 6 weeks, we should be getting back at it and baptizing more consistently. We’ve been finding all kinds of new investigators, all with cool backgrounds. There is this one cool cat that were teaching that a few years back was in the process of becoming a Catholic priest. Now he is living with a less active member and for that he lets us come over to teach him. Our lessons with him are always pretty cool because he knows a ton. So, I’ll tell you how everything goes with him.
Yeah, so this transfer has gone by fast, can you believe it’s been 6 full weeks since I left Champoton? Also, since then almost all of the other important people I was teaching there have gotten baptized, including Yadira’s daughter! Now a lot of my converts there have gotten callings and have stayed true!
I’m sorry this is going to be another short letter it’s just for lack of time. As I get more used to the offices, the letters should get longer.
The Church is true and I love and miss you all,
Peace,
Smitty OUT!
So here’s this week: it’s been pretty hectic as usual, working hard in the offices and improving office space moral and productivity haha.
But in my area we’ve been finding a whole lot more people willing to get baptized, so after a no-baptism fast of 6 weeks, we should be getting back at it and baptizing more consistently. We’ve been finding all kinds of new investigators, all with cool backgrounds. There is this one cool cat that were teaching that a few years back was in the process of becoming a Catholic priest. Now he is living with a less active member and for that he lets us come over to teach him. Our lessons with him are always pretty cool because he knows a ton. So, I’ll tell you how everything goes with him.
Yeah, so this transfer has gone by fast, can you believe it’s been 6 full weeks since I left Champoton? Also, since then almost all of the other important people I was teaching there have gotten baptized, including Yadira’s daughter! Now a lot of my converts there have gotten callings and have stayed true!
I’m sorry this is going to be another short letter it’s just for lack of time. As I get more used to the offices, the letters should get longer.
The Church is true and I love and miss you all,
Peace,
Smitty OUT!
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Wesley's Letter 8-18-12
HEY FAMERS AND FRIENDS,
Another week later and I’m still alive. The offices are still pretty fun. Good news, the mission just got us new desks and stuff like that so now I’m rockin my own work place, got all my favorite pics set to my background, and I have every little thing personalized to increase office productivity, LIKE A STRAIGHT UP BOSS! That, and every p-day I’m rockin it hard core doin crazy stuff with the APs and going to fancy places to eat. I’ve been eating so much pizza con al pastor from Trompos hahaha.
Whelp in terms of missionary work our area is on the up rise. We’ve been getting more and more people committed to getting baptized, so this should start looking better real soon. But unfortunately I still don’t have quite as much time working in the field, as I would like, so it’s going to be a lot harder for us to have success, but that’s ok.
It was pretty hard for me the first 3 weeks to be here in the offices because I just like being out in the field a lot more, but I can’t deny I do have a lot of fun experiences that no other missionaries in the field have. For example because our p-days are on Saturday and that’s the only day of the week anything is opened, we do have a lot more fun p-days than most. For example all these photos are from when we went to the zoo just now about 2 hours ago and it was pretty sweet. The zoo here is owned by the city or something so we got in for free, and it was actually a lot better than I would have thought a free zoo to be.
Anyway, how’s everything state side going? I found out the way to know if you’ve been in the field for along time is when everyone kind of forgets about you and stops writing. I’m getting to be a pretty experienced missionary it looks like haha.
I’m not sure if I had told the Brummers or not but thank you so much for all of the delicious chocolate you got me, it was super good.
Also, tell Alec I miss getting his letters. He used to be awesome and write me like every week now I haven’t gotten like a single letter from any friends for like 3 months.
Love you all,
Ekíicubaah Tsama´le!
ELDER WES SIDE SMITTY
Another week later and I’m still alive. The offices are still pretty fun. Good news, the mission just got us new desks and stuff like that so now I’m rockin my own work place, got all my favorite pics set to my background, and I have every little thing personalized to increase office productivity, LIKE A STRAIGHT UP BOSS! That, and every p-day I’m rockin it hard core doin crazy stuff with the APs and going to fancy places to eat. I’ve been eating so much pizza con al pastor from Trompos hahaha.
Whelp in terms of missionary work our area is on the up rise. We’ve been getting more and more people committed to getting baptized, so this should start looking better real soon. But unfortunately I still don’t have quite as much time working in the field, as I would like, so it’s going to be a lot harder for us to have success, but that’s ok.
It was pretty hard for me the first 3 weeks to be here in the offices because I just like being out in the field a lot more, but I can’t deny I do have a lot of fun experiences that no other missionaries in the field have. For example because our p-days are on Saturday and that’s the only day of the week anything is opened, we do have a lot more fun p-days than most. For example all these photos are from when we went to the zoo just now about 2 hours ago and it was pretty sweet. The zoo here is owned by the city or something so we got in for free, and it was actually a lot better than I would have thought a free zoo to be.
Anyway, how’s everything state side going? I found out the way to know if you’ve been in the field for along time is when everyone kind of forgets about you and stops writing. I’m getting to be a pretty experienced missionary it looks like haha.
I’m not sure if I had told the Brummers or not but thank you so much for all of the delicious chocolate you got me, it was super good.
Also, tell Alec I miss getting his letters. He used to be awesome and write me like every week now I haven’t gotten like a single letter from any friends for like 3 months.
Love you all,
Ekíicubaah Tsama´le!
ELDER WES SIDE SMITTY
Friday, August 17, 2012
Wesley's Letter 8-11-12
SUP FAMERS-R-US,
How we doin? I wrote you a little late today. I did get a little set behind on my schedule because although it was P day, today we tried doing a ward mission activity. Needless to say no one showed up because we had forgotten all about it being the same hour as the Olympic game between Mexico and Brazil hahaha. And man all of the streets were completely empty.
Well the good news is that we’re taking home the gold ha-ha! Today it was sweet seeing all of the Mexico pride, with people driving around with flags out their windows and honking!
This week has been another crazy week, running all over the place, and this next week even more so because there’s a lot of kids going home a little early to get to school. Also they’ve been closing a lot of areas for lack of missionaries, so that also makes it crazy with zone conferences and all that good stuff. Man the thing is, for a normal missionary with my amount of time in the mission field, time is already flying by, but a being a missionary in the offices time flies stupid fast! We are literally running all over the place, always. But we have been eating a whole lot more pizza.
In terms of the work here in Aero Puerto I’m feeling pretty good here. We still have yet to baptize, but we have been finding a lot of potential people. As for the next few weeks, I’m feeling better as time goes on, things should only be getting better.
Unfortunately I didn’t have more time or pics but I think you will all understand.
Just I’m missing you all tons.
Here’s my inspirational quote of the week.
"Better is to hear a rebuke of the wise than for a man to hear the song of fools."
(From the Bible Old Testament)
If you don’t understand it then I’ll explain it. It is a good “missionary works scripture” that means it is better for someone to help correct what you are doing wrong in your life than to just live in an ignorant bliss, even if it seems offensive. Sometimes as missionaries we have to be blatant and blunt about things, directly telling someone if what they are doing is ok or not. If someone tells you that your not doing something right, the key is to not be a baby about it, it is for the edifying of your character. To extend a house you’ve got to knock some walls down first.
Those are some inspirational words for today.
How we doin? I wrote you a little late today. I did get a little set behind on my schedule because although it was P day, today we tried doing a ward mission activity. Needless to say no one showed up because we had forgotten all about it being the same hour as the Olympic game between Mexico and Brazil hahaha. And man all of the streets were completely empty.
Well the good news is that we’re taking home the gold ha-ha! Today it was sweet seeing all of the Mexico pride, with people driving around with flags out their windows and honking!
This week has been another crazy week, running all over the place, and this next week even more so because there’s a lot of kids going home a little early to get to school. Also they’ve been closing a lot of areas for lack of missionaries, so that also makes it crazy with zone conferences and all that good stuff. Man the thing is, for a normal missionary with my amount of time in the mission field, time is already flying by, but a being a missionary in the offices time flies stupid fast! We are literally running all over the place, always. But we have been eating a whole lot more pizza.
In terms of the work here in Aero Puerto I’m feeling pretty good here. We still have yet to baptize, but we have been finding a lot of potential people. As for the next few weeks, I’m feeling better as time goes on, things should only be getting better.
Unfortunately I didn’t have more time or pics but I think you will all understand.
Just I’m missing you all tons.
Here’s my inspirational quote of the week.
"Better is to hear a rebuke of the wise than for a man to hear the song of fools."
(From the Bible Old Testament)
If you don’t understand it then I’ll explain it. It is a good “missionary works scripture” that means it is better for someone to help correct what you are doing wrong in your life than to just live in an ignorant bliss, even if it seems offensive. Sometimes as missionaries we have to be blatant and blunt about things, directly telling someone if what they are doing is ok or not. If someone tells you that your not doing something right, the key is to not be a baby about it, it is for the edifying of your character. To extend a house you’ve got to knock some walls down first.
Those are some inspirational words for today.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Wesley's Letter 8-4-12
Baax happenen? Hey fam-ers how we doin today, good? AWSOME.
Yeah, so this last week was super hectic and kind of stressful. I’m glad I’ve finally gotten it all over with, because once a month all of the zone leaders call me to tell me what all of the materials are that they want for their zone and I have to go order them and put them in boxes to go give to them. Every zone got 4 boxes of the Book of Mormon and then a fifth box with all of the things they wanted like pamphlets, posters, calling cards, everything, and their mail. It was only really a pain because while you’re in the middle of organizing everything you start getting calls from random kids in the mission complaining about not getting their package or letter yet. But yeah, I made it to p-day, whoop!
Yep, so the offices are totally hectic. Whenever someone goes home we have to wake up at 4:00 am to get them to the airport and stuff. It’s definitely the most bitter-sweet calling in the mission because I get to see all of my friends in the mission a lot and have a lot of unique experiences that you wouldn’t be able to have as a normal missionary. For example, the mission provides the first hammock for the new guys that come in and I’m the guy that gets to buy all of the hammocks for them. Basically you just go into a big room filled with folded up hammocks in bags and they say go choose 50 of them, so I just go up grabbing whichever ones look the coolest. So Josh, tell me what colors you like and I’ll save you a hammock like that. Really there’s like a bunch of other things but I won’t be able to tell you all of them for lack of time.
But the down side of being secretary is that you have like 0 time in your area, so naturally I’m going to probably not be able to have as much success in terms of baptizing as I had before. But I will still try my heart out to start baptizing here. It was kind of depressing leaving Champoton because I had spent the last 3 months helping to raise it up to be an awesome area and right when it gets good I get changed and the process starts all over again. My new area is DEAD. The missionaries before me left like 1 investigator. But it does have a lot of potential as an area and it’s slowly but surely on the rise. And we should start baptizing again real soon.
I did talk to Elder Babbitt the other day and the 2 other couples we were teaching and that were planning to get married, whelp they got married and Champoton should be baptizing, all of the people I had grown to know and love, for the next like 8 weeks straight. Sad I won’t be there to see it, but I know I had done my part of it. Maybe I’m just made to be a seed sower during my mission.
Anyways, time is on a spinning downward spiral right now and it has been ever since I hit the year mark, and in the offices it goes even faster. I will see you all in what will feel like tomorrow.
Peace out brown trout,
Smitty out
Yeah, so this last week was super hectic and kind of stressful. I’m glad I’ve finally gotten it all over with, because once a month all of the zone leaders call me to tell me what all of the materials are that they want for their zone and I have to go order them and put them in boxes to go give to them. Every zone got 4 boxes of the Book of Mormon and then a fifth box with all of the things they wanted like pamphlets, posters, calling cards, everything, and their mail. It was only really a pain because while you’re in the middle of organizing everything you start getting calls from random kids in the mission complaining about not getting their package or letter yet. But yeah, I made it to p-day, whoop!
Yep, so the offices are totally hectic. Whenever someone goes home we have to wake up at 4:00 am to get them to the airport and stuff. It’s definitely the most bitter-sweet calling in the mission because I get to see all of my friends in the mission a lot and have a lot of unique experiences that you wouldn’t be able to have as a normal missionary. For example, the mission provides the first hammock for the new guys that come in and I’m the guy that gets to buy all of the hammocks for them. Basically you just go into a big room filled with folded up hammocks in bags and they say go choose 50 of them, so I just go up grabbing whichever ones look the coolest. So Josh, tell me what colors you like and I’ll save you a hammock like that. Really there’s like a bunch of other things but I won’t be able to tell you all of them for lack of time.
But the down side of being secretary is that you have like 0 time in your area, so naturally I’m going to probably not be able to have as much success in terms of baptizing as I had before. But I will still try my heart out to start baptizing here. It was kind of depressing leaving Champoton because I had spent the last 3 months helping to raise it up to be an awesome area and right when it gets good I get changed and the process starts all over again. My new area is DEAD. The missionaries before me left like 1 investigator. But it does have a lot of potential as an area and it’s slowly but surely on the rise. And we should start baptizing again real soon.
I did talk to Elder Babbitt the other day and the 2 other couples we were teaching and that were planning to get married, whelp they got married and Champoton should be baptizing, all of the people I had grown to know and love, for the next like 8 weeks straight. Sad I won’t be there to see it, but I know I had done my part of it. Maybe I’m just made to be a seed sower during my mission.
Anyways, time is on a spinning downward spiral right now and it has been ever since I hit the year mark, and in the offices it goes even faster. I will see you all in what will feel like tomorrow.
Peace out brown trout,
Smitty out
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