No News is Not Always Good News...

Hello wonderful family!

Good news! I didn't mugged this week. I also didn't witness a mugging which is good too! I also didn't get transferred which is also good! I also get to stay with Elder Binford which is super good! We also get a new companionship in Windsor which is very good! They get our car which isTHEY GET OUR CAR?!!!??! Are you kidding me? That is...less good. Oh well. So as of Tuesday afternoon we no longer have a car. Its bus passes and bikes from here on out....and I thought not getting a call last night was good news. Ha. But the work moves forward! We just need to be more effective planners and just think of all the people we will get to talk with now! They can't use the bus to get away from us. This will be fun. :) I hope.

So before I forget I should tell you about the miracle last week. This one happened on Monday night when we  met with Al Russell. We have been working with him for four ish months and it has been an absolute miracle from the start. We had an amazing lesson with him about repentance and changing who we are to be more like Christ. This man has overcome a figurative mountain of challenges on his path to baptism and as of Monday night he has conquered them all. He is a completely changed man and he is more than excited for his baptism this Sunday. :) God is so very good. Miracle. 

This week was crazy. Appointments cancelled all over the place and more rejection. Sigh. Such is the life of a missionary. The week was thus rather uneventful until Sunday. Al came to church and is still very excited to be baptized and everything should go well with that. He has invited 30 of his friends to come so it should be very well attended. I am baptizing him and giving the talk on the Holy Ghost after. He was very happy to hear that I was staying. :) Cedric came to church and had a great time. He loved meeting all the "nice, happy friends" and was able to feel and recognize the Spirit in the Sunday school lesson. Even better is that he is looking for a job and there are a few members in the ward who are now on the hunt too and even have some promising leads. We have been praying that he will find a job because that is what he is praying for. It is so cool to see prayers answered. He also accepted a baptismal date for next month and is super ready to work toward it. He is super sweet. We had another miracle that day. Halfway through sacrament meeting, a member walked in with two women who, she explained, were coming for the first time. They are from Kyrgyzstan? and one of them, Rebecca, only speaks Russian and was going to church there. She wasn't baptized but really likes the church and wants to continue to learn more. The other woman is Leila who is her relative of some sort who lives in Windsor and also wants to learn! Crazy! We talked with them and they are interested and they even stayed for all three hours. The sad part is that we didn't get their number and we have no way to contact them...so they aren't investigators because we haven't met with them and for all we know we may never see them again...frustrating. God will provide.  

Well I am out of time. It was a great week and I still love being a missionary. I should have some fun stories from bus adventures next week so be on the look out. :) Have a great week and remember who you are! Do good things!

Love,

Elder E. Smith

Muggings and Miracles

Dear Family,

Things are FANTASTIC here in Windsor!! It was a long week but extremely worth it. Due to the 5-week transfer we are once again on the threshold of transfer day. :( I do not want to leave Windsor. Which probably means I will. Sigh. Good things are happening here and I wish very much to be a part of them. D&C 4:3 (kind of) "Therefore, if ye have desires to serve God (in one area) ye are called to (another);" Such is life. No sense fretting about something that hasn't even happened yet, right? Right. This week has definitely strengthened my testimony of obedience and God answering prayers. It is incredible. I love being a missionary. So much.

Monday was good. We had dinner with Al and then had a good lesson with him and overall it was just a regular, old preparation day.

Tuesday is where things get exciting. We had district meeting in Leamington and then we started an exchange with the Leamington elders. It was such a fun exchange. I got to be with Elder Gummow. He was in my MTC district and so it was fun to be with someone who has been out the same amount of time as me. It was super neat to see how much we had grown and matured since we left in June. We taught good lessons and just had a grand time of things. Tuesday night we got a call from the Chatham Elders saying that their investigator Lisa agreed to be baptized on Thursday. MIRACLE!! She has been investigating for a long time so when she commited they jumped on it. Because I am the District leader, I needed to interview her and we didn't have much time. I spent a good hour on the phone trying to juggle schedules and to get everything together so that Lisa could be baptized. Stress. I finally got things worked out and if everything went perfectly it would have worked. Ha.

Wednesday was CRAZY. Elder Gummow and I spent the morning talking to people downtown and tracting. It went okay. Nothing stunning. I spent it wishing I could take all this time we had and add it to the evening. No such luck :) So at 4:30 ish we met at a carpool lot along the highway and I got in the car with one of the Chatham elders and Elder Binford took the other back to Windsor to teach our two lessons back there and the Leamington Elders went back to their area. Step one went well. Almost. Somehow in the switch both phones went to Windsor and we were left without a cell phone going to Chatham. Ugh. Long story short we ended up missing our last lesson of the night because we couldn't communicate...I would have died if I was born in a time without cell phones. Truth. Everything else went alright but I was really stressed and frustrated and mad for the first time in a long time. I don't like being mad. But, Lisa got baptized so its all good.

Thursday was good. Nothing special.

Friday was really slow. We had planning and pretty much nothing else. These days stink. I started feeling sick and so the whole day was just a drag. I got over it though. All is well.

Saturday was slow too. We spent a good hour and a half walking around in the snow. It was fun but we didn't get much done. We need to conserve our kilometers so that we stay within our limit for this month so if we can walk, we walk.

Sunday was awesome. We had a great time at church took ten minutes for lunch then got right to teaching. Three lessons in a row in four hours, all with Chinese investigators. First was Cedric. He is awesome. When he was picking his English name, by the time he got to the C's he was tired to he just picked Cedric and moved on. Haha. He asked really good questions and even recorded the lesson so that he could go back and listen later. Pressure. It went very well and he is really excited to learn more. Then was David. He was really close to baptism a month ago but he found a Chinese Church that he likes better. He is getting baptized there...I don't like dropping investigators. He is really nice and we'll see him once a month maybe but for now he is no longer interested. Sigh. Then we met with Devon and he is also great. He asked PERFECT questions for the plan of salvation and we are teaching him that next week. Then we had dinner with a member which was really fun then headed out to go talk to people downtown. This is where mom should stop reading. :) We didn't get mugged but we saw it happen. We were walking down the street and saw a man steal a woman's purse. I stopped the guy and asked him if that was his and, obviously, it wasn't. Miracles of miracles a police officer drove past right then and we flagged him down and they took care of it. We spent the rest of the night in the back of cruisers giving our statements. It was crazy. I love Windsor.

You are going to have to wait for next week to hear the real miracle because we are getting kicked out so that they can use the family history center for...family history. Tell you then!!

Work hard, Study hard, Pray hard! do good things!

Love,

Elder E. Smith

NEW PANTS!

Hello family!!

You know it was a relatively slow week when the most exciting news I have is the news pants I bought. I got two pairs of nice dress pants and a black sweater for.....$57!! I am so happy. They fit and they look nice and now I have more than two pairs that I can wear. Hooray!! Also, before I forget, Next week our preparation day will be on Tuesday instead of Monday. Just a heads up. Back to the letter.

I'm not exactly sure what to write about today. I am just not in a writing mood at all. Highlights it is. 

Monday:NEW PANTS!

Tuesday:Nothing

Wednesday:Zone Training in London. Super fun and I got like 10 letters. I am really behind on writing so it will be a while before I respond but I got them. Also picked up two new investigators. Good day.

Thursday: Weekly planning then exchanges in Chatham. I love the Elders serving there and it was fun but also hard. Being the District Leader means correcting disobedience which is hard when you love them. But its because we love we correct. I learned some very valuable lessons that day. 

Friday: Still on exchanges then a lesson with an investigator that reminded me why we need the Spirit so much in missionary work. Without that guidance we would have been lost and our investigator too. This gospel is so true and it shows when I see it work miracles in the lives of my friends and when it anwsers every question we might have. I love it.

Saturday: Slow. Got some good bonding time though.

Sunday: Super great/disappointing. Shawna was confirmed which, due to my history, is a relief and very happy. She is very excited to be a member of the ward and is doing great. Alas only Al was at church so we missed hitting standards. No one we invited came and so it was sad. Plus we didn't set the alarm and woke up late. The whole day was miserable and it just added to my testimony of exact obedience. Man it stunk. Never sleep in. Word to the wise.

So thats all. Sorry this letter is rather lame. One last thing though. Randomly this week I rememeber back to my childhood when Dad would read us the latter-day voices section of the Ensign and quiz us about the gospel topics in them. I realized how much that built my testimony. Hearing the experiences of other people and listening so that we could find out how they apply to our lives. It made me so happy to know that I had such loving parents who helped me to learn at a young age the blessings of the gospel. I am very grateful for their example and the way I was raised. The end.

I love you all and I hope you have a great week! Do good things!!

Love,

Elder E. Smith

Baptism!

Family and maybe friends/anyone else because I'm not sure who all gets my emails...Hi...Its great to be a missionary.

This week was really great! I just don't know how to express what I am feeling in words. This gospel is just so true and this is truly Christ's work. It is absolutely incredible to see his hand in it everyday. It is truly overwhelming. I feel so blessed to be a part of this work and to be on a mission. I love it.

Shawna's baptism went well. The water was cold, the service was poorly planned (our bad) and poorly attended. Disappointing in those regards but the Spirit that was there made up for everything. It was really great overall. She was very excited and was very happy afterwards. She was very nervous going in but she was seriously a new person after the baptism. It is so incredible to see lives change. I love being a missionary! :)

Our new investigator from last week, Eddie, is doing very well. He wasn't at church but he came to the baptism and said that he liked it. He is great. He has lots of questions and is really studying this out. He went over the first four or five chapters of the Book of Mormon word for word and had a lot of really specific questions about rivers flowing into the Red Sea, steel being mentioned 200 years before the earliest archaeological evidence of steel, the travel times and all sorts of little details. The surprising thing is that he listens to our answers. Most people refuse to have their questions answered but he listens and agrees with what we say. Its awesome. So he is doing really well. Our other investigators are doing alright. Everyone is getting busy after the holidays again so its frustrating. I also wish I spoke Chinese...again. I thought I was over this when I left Markham, but alas. We have a sweet Chinese investigator, Dave, who doesn't come to church because he likes his Chinese church for the social aspect. He doesn't like their doctrine or the pastor and he thinks we are right but he still goes there. Grrrr. Agency. Everyone else is doing great and we are just having a grand time of things here is Windsor. I love Windsor!

Elder Binford is great. He is from California and is just giddy about the snow. Every time he brushes the snow off our car he just giggles to himself and says "This is awesome." Its kind of hilarious. He always wants pictures of him in the snow and just loves it. He is so much fun. He is really into soccer/all sports but he played soccer in High School so that is "his thing" so it is nice to be able to talk sports every once in a while. We get along well and are working really hard. He is a great missionary and I expect great things from this kid. He has such a great attitude and has a sincere desire to be obedient. The only problem is that all the success is kind of going to his head. Haha. He just has the "green fire" and it is totally working miracles in Windsor. I love my companion!

The week is good but I don't feel like going through everyday. Just know that it was awesome and super fun. Friday, Saturday and Sunday really made the week so I will talk about them. Friday we taught all day minus some contacting time downtown. It was awesome. I really love teaching. It is why I am a missionary. We taught all of our main investigators and were super busy and it was great. Then the Zone Leaders blitzed our area for an exchange from Friday night to Saturday night. Saturday was great! I was with Elder De Moura who is from......drum roll please......Fortaleza!!! That's where Megan is going on her mission. Weird eh? He was born there, grew up mostly in Rio but then moved back before his mission. Crazy. He is an INCREDIBLE missionary and I learned a ton. We talked a lot about how to be a successful missionary and what he had seen work in the past. He helped me set some goals and make plans for how to reach them and I left the exchange uplifted and inspired. He also taught me a little Portuguese which was fun. :) With E. De Moura we had Shawna's Baptismal Interview and then tracted for a while. We set one return appointment, got sworn at very heavily and then found a less active member who had disappeared for a while. She was on the phone with her friend two hours earlier saying that she needed to come back to church and then we showed up. She was happy to see us and glad to have a reason to come back. Its crazy how we are directed to those who need us. I love being the answer to prayer. I love being an instrument in God's hand. I love being a missionary. Meanwhile, while we were doing that, Elder Binford and Elder Gedelmann were helping a non-member family move from Leamington to Windsor. The family is super sweet and was really impressed with how helpful the church was and that we practiced what we preached. Elder B and I went back after the Zone Leaders left and helped unload the last load and then set an appointment to drop by on Wednesday. :) In addition to that Elder B and Elder G found another guy who we also have an appointment and we also talked to the neighbour of the family we helped move. Four solid potentials in one day. Crazy. Sunday was good, long and stressful. I passed out (figuratively) last night and was reluctant to get up this morning. I need a nap. :) Two years.

It was a super fantastic week and we are looking at another great one this week. I truly love being a missionary and I would not trade this experience for anything. This church is so true and it means everything to me. I am so happy to be sharing it for these two years. I love you all and I hope all is well! Do good things!

Love,

Elder E. Smith

Pictures

1:This picture pretty much sums up how awkward the baptism was...and every time we meet with Shawna. :)

2:Walking back from contacting downtown.
3:Me with snowy hair.