Dear Sam,
What a busy and amazing week we’ve had. LYR was amazing. After lots of stress, planning and worry, it went of amazing. We had amazing counselors and the youth were all in. I’m not going to send you a bunch of pictures cause you can go to the LYR Google Drive and see them, hopefully. Steph did an amazing job on the video and photos.
LYR Counselors
The final compiled video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
I was privileged to be able to be one of the speakers and spoke about the 3 books I’ve been recently reading: Grit, Essentialism and Deep Work. It went really well I think.
The response after the retreat has been amazing, both in reports from parents as well as people re-registering. We were over at Tad’s place for Benson’s going back to Vancouver BBQ and Tad said that Cody came back fired up about reading books. Sound familiar? LYR is a great catalyst for taking ownership of your own learning and we are so pleased it worked out so well this year. Your Mom was amazing in leading it all up. She was the heartbeat of the whole retreat. I’m so proud of her.
Josh has some challenging experiences leading the Education group this year. Much different than his experience with the Character group last time. They are all trying to look cool and it was a good learning experience for him to learn to work with a different age group. He still was amazing, just had to work harder and pray harder to make it happen.
One of the things we talked a lot about during and after the camp was the value of being “All In” when it comes to participating in the retreat and how when you do that, you get so much more out of it. I think the same holds true for the church. Being all in makes all the difference to how much you get out of it. Auntie Liz gave me a book for my birthday called “Whatever Happened to Faith”. In it, Robert L Millet comments on this saying
“I have heard it said that in some cases falling away from the Church is a lot like falling out of bed. One usually falls out of bed when one is not fully in the bed, close to the center. One who falls asleep on the edge of the mattress should not be surprised to wake up on the floor.”
It was really fun getting to know Denny. I know you and Ben have long looked up to him, and now I see why. He was the mission age counsellor with Ben and it was an amazing group of 7 boys and 1 girl (Ashlyn White). Denny is actively trying to get his Sherlock play to Broadway and is an inspiring example of going after your dreams. He’s also getting married in 2 weeks. His fiancé was a counsellor as well. She is super nice and very pretty. We’re happy for Denny.
Elizabeth Francis and Kylan were also Counsellors. Kylan was an amazing Character counsellor. Lots of energy and he was all in! We loved having him there with us.
Mom’s friend Joanne McLennan sent her 16 year old son out to LYR. His name is Max and he is Steph’s friend Sidney’s brother. He was amazing. Ben and I picked him up from the Calgary Airport on Sunday and we loved having him. He really got into it and was part of Ben’s “Band of Brother’s” mission group. He did break dancing for the Talent show. You would have liked him.
On Friday we went to Calaway Park in the rain and stayed for just 3 hours, but there were no lineups, so it worked out fine.
Life is good. Started to get some garden produced and enjoyed some amazing garden meals at Grandma Smith’s this week as well as a wonderful trip to the temple with both Steph and Josh with us along with Kylan. Such peace and perspective in the temple.
Keep being “All In” on your mission and you’ll get the change and growth the Lord has in store for you as well as be a blessing to the people of Zambia.
Love you lots, son.
Dad.
From Sam - The Power of Study
Hey everyone!
This week we had Zone Conference and the reading material was Jacob 5 in the Book of Mormon. As soon as I found out I wasn't too excited, it was going to be the first time I actually studied Jacob 5, every other time was just a read through with me not really getting anything out of it.
So, for zone conference I made it an effort to study it completely, I used the Book of Mormon study guide and lots of prayer to understand. As I actually studied, Wow, It was so cool to see it laid out so clearly. It's the allegory of the olive tree. The cool thing about an allegory is it used symbols that you can apply anywhere else. In Zone conference we talked about how Jacob 5 can talk about missionary work, Planning, working, reviewing. revisiting old plans, then trying again throwing away what's bad and keeping the good.
It was pretty awesome.
We found a family that came to church the same week that we found them. And that was the week President Kupu came to the ward and gave a talk and me and my companion(E.Odukoya) also gave talks about member missionary work. This past week has been really good, we've been finding lots of people that are more serious and are progressing. My mission has set a goal to baptize 100 people in a month and continue to baptize that much and more in the months to come. And being a Zone Leader I have a part to play not just in my companionship but in helping the other companionship.
Yesterday I was invited to go to a missionary farewell for Kay Seibert, who is leaving this Thursday for South Africa Durban mission. While we were there, because they were an American Embassy family, they had Root-beer floats. And all those who know me, I love Root-beer floats. It was soooooo goooood. Family, take note, I want Root-beer floats when I get home.
I love you all, the church is true,
-Elder Smith
P.S.
I forgot to take pictures this week. I thought about what I was going to say this morning and I checked my pictures and I didn't take any. Sorry.
No comments:
Post a Comment