Dear Sam,
It's been a different week for our family as this week we sent Abby and Mia off to St. George to spend time with Stephanie and Tyler. The night before they flew out, Mom and I were looking at the Swoop web site (Swoop is the new cheapo airline we got their tickets with), and read that unaccompanied minors were not allowed. We panicked a bit that we'd have to cancel the trip until we'd had a chance to call a few other airlines and realized that 12 and up tickets are labeled and considered as "Adult" tickets. So we went ahead and took them to the airport.
When Mom approached the desk, the hostess was concerned and didn't know whether they could allow them to go alone at 12 and 13 years of age, but after making a few calls and Mom reminding them that the ticket was considered an adult ticket, they let them through. When they got to customs, the officer had the girls step into a small holding room while he came and talked to Mom about it. By this time, Mom was starting to wonder if we were crazy to do this as it didn't appear that it happened very often. In the end, they let them through and they made it to Las Vegas. Steph was there to meet them and they called her as soon as they got off and were able to find each other. For all the trouble, we love it when we see our kids do hard things!
From all reports, they are having a blast rock climbing, shopping, watching weird Japanese movies and constantly asking me to send them videos of the new kitty to them.
So it's been Mom, I and Ben hanging out. Of course, Ben is super busy with musical theater so we only see him in the evenings. Mom has been busy doing what she does best, minister to others. Also, she is regularly adding to her science fiction novel she is writing. It is exciting to see her starting to fulfill her dream of being a writer. I've been working both for GE and for AIRDAR. This week being American Thanksgiving, lots of people are off work, so its been quiet and I've been able to get lots of work done.
Mom went down to Mark and Shannon's Thursday to Saturday to babysit their kids while they did some Christmas shopping, so was just me and Ben for a couple of days.
Yesterday was a particularly productive Saturday for me. I woke up early and was able to study the Book of Mormon reading in Jacob 5 and seeing lots of Gathering of Israel prophecies and counsel in that passage. I was anticipating taking Ben in for a Saturday shift building sets for his play so I planned to go to the AIRDAR office to work on some issues. Before leaving I was able to do some preliminary work and was able to solve a particularly challenging problem I'd been working on.
At 9:30 Ben and I had a great breakfast. Mom and I have been doing a cleanse where we only eat vegetables and fruits, but with her gone I took a 24 hour break and had some eggs and toast and a great blender drink. I also made some chocolate chip cookies and ate some of the yummy dough. We packaged up 3 plates of cookies for our ministering families and headed into Leduc for 11.
I dropped Ben off and went into the AIRDAR office for 3 hours and made some great headway. After picking Ben up, and going for our traditional Basha Donair...
we went to deliver cookies to Raymonds (not home), Franks (they were home and we had a great visit with Brian and Chance), then went out to the Boyds. Brother Boyd's been really busy, so they had told us no to a visit this month, but we took a chance and knocked on their door. Amazingly they were both there and we sat down for a 45 minute visit. Felt good to reconnect with them.
That was a bit of a ramble, but I really felt the Lord's hand in helping me to make productive use of the day. Mom came home last night and she told us some stories of babysitting Mark and Shannon's cute kids.
I got to teach Seminary on Friday and we talked about D&C 45. That is a powerful section. I especially love verses from 10-15 where the Lord repeats over and over the invitation to come and reason with him. Verse 10 says
"Wherefore come ye unto it (meaning the gospel covenants) and with him that cometh, I will reason as with men in days of old, and I will show unto you my strong reasoning.
Then in 15 he says
"Wherefore hearken and I will reason with you ..."
That captured my imagination and reminded me that the Lord is "reasonable" or in other words, wants us to understand and is willing to condescend to our level and show us in ways that we can understand, the joy of the gospel. It is real, God is real and good and he has and continues to bless our family wonderfully.
BTW, in case you haven't heard, Jacob Nesom just got engaged to Katie Orr and Seth just came home off his mission and reported in Sacrament meeting today. Looks like he and Bailey are already dating again, surprise, surprise :). Eric DeVries gets home 2 weeks. There's your weekly gossip catch up :)
We chatted with Steph, Tyler and the girls tonight, and they all seem pretty happy. Josh spent American Thanksgiving at a friends in Idaho and is on his way home tonight.
God bless you this week as you continue on the covenant path, Sam.
Love you always,
Dad.
From Sam - The Reality of the Atonement
Hello Everybody,
This week has been amazing, some ups and some downs. That's what happens in the life of a missionary. I have had great moments with investigators, recent converts, members and missionaries. I've been enjoying fresh fruit literally from the tree. For the jealousy of everyone at home I have been able to have both fresh peach's and fresh mango's, and who knows what else i'll have this week. I'm having a blast.
One fun experience was while I was on exchanges in my area we got totally rained on. Because I was in my area I didn't have the truck, so we were walking everywhere. After a lesson we walked out and all we had to do was finding. Nothing was planned for the next three hours. I had a choice to make, I wanted to follow up with someone we were teaching, but she stayed on the other side of the area. So I decided we could go and find/talk to people on the way. I could either go right, which was the longer way but we would probably find more people to talk to, or I could go left, which was faster but it had less finding opportunities. I was thinking about going right but by the spirit I went left. As we started going I made the comment to Elder Madsen about how it looks like we are walking into the storm that was right in front of us. As we got halfway there it started to spite a little, but I know Malawian storms. two minutes later we were passing the way to a recent converts house, and it started to rain a little harder. So I said "Lets go this way" and we made the turn. 30 seconds from that decision it started to rain hard and I yelled "RUN!!!" and we booked it to the house. We got a little wet when we got into the house. As we got near the house I yelled "Odi odi odi" and jumped into the house. The person that was home was very startled at our sudden appearance and said "Lowani" (Which means enter) We were lucky to get indoors Because it was raining cats and dogs for about an hour. The other Elders got soaked to the bone. We had to end our day early because of how wet they were.
The biggest highlight of my week was the most powerful spiritual experience I've had in my life.
We were teaching three of our recent converts about the Atonement(By the way, my understanding about the Atonement has increased so much while I've been on my mission) and we shared Alma 7:11-13 to help them understand that Jesus literally knows how you feel all the time because he felt it too, I then shared with them D&C 45:3-5 which says:
Listen to him who is the advocate with the Father, who is pleading your cause before him—
Saying: Father, behold the sufferings and death of him who did no sin, in whom thou wast well pleased; behold the blood of thy Son which was shed, the blood of him whom thou gavest that thyself might be glorified; Wherefore, Father, spare these my brethren that believe on my name, that they may come unto me and have everlasting life.
As I read this scriptures the Spirit testified to me about the love Jesus have for little ol' me. I felt the spirit so strongly that I can't deny that it wasn't the spirit. And I can safely say that this has been my biggest spiritual that I've had in my entire life. It was a testimony to me that this church is true and that it is Jesus Christ leading it today. Not only that but that He is aware of me and my life and all of it's difficulties. And that he's willing to be there for me. One thing I learned this week is that God allows us to suffer. But God does not want us to suffer for no reason. Sometimes our agency makes our sufferings unnecessary. But life isn't supposed to be easy. God want's to help us in our trials, but he won't take the trial away
I love you all, stay awesome,
-Elder Smith
Pictures:
-Playing with little Hilda
-Waiting the rain out and playing with the kids while we wait
-A group of kids watching us as we plan in the truck(They wouldn't go away so we when somewhere else to plan)
-Me and my companion
-Me holding fresh picked mango's
-A mango tree(try to spot all the mango's)
-Our recent converts getting the mango's for us
-And a fresh mini peach
Videos:
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