December 2, 2018

From Mom - Winter for Real

Dear Sam,

I don't know why the weather must be talked about every email. I guess that's just the way it is. After the weather report we can get on to real life. 😊 So, yesterday morning it was brown and dull, the temps just below freezing. I went for a run and the snow started to sift down, gently at first, then in that big fluffy way. It was beautiful, absolutely silent with the smell that only fresh snow has. Coco and I returned after an hour with an inch of snow on us. If my phone hadn't died, I would've taken a picture to show you. And it hasn't stopped and won't stop until the wee hours of Monday morning and winter will be here to stay. (We've had 5 snowfalls since September but each of them melted. This one won't.) Just in time for the Christmas decorations and hot chocolate. 

To be honest though, we've all been converted to herbal tea. Finally. Family tradition to gather round on cold nights and sip the relaxing hot goodness before bed. Love it. 

This week was eventful! The girls came home from visiting Steph and Tyler, safe and sound. The security guard walked them out because he just couldn't believe a 12 and 13 yr old girls were traveling by plane by themselves. Apparently it's not a common occurrence. I should have known. They had a fantastic time. I'm SO GRATEFUL for family relationships and how we all strengthen each other. Steph and Tyler gave the girls many experiences that we couldn't give them ... rock climbing, Target shopping, Pandemic playing, etc, etc. And now they feel happy and relaxed and not so sad in missing Steph. 

I also heard a funny bit of conversation between Josh and Ben tonight. It went something like this ...

Josh: "I prayed for humility and God made me fall (slip on the ice) twice in front of some pretty girls."

Ben: "God moves in mysterious ways."

Dad and I were cracking up. 

Then Josh told Ben that he's so poor, he's mooching off his roommates. And he let a girl buy him custard. This is how far he's fallen. 

Ben: "Well, what would student life be if you didn't starve a little." 

Josh: "True." 

Hahahahaha!

Oh, I love it. I love my family and how good you are to each other. 

The big news at home is still the kitten, Primrose, and will be until she stops being cute. I'm a convert to kitten therapy though. We let her crawl on us and cuddle with us. The girls are getting happily all scratched up. Ben even plays with her every night before bed just for good measure. Her current obsession is the Christmas tree and gets stuck in it multiple times a day.

Oh, and Ben made the news again. He's the most famous out of all of us, so far. 

I adore December. It's such a nice feeling. We become more Christ-centered and generally just kinder and happier people. I don't think we do so bad all year, but in December, it's just all around loving. We went to the Stake Christmas Social last night. They set it up so there were 5 places to go that had Christmas-type stuff. 1) The Food Room; 2) The Singing Room; 3) The Nativity Room; 4) The Performance Room; and 5) The Christ Room. Attendees could walk around and go to whatever they wanted. My favorite was The Christ Room. Ron Patrick was in charge. We watched a couple of short videos then he bore his testimony about the Savior. In his long life, he's had multiple crazy experiences that taught him about the divinity and tangible reality of Jesus Christ. I walked away feeling strengthened and humbled and grateful for our belief in Him. It just makes life so much more abundant.

Having said that, the snowfall is going to prevent me from driving into Edmonton to mail your package tomorrow as planned. Hopefully this week though, then we'll be praying you get it in time. Otherwise, it'll have to be a New Year's package, like Josh got when he was on his mission. I'm about the worst for getting out packages. I hope you'll forgive me.

Love you forever,

Mom

From Sam - Contention is not of Christ

Hello everyone,

This week has come and gone and so has November. Now we are in December which is the Christmas season, some say it as x-mas but when you do that you cross the savior out of it. This past week me and my companion(Elder Williams) did a roleplay with the two other "young" missionaries in our compound(Elder Funaki and Elder Madsen) In this roleplay I acted as a person confused by all the doctrines in the world today and Elder Williams acted as a pastor for a church and a founder of a bible collage. The "young" missionaries were supposed to try to teach two unteachable people. Our goal was to make the two E.Funaki and E.Madsen mad or angry at us and as we did the roleplay I could see the frustration start to pent up inside them. We hit them with anti-Book of Mormon, Gift of tongues and seventh-day questions and used scriptures to "confound" them. It was a lot of fun but our end goal in this was to teach them that contention drives the spirit away. You may know the scriptures to prove people wrong but if you do it without the spirit you cannot teach them. In my first 6 months of my mission I got pretty good at "bible-bashing" but where I am now, I know that it gets you nowhere and wastes time. 

As a missionary and as a person you need the spirit. Without it not a lot gets done. Life is always going to be hard so it is our choice to either have God with us or not. God doesn't take our trials away, he helps us through them. When I left home to go on my mission my testimony was mostly based on Joseph Smith, as I have gone through my mission my testimony has shifted to Jesus Christ. I love this Gospel so much, I can't wait to be a regular member of His church and apply all the principles I've learned from my mission.

I love you all, Stay awesome!

-Elder Smith

Pictures:

-A little bit of heaven after a storm

-Breakfast at a Buffet

-Me being a baby on my companions back(The power of Chitenges)

-Elder Williams on Elder Funaki's back

-Mango season is here!!!

-Ways a chitenge can be worn

-Elder Williams and Elder Funaki doing their usual wrestling.  

November 25, 2018

From Dad - Adventures

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.

New Kitty Video Link

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:

November 19, 2019

From Sam - The Start of Mango Season

Hello Everyone,

This week has come and gone. Every week goes by faster and faster.

Mango season is starting and the mango's are delicious. I wish I could take all the fresh fruit with me when I go home, but sadly you can't take fruit on the airplane and nothing grows in Canada. So I'll enjoy every minute of it.

This week has been a week of God blessing us. Almost everything we did for finding, teaching, church attendance and baptisms were not because of us. Sure, we were the ones doing the work but we all know who is really steering the ship. We were able to baptize David this week. He is someone who has been prepared by the Lord in everything. We barely taught him anything but because of his own reading he already knows almost everything. It was a great baptism.

This week I also started back on my quest to read the Bible from Genesis to Revelations. I was stuck in the middle of Deuteronomy and with the power of the spirit, from Friday to today I am now starting the book of Joshua. Don't disregard the bible. I know it's hard to read but it is still the word of God. The Bible and the Book of Mormon are like our legs. If we just have the Bible, we're playing the Soccer with only one leg, the same if we only use the Book of Mormon, you are still playing with one leg. But when you read both and understand both, you play the game with two legs. 

This week is mostly a report that I'm still alive and loving it.

I love you all,

Elder Smith  

Pictures:

-Baptism Pictures

-Quick view of the area

-Lunch with Elder Hansen during exchanges

-Avengers!!!

-My companion having a missionary swimming session

-Irish potatoes

 

-First try of my first fresh mangoes

-King Willie and his body guard Funaki

-King Willie knighting the new squire, Smith

Video:

From Dad

We're excited for David. I'm sure Mom's totally jealous about the mangos. Here favorite fruit.

This week has been a good one. Grandma and Grandpa Bruce came up on the week-end overnight to go to the Farmer's market with Abby and Mia. Abby sold some wood crafts and Mia played her Ukelele again. Both got some spending money for St. George this week. 

The girls are about to go off on an adventure to fly to Las Vegas to spend a week with Steph and Tyler. We had a bit of a scare and are still praying everything goes well with getting them on the plane as unaccompanied minors. Some mixed messaging on the website had us worried they wouldn't be able to go, but we'll see how it goes today.

This week was YW in Excellence and Abby sang a solo as well as receiving her Faith ribbon.

I was blessed to be able to teach SS this week. Interestingly enough, I taught from Jeremiah. Jeremiah didn't have an easy road and was a great example of faith amidst persecution. My favorite vs. in the reading was Jeremiah 31:30

33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. 

As we write the Lord's law and commands on our hearts,  it becomes so much easier to be obedient and our whole motivation changes from duty and command to love and commitment. We live in an amazing time in the history of the world. The girls often walk around the house singing the Skyler sisters song about the revolution from "Hamilton", and the part that strikes me is the vs. that says. "Look around, Look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right now". I feel that way too. As Oliver Cowdry put it, "These are days never to be forgotten...". 

Have a great week, Sam. Stay "All in".

Love  you lots.

Dad.