Happy 20th Birthday Elder Smith!

Happy 4th of July Week!

I hope that you guys all have an amazing 4th of July and make sure you guys send me lots of pictures! Imma miss it, but it's weird to think that next year I will be there with you guys.

 

 This past week was fun, but really rough on us. Fun I say because I got to go to the beach for my birthday.  Some sisters wanted to move out of their room to a different apartment.  When missionaries want to do that, the zone leaders have to go and make sure their new apartment is safe, a fair price, and stuff like that. So we went over Tuesday in the afternoon and their area is right by the beach, it's called Pimentel. As we were leaving it was around 6 o clock and so we ran to the beach to take some pictures from the boardwalk real quick.  It was pretty legit and we got some sweet photos as you can tell.

Then as we got back, my pencionista threw a little birthday party for me!  They bought me a cake and we ate some pop corn and looked at my pictures from the mission, it was pretty fun indeed!

 

As the week went by, it was pretty hard. We noticed that Satan is working pretty hard against us. The woman Flor that attended last week isn't interested anymore.  She told us that she looked up Apostasy from the dictionary and it means to leave your religion for another religion.  We tried to explain that she wasn't in apostasy and that she was doing a good thing, but she didn't believe us and she said that she needs to go back to her own religion. As I sat there, listening to that, I felt sooo sad and a little mad inside. We both bore a really good testimony; we also told her that she is always invited to church. But we aren't going to pass by as often. Maybe once a week to see if anything has changed. But we won't give up completely on her. We haven't been able to find the dad of Alexis and so it's been hard...his baptismal date is this week, but we don't know if it is going to happen. We hope to pass by everyday to see if we can find him. It's just gonna be hard because the first week of every month is a killer for zone leaders. Its full of meetings, plannings, typing out plans for the zone, meeting with the stake president and other stake leaders, and zone conferences and trainings. But we always work hard so we shall see.  Jenny hasn't attended church for 2 weeks now and she always says that she is going to go but she doesn't end up going. Her baptismal date is for the 12th of July but we want to see an effort out of her before we baptize her to make sure that she is going to be strong in the church. It's been a hard week...but sometimes that is how the mission is. We met President Williams Saturday in a baptism of the zone and I talked to him for a bit. He was born in Wyoming but has been all over the states. He went to BYU and he met his wife in Utah.  President Williams is probably one of the funniest guys that I have ever met!!! He is sooo legit! His wife is a little quiet because she can't speak Spanish yet but she will learn. He served in Spain for his mission and he asked me how I speak Spanish so perfectly? I look forward to hearing his future talks because I bet they will be funny and so spiritual. Tomorrow we have a meeting with the zone leaders of the mission and so we are excited! Anyway have a great weekend folks!  I love you. He loves you! Elder Smith