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Week 8 - Olympics and Outdoors

 Hey everyone!

This week was more than crazy, but it's been so much fun. Holy cow things have gone off the rails. 
Jaylin's whole family got sick so he hasn't been meeting with us or attending church. This has forced us to move both his and Quinton's baptismal dates back. We've been trying to meet with him over the phone and get him to watch church but that has been fruitless. If everyone could pray for him and his family that they can get better and be motivated to progress that would be awesome.
We got to go on exchanges with one of the zone leaders this week which was really fun. The zone leaders are in a trio so the only exchange was Elder Warren coming to our area and making us a trio for the day. We got some quality work in and we were able to show off our teaching skills which was probably my favorite part. 
Miss Luke had to leave to Atlanta while she waits to go to court over her divorce. If y'all could pray for her too that would be so awesome. She's a really nice lady with a hard life. I am glad we met her though, she definitely needs the  church and some friends. She told us her current church isn't bad but she feels like they aren't doing the Lord's work like they should be. We explained a lot about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and she was very impressed. She told us if her church doesn't shape up at their next meeting she's gonna look into what we told her. We were happy about that, but when she gets home we plan to explain that she should join because we are the true church not just because we do lots of service.
Elder McArthur and I found a new super awesome park with tons of trails! We were walking around the park trying to meet people and we got pretty far down a trail. There were people down there though, so it wasn't like we were on a pleasure walk. We came to a point where there was a river with a pipe that went across it. As all good missionaries learn early on from the safety zone this is in fact a dangerous situation even though the fall would only be like a foot into water we shouldn't risk twisting an ankle or any worse injury. So anyway once we got on the other side we thought the trail continued but it turned out we were very wrong. We sorta got lost but not really. We knew where we were and I knew how to get back it was more just Elder McArthur not wanting to go that way till we ended up in someone's backyard. That was a little awkward but no one saw us so we faded back into the woods and together we made our way back to the trails. It was a great and fun learning experience but it did take quite a bit of time and that was frustrating.
Lyndon came to church!!! We had the honor of helping Lyndon come home from the rehab facility and learn how to live again. It was so cool and I got to learn quite a bit. We are still working with Lyndon on preparing for baptism and he is looking pretty stellar. Then Sunday rolled around and he beat us to church. To be fair we weren't super early but we were early enough to greet most people and get good seats next to Lyndon. 
This week is the first time I have run out of money. The whole district was definitely not thinking ahead. We went to the Pizza Joint a couple times and ate at Red Robbin during our splurge. On a side note Red Robbin is pretty bomb. I won't deny the bombness but it took like three days worth of money to eat there so definitely not the move. Fortunately like the good prepared missionary I am I had prepared in advance for situations like this by purchasing plenty of peanut butter and jelly with a couple loaves of bread (we also bought a big thing of ramen a little while ago just in case). That paired with the plethora of member meals we were invited to out of the blue, we ate better than we probably would have in a normal week. 
This P day (today) my zone is having the Augusta Zone Olympics which are for sure going to be a total blast (or a flop but we are gonna be optimistic). I have no clue what the events are cause the leaders refuse to tell us which seems kinda like cheating cause they know and plan on competing but they also told us to bring my football cause they don't have one and if football is involved they might as well hand Elder McArthur and I the gold and Silver medals right now. We are pretty sure it'll come down to us two in case you couldn't tell. 
We got to decorate our Olympic flag which was also super fun. We decided our team name is the PJ bois because our district likes to go spend all our money at PJs (Pizza Joint). On our flag we have a plunger crossing a guitar both of which represent our district. Then in the corners we had the letter P and the letter J then slices of pizza in the two empty corners. 
We divided to get fresh haircuts before we competed and they turned out super well. The ladies at hair world are phenomenal and deserve everything. They proved that if you look good you will in fact play good. My district won the Olympics! There was no prize and no medals and basically no glory but I am a winner. The events were volleyball, spikeball, football, a relay race, and trivia. My district took silver in volleyball, gold in spikeball, gold in football , bronze in the relay race and gold in trivia which was good enough to put us at number one overall. 
That's basically it for this week thanks everyone for your love and support!


- Elder Smith


Police and Fire departments had a recruiting fair thing at the park so we stopped by and plot twist the church had a tent there promoting emergency preparedness and 48 Kits 



Nature pics




We were double booked on member meals, but we didn't know it till one fell through and they sent us food. We then ate that food for breakfast instead of dinner.


The new cut









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