Elder Smith in South Carolina

Hey everyone! Every week I keep thinking I'll be able to settle in and be a bomb missionary next weekend, then it's like God decides to sprinkle a little figurative hot sauce on the plate to spice up my mission. That's ok though, I like the fast pace.  It helps me keep my mind sharp, and it puts me in a lot of situations that help me learn and grow spiritually and physically.  One of the biggest lessons I have learned recently has to do with oxen being stuck in pits. In Luke 14, Jesus asks, "Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day?" I love this questions for many reasons, so I'm going to share a couple.  1. Sometimes we get so caught up in rules that we forget what it is that we are actually doing on this earth. At the end of the day a lot of things don't matter as much as we make them out to matter.  For instance, if we have let's say an ox, and it falls into a pit on the sabb...

 Hey everyone! LYNDON GOT BAPTIZED! After decades of missionaries and countless prayers from his family, he finally became a member of the Lord's Restored Church. It was so cool to see him in the font. It took two men to get the job done cause he needed some help balancing and everything, because he's still recovering from his stroke. He wanted the missionaries to sing at his baptism, so we got a couple other Elders to sing Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing with us. We sang that to him a few times during lessons, and he loved it. We taught him with a Zone leader on one of those occasions and the Zone leader decided it would be cool to sign us up to sing at Zone Conference... if ever there was a move that be'eth not it. -Elder Smith 4:18 It was pretty alright though I had a lot of fun. Elder McArthur was freaking out the whole time while we practiced the day before, but he did a great job. The Sisters we sang with were way better than us too, so that made up for the guttural...

 Hey everyone!  Holy Cattle guys I'm an old person! Yes it feels super different than being 18. The first thing Elder McArthur told me this morning was that I look older, so yeah it's a good day. This week went by so fast, and I don't actually have that many stories to tell, but I do have a bunch of pictures, so hopefully that will make up for it.  We had another lesson at the Kotter's with Kieron, David, Kamren, Kaiden, and Matthew, and this time instead of Dylan, we had our friend Tristain there. That was pretty awesome, and they all left with their own copy of the Book of Mormon, which we were super hyped about.  Lyndon's baptism will be this Saturday and we are super excited for it!  We know he's making the right choice and it's gonna be fun seeing him continue progressing.  Jaylin came to church again, and we made sure he didn't leave without getting a picture with us, so now y'all can finally see what he looks like. He didn't say much about...

 Hey Y'all!  This week has been so different from every other week ever, but it has also been amazing. I went on exchanges twice this week which was super fun. Elder Deppe was my first exchange companion and I'm pretty sure I could have him as my companion for the rest of my mission without feeling at all even a little bit sad. He is literally the nicest guy I have ever met. We went and worked out at his gym cause he actually has one he can go to unlike certain other Elders that will remain nameless. After we worked out, I went to take a shower and when I got out there was a trail of sticky notes leading up the counter to where he had made and left me a smoothie! Definitely made my day and set the tone for the rest of the day. After that we spent our time trying to find ways to get people to come to spanish class while lightening each other's load. Once again Elder Deppe is pretty much the bomb, so I had to work to keep up with his niceness. It just so happened that on th...