Dinner With President Hansen! - 1/26/15

Hey family! Sounds like another crazy busy week back home. Those are always the best because they fly by haha. That is how mine was as well. Every week is super busy and fun. Mom it sounds like a ton is going on with the house and that is keeping you pretty busy. Did you say they are going to start roofing today? If they do you'll have to send some pics. The house is already looking so good! Mom you need to do this on the side. You would be the best! It sounds like a ton of fun all of the basketball games for Jason. He is the man. I am stoked for next season. He is going to dominate! I am glad the whole family is doing good. I miss you all! It is crazy to think there is only 6 more months left. Only 4 more transfers. That is so crazy. It is starting to hit me. last night I was talking to some of the elders and man I have a hard time going to sleep at night because it just seems like it is going so fast. When I do go to sleep it just seems like a blink of an eye and then the next day I am back ready to go to sleep. I hope that makes sense. It makes sense in my head haha! 

Well thank you all for your prayers and for fasting yesterday. I felt really close to you all. And I know fasting and prayer works. Always. I mean I can already tell. There is a non member that comes to church every week and he never will meet with us. Well yesterday I asked him if we could go out and get ice cream with him some time this week. To my surprise he said YES! Then I also asked if we could get a ride with him to New Orleans next Sunday for another Stake Conference. He said YES to that too! So it is the small things that start happening. I know that is going to be for a lot of people too. So thank you again for your faith a testimonies. Good luck with this next week. Remember to do the small things! :) 

This week has been pretty much the same as last week. It was full of meetings! One fun thing is I did exchanges with elder Madsen (one of our Zone Leaders). He is my boy! We had a great time and we got some good work done. He served in Thibodaux for 6 months so he knows a lot of people down here so we did some visiting and meeting with new people. He is about in my same shoes as in time frame. He is going to be going home a week after me for school. He is the man! Then on Wednesday it was Elder McMurrys birthday so we set up a surprise birthday party for him. I told all of the missionaries to meet at this snowball place called brookes and then I told him that we had an appointment with a single sister so we needed some more missionaries with us so we could go in. He didn't think anything of it. So when we pulled up he was sooo surprised. It was a blast! Then that night we ended exchanges and elder Jones and I went over to the Kennedies. We asked him a ton of questions that both our investigators and we had and got his input. We ended up getting into some deep doctrine. Man I love that stuff! It is pretty crazy how little we know and how tiny our earth is compared to the universe. Anyway it was a good night. 

Then on Thursday Elder Jones and I got out and taught! We had some great lessons. We had one on the plan of Salvation with one of our investigators that helped him with so many questions he has had in his life. We committed him to pray and to ask if what we taught was true and also to re-read the pamphlet we left him and then to tell us what he thought when we saw him at church.. Well he didn't come to church!! Ah I could kick some peoples butts. But with him he is a very heavy smoker so we are about to talk to him about that and see if he wants to do an addiction recovery program. He is a great guy that would be a good member. Speaking of great members... We had a lesson with W..S.D. and holy smokes is this guy a spiritual giant. All he does is go by faith. He sometimes says he has no idea, but then he says he just goes by faith. It is true that is all we have to do. Well he has been working on his Family History to go to the temple. Well we set him up an account like 3 sundays ago and when we met with him he already has 3 generations done! Then he asked his family back in Meamar to send him a book of all of his relatives. He says he is going to be very busy with that! He wants to go to the Temple so badly, but it is just his darn work schedule that is making it tough on him. And plus on top of it he is in full time school to get his GED and also to become a nurse tech. He wants a new job which will pay more and then he can have sundays off so he can go to church. He also is looking forward to when he gets his endowments taken. He is pretty excited about that! He wants me to be there. So I told him I will. It will be in October this year if he continues to progress. He is an awesome man! Oh and he wants to translate the book of Mormon into Kachin. So we will see what happens. 

On Friday something cool happened. President Hansen had to come down to do an interview for one of the Spanish people. Well we had to go out there to take them. So we were able to see him again. Then after the hour and a half interview for this person we started on our way home. Well about half way there we got a call from President. He asked if we wanted to meet him for dinner. So we said of course!! haha free meal right? just kidding. But he asked what place was the best for Chinese. We went to dynasty and it was really fun. I gained a lot of respect for President Hansen. He is trying so hard and is such a humble man. He is very friendly and loving and wants the best for us. Then at the end of the dinner we started talking to our waitress who always helps us when we come in well she now wants to meet with us and she wants her whole family and everyone that works at that place to listen to us! Pretty legit right? I am excited so we will be doing that this week. So that was nice going out to dinner with the mission President. 

Well that about wraps up our week. Yesterday was a good day. We gave a lot of blessings and took the sacrament to a lot of people. I enjoy the mission. I enjoy having conversations with people who have had some crazy things happen in their lives. I enjoy getting to know people. I love talking to real pure Cajuns you can barely understand. It is so funny! This work truly is the work of the Lord. I know he is with everyone of us because if he wasn't then this work would fail. I am thankful for this Gospel and everyday we have to be here and learn and grow to become closer to our Heavenly Father. I love you all so much and I hope you have a great week! 

Love Elder Smith