Monday, October 7, 2013

Letter #20 (Oct. 7, 2013)

Dear Family,

This week was great! We had a baptism for an investigator who has been an investigator for four years. Obviously Sister Natarte and I can't take credit for his conversion, but it was a pretty special moment. I just wish there was some way I could contact the hundreds of missionaries that taught him and contributed to that day. We asked him for some of their names, but he didn't remember a lot of their names. I guess it will just be a sweet reunion in the celestial kingdom. He's a young adult and really excited about missionary work, so we are excited for all of his friends that he will help bring into the gospel and give us more appointments. Actually, we teach a lot of lessons in this area and a lot of "member present lessons." Which means a lot of our lessons to investigators are being taught with members there. It is really helpful, but since we have so few members, I feel we are always asking the same ones for help. There are only about four families who are active members in our ward and it reminds me a lot of our branch in Montana. We don't have any young women, only a few primary kids, a couple young men, and five relief society members... so basically like our Superior, Montana branch... :) But it has been a great motivation for us as sisters to get more young women for our ward. We are teaching a few right now and we really want friends for them at church, but our mindset is just, "If we can get them baptized, thenthey can be the friends for later investigators. Missionary work is so different then I thought it would be, especially in working on helping the wards become more developed. I remember it used to make me homesick every Sunday because you just kind of remember how great our ward is at home. Yesterday, I noticed SIster Natarte was having a little bit of a hard time, so I finally got her to tell me that she was homesick for her ward too. It really makes me grateful for the little things over there in Highland. We even laughed for a while about how we just miss the carpet. It really adds reverence to the meeting. But every meeting house is dedicated to the Lord and has the same spirit, it's just the small things that remind us how far away we are from home. :)

These last two weeks Sister Natarte has been teasing me about my hair, because we all know that it looks like a stiff, old, tried out broom. So today she was so excited to take an hour bus ride into town to get my hair cut. We made a day out of it and even splurged at the mall and bought some cake. But we went to get my haircut and I just held my breath as I now look hilariously ridiculous. At least I just put my hair up every day so it doesn't really matter, but just like every other missionary said, they cut off more than I asked for. Oh well, it will grow back. At the beginning of my mission it probably would have really bothered me, but now it doesn't really bother me. We had a fun time laughing and preparing for the week, and I know I am so lucky to have a companion who I get along so well with. I know not all of my companions will be like this (even just from past experience) so I am trying to just enjoy every minute of our working together in unity, the emotional support and the friend. I am so lucky and grateful to be a missionary here in this area with Sister Natarte. I feel bad, she always gets sad when we email because her family still hasn't contacted her, but we will keep having positive attutudes and helping our area become strong. I love you all and will give you some better details next week of our investigators and our teaching appointments. This little town is so cute, but we have basically already contacted everyone in our area :) Time for round two! Love you all!

Sister Smoot

(note from mom: Superior Montana was not quite as small- We had about 30 total in sacrament meeting. But I can see why Ashley thought that- We doubled the primary when moving there with our three little girls and by the time we moved 2 years later there were 12 primary kids! haha)

No comments:

Post a Comment