Well happy Birthday America we made it one more year and we are still in one piece. It has been so lucky that both years of my mission the Fourth of July has landed on a preparation day and this year we are going to celebrate in the same fashion as the last. We are going to the beach and are going to have a barbecue as a zone. The perfect way to celebrate. It will be a great start to the week to the second barbecue
in two days.
This week has also been very animated.
Monday we started off the week with Zone Sports against our good friends in the North York Zone. It was a fun day though sadly we fell once again to their prowess in playing dodge ball. It was a great time though followed by a wonderful lesson with our investigators L and F. They are a wonderful family from Brazil and we were able to discuss the importance of faith with them and read Alma 32. We were also able to meet with our other progressing family S and L and teach them the Gospel of Jesus Christ this week. They are progressing really well and just eating up the lessons. They are doing well at keeping commitments and S even came to church this week. He showed up late because of the buses but had a great time and says that he will come back again next week.
We have seen a lot of cool progress like that this week and I am convinced that it has come from the fact that we have been opening our mouths and talking to more people. At Zone Conference last week president committed us to fast
on Sunday for the courage to open our mouths more and talk to more people every day. He promised that if we would all of these things that we are seeing would happen and they are. Elder Herculano and I have been opening our mouths and talking to everyone and we were able to find 4 new investigators, received 11 referrals from other missionaries efforts and we have 3 appointments already set this week to meet more new investigators. I have also noticed that talking to more people has helped me with personal struggles that I have been passing through as I have felt the spirit more in my day to day activities and that I just feel happier.
This all lead up to probably the best part of the whole Canada Day long weekend. Yesterday we had a barbecue with one of the part member families that we have been working with that we set up with our assistant ward mission leader. We had been planning it for almost a week and we were all ready to go. We went to pick up our assistant ward mission leader at 130 and everything starts falling apart. He ends up showing up at about 145. So we hurry over to the appointment and when we get there the family thought that it had been cancelled. One of the other members of the group had called and said that they couldn't come today because they were having their own barbecue. So the family thought that we were not coming either. So we are there a little late with no barbecue. It was at this moment that we had one of two choices to either give up and try again another day or make something happen. We decided to make something happen. The mother of the family went to go get her husband. Our mission leader started chatting with her 16 year old son about soccer and quickly they became friends. When her husband got home he started pulling out more meat than I have ever seen in my life because even though his wife kept telling him that she didn't think that we would come he knew that we would so he had bought everything we needed a few days before. We hopped in his truck and drove over to his other house to pick up his barbecue then while our assistant ward mission leader was preparing the meat and getting it all ready for the grill Elder Herculano and I washed down all the chairs and Tables from the winter grime and in less than an hour we had meat coming off the grill and one of the best barbecues of my life. It was such good food and company and our ward mission leader was perfect. He became best friends with the family and even went as far to invite the father and his son to come to church this week and to get baptized on the
16th of July. He is super excited to see how this family progresses and we are super pumped for the future.
On to some questions...almost done with these....
1. What activity did you really love this week?
Barbecue or maybe service. We helped clean out a member's garage and then she made us tacos.
2. How do you split your time between the car and walking?
mainly we take the car if it is far. If we have time and it is closer we walk.
3. Did you travel very far away from the area you live in this week?
yeah pretty far like 20 minutes.
4.Did anything funny happen this week?
yeah Elder Herculano is trying to teach me the Vaia of Ceara. It is not going to well and ususally he just laughs at me.
5. What struggle did you face this week?
We had some problems in our companionship and Elder Herculano stopped talking to me for a couple of days. We talked about it during companionship inventory and set some goals and now we are better than ever.
6. How are your investigators?
Doing great.
7. How are your ESL students?
Growing Strong.
8. What are your pday plans?
Beach Barbecue.
9. What are you looking forward to this week?
Having another great week.
10. What is the most interesting thing about Elder Herculano?
That is a good question I will get back to you about that.
Loves,
Elder Smith
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