Hi family!
well, thank you president's day -- i used to really love this day because i got out of school - well, now it just means a really dirty internet cafe. However, i'm really really glad that i got to read all of your emails... pday would kind of suck without them :)
so -- this week has been described by sister kim and i of this "God has opened the windows of heaven and is not only pouring out miracles, but dumping them by buckets and buckets on our heads." it has been really good. in the ward it's crazy because most of the people are young families that have gone to byu or byu-i or something. crazy? yeah. but it'sreally awesome to have so many people that have really really firm testimonies.
one of my favorite stories came from a family that we finally got in touch with this week. both parents had a really rough go in the beginning, she had to drop out of college and he had just barely graduated when they had their first daughter. they have been through a lot and within the last few years they have been really brought together as a family and it has been really cool. we met withthem and i just felt an overwhelming love for them. i didn't know that i could love people this fast and this much. i think it's a minute fraction of what our Heavenly Father feels for us - he lets me feel that for other people and it's amazing. we really are loved. no matter what we have done, no matter where we are, we are loved. we got to say a little tiny bit of that to this family and it was amazing. they were crying and the spirit was really strong. the mom and two daughters were at church and it was really good.
we also met another family (mom and two daughters) and they gave us a chinese new years! it was the last day of chinese new years and so they let us help them make dumplings and i ate with chopsticks and i was really proud of myself. the mom doesn't really think that there is one christian religion -- even though she has been baptized. we talked about the restoration and told her truly how important this gospel is to us. her daughters haven't been baptized and the one that is 16 doesn't like church and really doesn't want to come - we invited her and she said she wasn't really sure... but as we were leaving (in the pouring rain and thankfully they were sweet enough to give us umbrellas since we forgot ours) she said "seeyou at chruch on sunday! and she came into the church at the very end and we were WAY hapy to see her there.
well family, i love you more than you know. i'm amazed at how much you all do for me and i'm so glad that you are all my very best friends.
i love you. the church is true. Christ really did atone for us and He is ALWAYS there. always.
love you
sister mich
2.23.2011
Happy Charity Day!! (2/14/11)
Hello my dear family!!!!
so basically, this week was awesome. i feel like Heavenly Father has said "hey Sister Smith i'm going to put you in an amazing area with an amazing companion and right now - no stress. you just have fun. :) " it has been AWESOME. this week we got to go to a ton of ward members' homes and meet them and i LOVED it. this ward has so many people that are so strong and SO solid in their testimonies and they are amazing. ANYONE that we bring to church just gets the guts loved out of them and the ward is SO willing to help us. i am just absolutely amazed. dad commented about our area and how it covers a LOT of shoreline and it does. it's AWESOME. and he said that with so many cultures it may seem like i have moved halfway across the world -- not five miles away. yep. that is exactly how i feel. it's SO different. we have a lot more people of asian background and hey! chinese new year's was going on so they were pretty excited. and it's just a lot different. the last area i was in is the poorest zip code in ny so... yeah. well, it's a lot different to go in to people's apartments and they all look like homes. weird.
oh crap. i just heard the librarian and have some news to alert y'all to. next monday - thank you president's day - the libraries are closed. SO don't you even fret if you don't get an email because i will just handwrite letters or figure something out. but yeah.
miracle story of the week - judith and alexa. we taught them last week and they were found because they investigated the church in 08 for a while. they came to church last week and we taught them this week a couple of times and they came to church again!!! judith had a really rough childhood and you can tell that some of the effects are still there. she talks a lot about her angels that came to visit her when her mom didn't want to take care of her anymore. well, her little girl, alexa, is there too and so we have been working with both of them. they really want to get baptized, but both sister kim and i feel that they really need to show more effort and take the little steps before they make that commitment. the big one is them to read their scriptures. that is what all of our lessons have been on this week. i am absolutely blown away at how my view of the scriptures has changed. before, well it was something that sometimes i really didn't want to do, but forced myself before i went to sleep. now, oh no. with everyone we teach and meet, so many of them just want huge miracles to happen and God to come down and say "hey, you know those two girls that you talked to the other day? yeah, not only are they pretty cool, but they are telling you the most important message you will ever hear in your life and guess what? it's true." and they all want that to happen without them doing ANYTHING. maybe praying once in a while. and we tell all of them -- you want to get closer to God? you want an answer? well, read, pray, and come to church. do that and you will get an answer guaranteed. and then they don't do it and still expect a miracle. reading the scriptures is absolutely critical. and so we tried to tell judith that. she agreed and said she would read then she came to church and well, she hadn't read her scriptures. so we told her that and had an amazing lesson with a sweet member who stayed over an hour after church even though her stomach was grumbling and i'm sure she just wanted to go home. but finally during the lesson i felt prompted to extend the baptismal commit to judith and i asked her if she would be baptized on march 12. she said yes and got SO EXCITED. and then alexa turned to me and said - that means me too right? so both of them are getting baptized in march!!!!! and then we made sure that judith knew that she really needed to prepare herself for her baptism and she HAD to read the scriptures everyday. then she told us how excited she was and how she won't let anything hold her back now. it was cool. so yeah. we have a whole lot of work to do with her, but i'm excited.
yesterday we found out that we are having a special stake conference on march 6 WITH ELDER NEIL ANDERSON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! holy cow. HOLY COW! family, i'm so excited. i feel so blessed. what are the chances that neil anderson, only the apostle that i got to meet and get advice from a week after i got my mission call would be coming to MY STAKE and the area that i'm serving in and hold a special stake conference so that he can speak to us?! miracle? i think so.
we met some REALLY cool people this week. i am continually, every single week, blown away at how much the Lord's hand is in this work and how much we are guided. we were looking up people that have investigated the church in the past and people that have given us their names and nothing has happened and no one was answering, but we were having a really good morning. we just kept going and talking to people on the way and after one door me and sister kim both felt like we should knock that hallway. so we did. and MIRACLE. first door - no answer. second door - no answer. third door - you guessed it. no answer. but the fourth door this girl (kayla) answered and she said she has been looking for a church and was really glad we came and yeah. tender mercy.
sister kim is amazing. she cracks me up SO MUCH. she taught me "our purpose" in korean and so next transfer meeting i get to go up and say it. i'm pretty stoked. transfer meetings/mission conferences are really cool because we say our purpose in all the languages that are spoken in the mission. and it's SWEET. and there are only a very few korean speakers so they all go up in front of everyone and say it in korean. and now i know it!!!!! and i'm learning it in sign language. and i want to ask the chinese elders in our zone to teach me in chinese - but i don't know how that will go because i don't see them too often. anyways, sister kim and i were talking last night about how we both didn't really think that we would get THIS close to our companions. she is a very dear friend to me and it's really cool that we can both trust each other with anything and we have only really known each other for a couple of weeks. one of her funny quotes from the week -- we were putting on our tights and she said - right now i wish i were a paper doll so i didn't have to get these stupid tights on. MAN! Why do i have to be 3D?! -- we laughed. we laugh a LOT. good good times.
yesterday we fasted as a mission to come up with ways to make our mission better. we had a zone meeting last night and talked about how we could do that. lately i have really seen how much our relationship with our Heavenly Father is so important. once we realize who we are and what that relationship is - everything else falls into place. we read our scriptures, we pray because we really want to, and we go to church because we want to too. love it.
well, this is one of my more scattered emails, but i'm not the one who has to read it so meh. :) kidding. please accept my apologies and i will try to find my brain sometime in the near future to organize better. i'm so glad to hear from you all and hear that all is well. i love you all so much and i can't explain how much your support means to me. have a good week!!!!!!!! you are the best family and friends that i could ask for.
love you,
sister mich smith
me and the verizzano bridge, sister kim trying to hit the pigeons out of the window with a slingshot, me and sister kim at district meeting driving my jeep (it was our spiritual activity) :)
so basically, this week was awesome. i feel like Heavenly Father has said "hey Sister Smith i'm going to put you in an amazing area with an amazing companion and right now - no stress. you just have fun. :) " it has been AWESOME. this week we got to go to a ton of ward members' homes and meet them and i LOVED it. this ward has so many people that are so strong and SO solid in their testimonies and they are amazing. ANYONE that we bring to church just gets the guts loved out of them and the ward is SO willing to help us. i am just absolutely amazed. dad commented about our area and how it covers a LOT of shoreline and it does. it's AWESOME. and he said that with so many cultures it may seem like i have moved halfway across the world -- not five miles away. yep. that is exactly how i feel. it's SO different. we have a lot more people of asian background and hey! chinese new year's was going on so they were pretty excited. and it's just a lot different. the last area i was in is the poorest zip code in ny so... yeah. well, it's a lot different to go in to people's apartments and they all look like homes. weird.
oh crap. i just heard the librarian and have some news to alert y'all to. next monday - thank you president's day - the libraries are closed. SO don't you even fret if you don't get an email because i will just handwrite letters or figure something out. but yeah.
miracle story of the week - judith and alexa. we taught them last week and they were found because they investigated the church in 08 for a while. they came to church last week and we taught them this week a couple of times and they came to church again!!! judith had a really rough childhood and you can tell that some of the effects are still there. she talks a lot about her angels that came to visit her when her mom didn't want to take care of her anymore. well, her little girl, alexa, is there too and so we have been working with both of them. they really want to get baptized, but both sister kim and i feel that they really need to show more effort and take the little steps before they make that commitment. the big one is them to read their scriptures. that is what all of our lessons have been on this week. i am absolutely blown away at how my view of the scriptures has changed. before, well it was something that sometimes i really didn't want to do, but forced myself before i went to sleep. now, oh no. with everyone we teach and meet, so many of them just want huge miracles to happen and God to come down and say "hey, you know those two girls that you talked to the other day? yeah, not only are they pretty cool, but they are telling you the most important message you will ever hear in your life and guess what? it's true." and they all want that to happen without them doing ANYTHING. maybe praying once in a while. and we tell all of them -- you want to get closer to God? you want an answer? well, read, pray, and come to church. do that and you will get an answer guaranteed. and then they don't do it and still expect a miracle. reading the scriptures is absolutely critical. and so we tried to tell judith that. she agreed and said she would read then she came to church and well, she hadn't read her scriptures. so we told her that and had an amazing lesson with a sweet member who stayed over an hour after church even though her stomach was grumbling and i'm sure she just wanted to go home. but finally during the lesson i felt prompted to extend the baptismal commit to judith and i asked her if she would be baptized on march 12. she said yes and got SO EXCITED. and then alexa turned to me and said - that means me too right? so both of them are getting baptized in march!!!!! and then we made sure that judith knew that she really needed to prepare herself for her baptism and she HAD to read the scriptures everyday. then she told us how excited she was and how she won't let anything hold her back now. it was cool. so yeah. we have a whole lot of work to do with her, but i'm excited.
yesterday we found out that we are having a special stake conference on march 6 WITH ELDER NEIL ANDERSON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! holy cow. HOLY COW! family, i'm so excited. i feel so blessed. what are the chances that neil anderson, only the apostle that i got to meet and get advice from a week after i got my mission call would be coming to MY STAKE and the area that i'm serving in and hold a special stake conference so that he can speak to us?! miracle? i think so.
we met some REALLY cool people this week. i am continually, every single week, blown away at how much the Lord's hand is in this work and how much we are guided. we were looking up people that have investigated the church in the past and people that have given us their names and nothing has happened and no one was answering, but we were having a really good morning. we just kept going and talking to people on the way and after one door me and sister kim both felt like we should knock that hallway. so we did. and MIRACLE. first door - no answer. second door - no answer. third door - you guessed it. no answer. but the fourth door this girl (kayla) answered and she said she has been looking for a church and was really glad we came and yeah. tender mercy.
sister kim is amazing. she cracks me up SO MUCH. she taught me "our purpose" in korean and so next transfer meeting i get to go up and say it. i'm pretty stoked. transfer meetings/mission conferences are really cool because we say our purpose in all the languages that are spoken in the mission. and it's SWEET. and there are only a very few korean speakers so they all go up in front of everyone and say it in korean. and now i know it!!!!! and i'm learning it in sign language. and i want to ask the chinese elders in our zone to teach me in chinese - but i don't know how that will go because i don't see them too often. anyways, sister kim and i were talking last night about how we both didn't really think that we would get THIS close to our companions. she is a very dear friend to me and it's really cool that we can both trust each other with anything and we have only really known each other for a couple of weeks. one of her funny quotes from the week -- we were putting on our tights and she said - right now i wish i were a paper doll so i didn't have to get these stupid tights on. MAN! Why do i have to be 3D?! -- we laughed. we laugh a LOT. good good times.
yesterday we fasted as a mission to come up with ways to make our mission better. we had a zone meeting last night and talked about how we could do that. lately i have really seen how much our relationship with our Heavenly Father is so important. once we realize who we are and what that relationship is - everything else falls into place. we read our scriptures, we pray because we really want to, and we go to church because we want to too. love it.
well, this is one of my more scattered emails, but i'm not the one who has to read it so meh. :) kidding. please accept my apologies and i will try to find my brain sometime in the near future to organize better. i'm so glad to hear from you all and hear that all is well. i love you all so much and i can't explain how much your support means to me. have a good week!!!!!!!! you are the best family and friends that i could ask for.
love you,
sister mich smith
me and the verizzano bridge, sister kim trying to hit the pigeons out of the window with a slingshot, me and sister kim at district meeting driving my jeep (it was our spiritual activity) :)
I'll always be a Brooklyn Girl :) (2/7/11)
Well family,
pretty sure you are all dying for the news... :) well, i am still in brooklyn! i moved to the area right below my last area - bensonhurst, brooklyn. our area is u-shaped and the entire area in the "u" is midwood :) haha. i guess the Lord just really really needs me in brooklyn. i sent a map to the family of the new area boundaries and stuff so yeah, family it's not in an envelope - open carefully :). and one very big item is now i have to use the stinking library to do my email - so i have been severely limited on time. THEREFORE, i will be printing all of your emails out probably after my email, so i will have no idea of what is going on. anyways. this week was pretty bombin. we had to say a whole bunch of goodbyes on monday which really sucked, but it was really good at the same time. i am so blessed. i cannot believe how much i have been able to be an instrument in Heavenly Father's hands and i really understand why President Norby said that i would feel more joy than i have ever felt in my life on my mission. yeah, totally right. monday we said goodbye to rachel and she was really really sad. she had bought me a present (which she shouldn't have, but she was really stubborn about it) and she gave me a letter that made me cry. she just said how much i meant to her and how she sees God when she sees me and how i am not only her friend, but her sister and life saver. yeah, i do NOT deserve that. i was SO BLESSED to be able to be there to see her change her entire life and so blessed to see her where she is now. when she was confirmed they said that she would be able to go to the temple with her family and be sealed - well, she told her husband that he needed to come to church. he said he would when things got better for their family and they moved to a safer area (he told me and sister smith that he honestly couldn't just change his life around because people get killed for doing things like that) well, rachel told him that he was being stupid and that you can't wait for things to get better before you turn to God. that you have to turn to him because things are bad. yeah. HOLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOA! her faith is amazing. right before we got there on monday night, she had been studying faith and preparing a talk for church because she just felt like she would be speaking and, since that is one of her biggest fears - well, she thought she should practice. it was AMAZING. and on monday night i really struggled because i was leaving so much of myself in midwood - as well as so many people i cared about. i couldn't really believe that i could love another area and yeah. OBVIOUSLY pretty faithless. and then i moved!!!!!!!!!
so transfer day was crazy like always. thankfully we got some elders that have a car to take my bags because i REALLY didn't want to drag them through the snow and slush forever and then take them on an hour and a half train ride - transferring trains too. so - thank you elders. you are a very big blessing. AND, i was pretty stupid and put ALL of my books in one bag and it was SOOOOOOOOO heavy. and then i thought i was going to have to take THAT monster on the train to my new area. bless the elders again, they took it for me. and poor elder morales (who i have never really met until tuesday) had to drag my bag up three flights of stairs to my new apartment. however, i was very grateful that i didn't have to do any of it!!!!!! :) AND, some random man took my other bag that i did have to carry on the train down the stairs for me and that was very nice of him. there is good in the world! my new companion is sister kim and holy cow. i'm really REALLY excited to be with her. she is AMAZING and we are going to have a really really good transfer together. she is from korea and she is teaching me a little korean :) she and her family moved to the u.s. when she was 13 and holy cow. she is really really strong. and so funny. and we get along REALLY well. she has served with everyone of my other companions and she also started her mission in midwood. therefore, she is cool.
we had a BUNCH of meetings this week and that basically took up the whole week, but they were really good. we had zone conference and a mission-wide conference because a member of the seventy had some appointments in washington d.c. and so he called pres. nelson and asked if he could come and speak with us. and it was an incredible answer to my prayers. HUGE. he talked a lot about prayer and our true relationship with our heavenly father. and he talked about being a true disciple of Christ and what that really means. he told us about how we all need more faith and how simple it is to gain faith. he just said that if you are more obedient, you will be blessed with faith. no questions. and he told us an AWESOME miracle story about his mission and how he and a companion worked sooooo hard to find one person to baptize. the other companion was going home and he hadn't baptized anyone. so they worked harder than they had in their entire lives and he said they literally just wept when the elder got on the train to go to Helsinki, Finland to go home because they hadn't seen a baptism. and then
HOLY CRAP i am so sorry i didn't use the subject line for this but i SWEAR i didn't forget - it's written in my planner :) i would like to wish cory michael a very happy birthday today and chelsea a happy birthday on friday! happy happy birthday!!!!!!!!!!! okay, so i will finish real quick cuz i think i'm going to get kicked off sooner rather than later -- seriously i'm so grateful i haven't had to deal with this until now. bah. and i'm very grateful for libraries for letting us do this so really it is a blessing. anyways.
so elder pierson and his comp were really sad... and then he got his new companion and they went home to drop the suitcases off and he had a note on the door from a member saying get to my house immediately. he was pretty scared of that note because the member was a little crazy -- but when they got there this man (who was described as an "Igebor" HUGE guy that was really scary) dragged his son into the room who was in the military and home on break. he said that before his son left, he told him to read the book of mormon and the son had, he knew it was true, and he wanted to be baptized in the next two days before he had to leave again. that was before elder pierson's companion had left finland for home. it was awesome. i have seen that so many times that Heavenly Father tests us until our very limits - and a lot of times we don't see the results we expect. However, if we have faith that is not dependant upon those results at all, then we are blessed with some awesome tender mercies from the Lord.
that conference was a HUGE answer to my prayers. i felt so good leaving and i have fallen in love with being a missionary again. :) cheesy? oh yeah. do i care? nope. sunday was AWESOME too. i met the ward and i feel like Heavenly Father has just put me in a little bubble at least for this transfer that is a "perfect world, perfect mission" bubble. the ward is AWESOME. and i was just overwhelmed with love for all of them :) there are a lot of really cool people. our ward is SUPER diverse - the area is too. there are chinese, japanese, phillipeno, russian, latin, american and caribbean and a couple of other places in our ward. it is AWESOME. we have more languages that can be spoken in our ward than most countries have in the entire country. pretty tight. the church came here to do the new pass-along cards for mormon.org because there is so much diversity. so we have a bunch of ward members on those cards :) cool!!!!
aight fam. time's up. love you all so much. sister kim and i changed valentine's day to charity day this year (it was the only way we could bear hanging hearts all over the place) so - happy charity day! and happy birthdays and cory i'm way proud of you for being able to get the priesthood. always take it seriously - it's huge. love you all!
sister mich smith
AND
oh and i hate to say it -- but it might be a LOT easier if you guys wanted to switch to written letters some of the times. however, i know that is a pain. so if you can't well, keep writing emails :)
pretty sure you are all dying for the news... :) well, i am still in brooklyn! i moved to the area right below my last area - bensonhurst, brooklyn. our area is u-shaped and the entire area in the "u" is midwood :) haha. i guess the Lord just really really needs me in brooklyn. i sent a map to the family of the new area boundaries and stuff so yeah, family it's not in an envelope - open carefully :). and one very big item is now i have to use the stinking library to do my email - so i have been severely limited on time. THEREFORE, i will be printing all of your emails out probably after my email, so i will have no idea of what is going on. anyways. this week was pretty bombin. we had to say a whole bunch of goodbyes on monday which really sucked, but it was really good at the same time. i am so blessed. i cannot believe how much i have been able to be an instrument in Heavenly Father's hands and i really understand why President Norby said that i would feel more joy than i have ever felt in my life on my mission. yeah, totally right. monday we said goodbye to rachel and she was really really sad. she had bought me a present (which she shouldn't have, but she was really stubborn about it) and she gave me a letter that made me cry. she just said how much i meant to her and how she sees God when she sees me and how i am not only her friend, but her sister and life saver. yeah, i do NOT deserve that. i was SO BLESSED to be able to be there to see her change her entire life and so blessed to see her where she is now. when she was confirmed they said that she would be able to go to the temple with her family and be sealed - well, she told her husband that he needed to come to church. he said he would when things got better for their family and they moved to a safer area (he told me and sister smith that he honestly couldn't just change his life around because people get killed for doing things like that) well, rachel told him that he was being stupid and that you can't wait for things to get better before you turn to God. that you have to turn to him because things are bad. yeah. HOLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOA! her faith is amazing. right before we got there on monday night, she had been studying faith and preparing a talk for church because she just felt like she would be speaking and, since that is one of her biggest fears - well, she thought she should practice. it was AMAZING. and on monday night i really struggled because i was leaving so much of myself in midwood - as well as so many people i cared about. i couldn't really believe that i could love another area and yeah. OBVIOUSLY pretty faithless. and then i moved!!!!!!!!!
so transfer day was crazy like always. thankfully we got some elders that have a car to take my bags because i REALLY didn't want to drag them through the snow and slush forever and then take them on an hour and a half train ride - transferring trains too. so - thank you elders. you are a very big blessing. AND, i was pretty stupid and put ALL of my books in one bag and it was SOOOOOOOOO heavy. and then i thought i was going to have to take THAT monster on the train to my new area. bless the elders again, they took it for me. and poor elder morales (who i have never really met until tuesday) had to drag my bag up three flights of stairs to my new apartment. however, i was very grateful that i didn't have to do any of it!!!!!! :) AND, some random man took my other bag that i did have to carry on the train down the stairs for me and that was very nice of him. there is good in the world! my new companion is sister kim and holy cow. i'm really REALLY excited to be with her. she is AMAZING and we are going to have a really really good transfer together. she is from korea and she is teaching me a little korean :) she and her family moved to the u.s. when she was 13 and holy cow. she is really really strong. and so funny. and we get along REALLY well. she has served with everyone of my other companions and she also started her mission in midwood. therefore, she is cool.
we had a BUNCH of meetings this week and that basically took up the whole week, but they were really good. we had zone conference and a mission-wide conference because a member of the seventy had some appointments in washington d.c. and so he called pres. nelson and asked if he could come and speak with us. and it was an incredible answer to my prayers. HUGE. he talked a lot about prayer and our true relationship with our heavenly father. and he talked about being a true disciple of Christ and what that really means. he told us about how we all need more faith and how simple it is to gain faith. he just said that if you are more obedient, you will be blessed with faith. no questions. and he told us an AWESOME miracle story about his mission and how he and a companion worked sooooo hard to find one person to baptize. the other companion was going home and he hadn't baptized anyone. so they worked harder than they had in their entire lives and he said they literally just wept when the elder got on the train to go to Helsinki, Finland to go home because they hadn't seen a baptism. and then
HOLY CRAP i am so sorry i didn't use the subject line for this but i SWEAR i didn't forget - it's written in my planner :) i would like to wish cory michael a very happy birthday today and chelsea a happy birthday on friday! happy happy birthday!!!!!!!!!!! okay, so i will finish real quick cuz i think i'm going to get kicked off sooner rather than later -- seriously i'm so grateful i haven't had to deal with this until now. bah. and i'm very grateful for libraries for letting us do this so really it is a blessing. anyways.
so elder pierson and his comp were really sad... and then he got his new companion and they went home to drop the suitcases off and he had a note on the door from a member saying get to my house immediately. he was pretty scared of that note because the member was a little crazy -- but when they got there this man (who was described as an "Igebor" HUGE guy that was really scary) dragged his son into the room who was in the military and home on break. he said that before his son left, he told him to read the book of mormon and the son had, he knew it was true, and he wanted to be baptized in the next two days before he had to leave again. that was before elder pierson's companion had left finland for home. it was awesome. i have seen that so many times that Heavenly Father tests us until our very limits - and a lot of times we don't see the results we expect. However, if we have faith that is not dependant upon those results at all, then we are blessed with some awesome tender mercies from the Lord.
that conference was a HUGE answer to my prayers. i felt so good leaving and i have fallen in love with being a missionary again. :) cheesy? oh yeah. do i care? nope. sunday was AWESOME too. i met the ward and i feel like Heavenly Father has just put me in a little bubble at least for this transfer that is a "perfect world, perfect mission" bubble. the ward is AWESOME. and i was just overwhelmed with love for all of them :) there are a lot of really cool people. our ward is SUPER diverse - the area is too. there are chinese, japanese, phillipeno, russian, latin, american and caribbean and a couple of other places in our ward. it is AWESOME. we have more languages that can be spoken in our ward than most countries have in the entire country. pretty tight. the church came here to do the new pass-along cards for mormon.org because there is so much diversity. so we have a bunch of ward members on those cards :) cool!!!!
aight fam. time's up. love you all so much. sister kim and i changed valentine's day to charity day this year (it was the only way we could bear hanging hearts all over the place) so - happy charity day! and happy birthdays and cory i'm way proud of you for being able to get the priesthood. always take it seriously - it's huge. love you all!
sister mich smith
AND
oh and i hate to say it -- but it might be a LOT easier if you guys wanted to switch to written letters some of the times. however, i know that is a pain. so if you can't well, keep writing emails :)
THE NEWS -- TRANSFERS!!!!!!!!!!! (1/31/11)
Well, basically everyone has asked me about transfers because, let's face it. i've been in midwood for quite a while. yes, i am being transferred. transfers are tomorrow. i don't know if i have explained transfers yet because our mission is different from a lot of others - we get transfer calls on saturday night and have sunday to say goodbye to members (well, that has definitely carried over into monday because we could NOT get to everyone yesterday) so all we know is who is leaving and who is staying in the area. everyone who is getting transferred goes to the mission office and we have transfer meeting and at the VERY END all of the district leaders stand up and announce where everyone is going... and then right after they say the prayer, we grab our bags and our new companions and go to our new areas... so i have five other options - riverhead long island, bay shore long island, astoria queens, jamaica queens, or bensonhurst brooklyn. jamaica is where sister smith is - i would LOVE to go and be her last companion - however, i'm really excited for anywhere. it's weird to think that i can go to another area and love the people as much as i love the people here. yesterday was CRAZY. crazy. i spoke and started crying, which was thoroughly embarrassing, and then right after sacrament meeting got over i said more goodbyes than i really would care to :) but it felt really good. really good to hear a lot of people say a whole bunch of compliments (even though they are all obligated to because i'm leaving) anyways, it was good. i'm nervous and excited and just really pumped that i get to start a new adventure :)
SO FOR THIS WEEK:
-we got on a wreck on the bus and it was pretty hilarious. i have just been waiting for it to happen because drivers here really are nuts. even the bus drivers. and so some guy tried to pull around the bus and didn't make it. so then the bus driver just kept driving for a few blocks before he actually got out and checked out the bus. the other guy drove off - surprise. and so we just went on and got off the bus and then i realized we were about a 20 minute walk from our appointment because i got the cross streets wrong for the address. and we were already late to the appointment (thanks bus wreck). and we couldn't call the guy because his phone wasn't working. and it was the guy that we met on the train that thought we were nuns and he is AWESOME. so anyways, i was kinda freaking out a little bit and a little stressed. HOWEVER, i said a prayer and just told Heavenly Father how important this man felt our appointment was and how much we both wanted to teach him because he needed the gospel so bad in his life right now. well, guess what? obviously you can have faith in Heavenly Father and obviously He knows how important our appointments are. so we got to the appointment and knocked and he wasn't there. so we knocked on his neighbor's door just because i felt like it. and they said he wasn't there. and so we were writing a note to him and lo and behold, Aaron shows up. We talked to him for a while and he again poured out his soul to us and talked about how much he was changed when he saw his baby girl born and how he felt like none of his prayers were being answered because he couldn't hold that baby girl or put her in the crib he had just bought for her. it was pretty sad and we just bore our testimonies about how Christ really is there and that this is an answer to his prayers. well then we couldn't get a hold of him for the next couple of days because his phone still didn't work - well, we talked to him on saturday and it was so awesome. umm for anyone who believes that God is not a God of miracles, please read on. Aaron told us that he was going inside the house and reading the entire Book of Mormon, he said it didn't matter how long it took him. well, he did read and this week the mother of his baby called him and said she was coming back and giving him another chance and he told her about church and she said okay and that they both wanted to go. oh yeah. it was pretty tight.
we met some crazy guy on the bus that was complaining about the snow... then he started complaining about how everyone in egypt is revolting against the government. funny how detached i am. we both looked at him and said. oh. okay. and then we got off the bus. sorry egypt! we also went to meet with some of the young women and their grandpa came over and said a prayer. he blessed the senator that got shot in the head (obviously i'm pretty oblivious so i have no idea what he was talking about) and then he said "please bless her because we know that it is really hard to get shot in the head and live"
Sister Robinson has been practicing her karate skills all this week, mostly in the elevators. i would die laughing if i ever saw the video feed from the elevators we ride. sometimes we go in and we turn our backs to the door so that anyone that comes in feels really weird that we are standing the wrong way. one time sister robinson yelled at the top of her lungs and the elevator stopped and some lady came in, smiled at us and then yelled at the top of her lungs. apparently she heard us haha. it was pretty funny.
blaise is doing AWESOME!!!!!!!! he is getting the priesthood next week and he has been called to be a ward missionary (can't remember if i already told you that) and he is really doing well. sister robinson and her comp are going to take both blaise and rachel to the temple in a couple of weeks (it is closed right now) and rachel is doing AWESOME as well. she lost quite a bit of money this week, and her family is going through some really really tough times - well, on sunday she came to church and asked us if we could help her fill out her tithing slip. she told us that she has been wanting to pay tithing for so long because she knows it is God's commandment and that is what she needs to do. faith? yeah, i think so. it was really really cool to see.
everything else is just kind of crazy. i haven't let the reality hit me of "hey sister smith, you are leaving midwood and you have a large possibility of never seeing these people again." yeah, that stinks because i really really love the people here, so i just don't think about it :) i talked to one of the sisters going home last night and she said she loves the miracle of being able to love and love and love even though you think that you have given everything you have.
well, family i love you. you guys are awesome and i am so grateful for you. i will keep you posted on where i go!
i love you!
sister michelle smith
SO FOR THIS WEEK:
-we got on a wreck on the bus and it was pretty hilarious. i have just been waiting for it to happen because drivers here really are nuts. even the bus drivers. and so some guy tried to pull around the bus and didn't make it. so then the bus driver just kept driving for a few blocks before he actually got out and checked out the bus. the other guy drove off - surprise. and so we just went on and got off the bus and then i realized we were about a 20 minute walk from our appointment because i got the cross streets wrong for the address. and we were already late to the appointment (thanks bus wreck). and we couldn't call the guy because his phone wasn't working. and it was the guy that we met on the train that thought we were nuns and he is AWESOME. so anyways, i was kinda freaking out a little bit and a little stressed. HOWEVER, i said a prayer and just told Heavenly Father how important this man felt our appointment was and how much we both wanted to teach him because he needed the gospel so bad in his life right now. well, guess what? obviously you can have faith in Heavenly Father and obviously He knows how important our appointments are. so we got to the appointment and knocked and he wasn't there. so we knocked on his neighbor's door just because i felt like it. and they said he wasn't there. and so we were writing a note to him and lo and behold, Aaron shows up. We talked to him for a while and he again poured out his soul to us and talked about how much he was changed when he saw his baby girl born and how he felt like none of his prayers were being answered because he couldn't hold that baby girl or put her in the crib he had just bought for her. it was pretty sad and we just bore our testimonies about how Christ really is there and that this is an answer to his prayers. well then we couldn't get a hold of him for the next couple of days because his phone still didn't work - well, we talked to him on saturday and it was so awesome. umm for anyone who believes that God is not a God of miracles, please read on. Aaron told us that he was going inside the house and reading the entire Book of Mormon, he said it didn't matter how long it took him. well, he did read and this week the mother of his baby called him and said she was coming back and giving him another chance and he told her about church and she said okay and that they both wanted to go. oh yeah. it was pretty tight.
we met some crazy guy on the bus that was complaining about the snow... then he started complaining about how everyone in egypt is revolting against the government. funny how detached i am. we both looked at him and said. oh. okay. and then we got off the bus. sorry egypt! we also went to meet with some of the young women and their grandpa came over and said a prayer. he blessed the senator that got shot in the head (obviously i'm pretty oblivious so i have no idea what he was talking about) and then he said "please bless her because we know that it is really hard to get shot in the head and live"
Sister Robinson has been practicing her karate skills all this week, mostly in the elevators. i would die laughing if i ever saw the video feed from the elevators we ride. sometimes we go in and we turn our backs to the door so that anyone that comes in feels really weird that we are standing the wrong way. one time sister robinson yelled at the top of her lungs and the elevator stopped and some lady came in, smiled at us and then yelled at the top of her lungs. apparently she heard us haha. it was pretty funny.
blaise is doing AWESOME!!!!!!!! he is getting the priesthood next week and he has been called to be a ward missionary (can't remember if i already told you that) and he is really doing well. sister robinson and her comp are going to take both blaise and rachel to the temple in a couple of weeks (it is closed right now) and rachel is doing AWESOME as well. she lost quite a bit of money this week, and her family is going through some really really tough times - well, on sunday she came to church and asked us if we could help her fill out her tithing slip. she told us that she has been wanting to pay tithing for so long because she knows it is God's commandment and that is what she needs to do. faith? yeah, i think so. it was really really cool to see.
everything else is just kind of crazy. i haven't let the reality hit me of "hey sister smith, you are leaving midwood and you have a large possibility of never seeing these people again." yeah, that stinks because i really really love the people here, so i just don't think about it :) i talked to one of the sisters going home last night and she said she loves the miracle of being able to love and love and love even though you think that you have given everything you have.
well, family i love you. you guys are awesome and i am so grateful for you. i will keep you posted on where i go!
i love you!
sister michelle smith
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