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) :)
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