Hola everyone y pura vida! I hope everyone is doing well and had a great week this last week!
Well to start off, like it says in my title, I have officially completed 52 weeks in the mission!!! But I don't technically complete a year until Thursday, the 13th. It's truly amazing how fast the time goes by in the mission. This year has been one of the hardest but one of the most rewarding years of my life. It has not been easy, but I couldn't be more grateful for all of the things I have seen and experienced. It has changed my life completely and I'm so excited to see what this next year of the mission has in store for me. I expect it to be at least a little bit easier because I can actually speak Spanish now haha. But I'll see you all again on June 28th, 2018!
Now for this last week! First off... I have great news! Frank passed his baptismal interview this week which means he is going to get married and baptized this Saturday, July 15th!!! I couldn´t be more excited and hopefully everything goes smoothly. He has changed so much in these 2 months that I´ve known him and it has truly been a miracle watching him progress. He currently doesn´t drink or smoke at all, whereas before he drank and smoke pretty much all day, every day. He´s only missed one Sunday since the day I met him, and now, his future wife, daughter, and other members of the family are coming to church with him as well. His daughter also wants to get married and hopefully baptized as well here soon. Joshua and Naihyell passed the sacrament for the first time this last Sunday and it´s just amazing watching how the Gospel can change people´s lives.
This week we also had a zone conference and learned a ton. One of the things that stood out to me most was a training on the parable of the 10 virgins. To explain the parable a little bit, there were 10 virgins, 5 of them were ready with oil in their lamps, and 5 were not. 5 were ready when the Lord came, and the other 5 were not. I don't have much time to explain, but basically they said that there are 3 types of lamps: empty, half full, and full. We obviously always want to be that lamp that is full of oil (love, diligence, faith, obedience, and discipline). We need to be a light for the rest of the world and have our lamps ready, full of oil, for when the day of judgement comes. Is our lamp burning, full of oil? Or is it on the verge of being empty? What do you need to change so that you are always full of oil (love, faith, diligence, discipline, and obedience)?
I love you all and hope everyone has a great week this week!
Elder Smith
Pics: Las Pastoras (one of the areas we visit most in our area), when our zone leader, Elder Lopez (one of my first zone leaders in the mish) came to do the baptismal interview, Santo Domingo centro, they gave us aprons to eat spaghetti on Sunday haha, Elder Parma and I with our aprons
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