Semana 93: Guanacaste Miracles: 4/23/18

Hello everyone!

Every week here in Guanacaste just keeps crazier and crazier with surprises every day.  This week was one of the best one yet and ended with 2 baptisms!!  To explain...

So this week we had great days and not so good days and they alternated like that.  We were having one of those not so good days when we get a phone call from our bishop.. He asks us if we know a little girl named Madelyne and my companion says that he does.  She´s a little girl who is 9 years old and isn't baptized but both of her parents are members.  Elder Waite and his last companion tried to teach her but she wasn't ready to get baptized yet.  But the bishop just called us on Thursday night and told us that she wanted to get baptized on Saturday so we needed to go visit her and prepare her... My companion went on exchanges with our district leader to do the interview and I met her for the first day the day of her baptism.  It was just nuts but a huge miracle and just a great blessing from the Lord.

The other baptism that we had was Jordy! His family was finally willing to support him this week and he got baptized and confirmed on Sunday! We had to wait quite a long time for him to get baptized for his parents but it finally happened and was honestly just a great day.  

We had lots of other small miracles this week and other difficult things that happened, but the Lord truly blessed us greatly.  It made me think a lot and I came to the conclusion that when we do all that we can and we try our best, we may not see the results or the blessings right away or in the way that we wanted or expected, but the Lord ALWAYS blesses us.  Every time that my companion and I are just having a tough day or something bad happens, we just say to each other, "The Lord must be preparing us for something really good".  And vice versa for when it´s going really good haha.  We´re here in this life to learn and we learn from the good times and the bad, but if we´re truly doing all that we can to serve the Lord, He will bless us.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Smith

P.s. Saw my first scorpion here in Guanacaste... And it was in my suit jacket! I didn't get stung, don't worry...

Pics: baptism of Madelyne, baptism of Jordy, Elder Solis and I when we found our investigators house in the middle of nowhere, when you get locked out of the house...

Semana 92: Semana de Milagros + Zone Conference = Crazy Week: 4/16/18

Hello everyone!

Another awesome week here in beautiful and hot Guanacaste!

Like the subject title says, this was a very crazy, hectic week! We originally thought that we were only going to have zone conference, but then they advised us on Friday (3 days before semana de milagros) that it was going to be the semana de milagros.  Normally we spend like 2 or 3 weeks, preparing and planning for the semana de milagros so it was a little hectic but it ended up going really well and with us seeing lots of miracles!

Elder Waite and I are just having a blast here in La Victoria and we´re super excited to help our little zone progress and have tons of success.  We weren't able to spend too much time in our area this week, but we were still able to see lots of small miracles and enjoy the week.  In the zone, we have LOTS of potential (at least I think so) because we have several people investigating the church that have already assisted, but just haven't gotten baptized yet. Just in our own area here in La Victoria, we have like 4 people now that could possibly get baptized this week or the next...

Jordy was going to get baptized yesterday, but again, he had family problems and couldn't come :(.  He told us that this week "for sure" so we´ll see what happens.  If it was all up to him, he would've been baptized weeks ago. His mom just doesn't make it a priority to be able to go to church with him on Sundays. We also had a really cool miracle with an investigator that we have named Marley.  She´s a single mom of 4 and one of her daughters is already a member.  We haven't been able to visit her too much in these last 2 weeks, but on Saturday she told us that she feel likes God has answered her prayers and that she has received her answer!!! We told her that she could get baptized the next day, just that she would have to have her baptismal interview during church.  She agreed but then didn't come to church the next day and we still don't know why :(. We will be visiting her tomorrow to see what happened.  And then we had ANOTHER cool little miracle on Sunday.  We had just called Jordy like 15 min before church was about to begin and he had told us that he wasn't going to be able to be baptized.  We were a little crushed, but then my companion and I noticed that there was some guy just standing outside the church gates doing nothing.  We invited him to come in and he just walked in and sat in sacrament meeting with us!! We challenged him to be baptized afterwards and he accepted! We will be visiting him tomorrow as well!

Lots of little miracles this week and I´m so grateful for the chance I have to be here to witness them.  The Lord lives and loves us and truly does put little miracles in our lives every single day if we open our eyes to see them.  I have seen them plenty this week and I will continue to open my eyes and look for them.  I invite you all to do the same.  Even if you have the worst day, the Lord will bless you in one way or another and we need to CHOOSE to be grateful and focus on the blessings and not the problems we may be facing.  We´ll all be happier if we CHOOSE to be. 

Hope everyone has a great week! Pura Vida!

Elder Smith

Pics: Liberia zone with president and hermana laboriel in our zone activity!

P.s. I promise I´ll take more pics this week :/ sorry mom

Semana 91: HOT: 4/9/18

Hello eveyone! Pura vida...

Well this week was crazy and full of meetings, traveling, and new experiences.  

I am here in Guanacaste and it is HOT... It reaches high 90´s every single day and it actually rained a few days this week which makes it really humid as well.  Normally it´s really dry and just dries you out in like 5 minutes but thankfully we´re getting to the rainy season.  We had to travel to San José and back twice this week so we spent a lot of time on the bus this week (the trip is 5 hours or more in bus each way).  It´s really different here but I already love it and I feel a really good spirit here.  I´m super excited to be here and I know Elder Waite and I are going to see lotssss of miracles in our time together here. 

We have a few really great investigators but are starting to look for new people to teach as well.  We should have a baptism this Saturday of a 14 year old named Jordy who´s great! His parents got baptized a little over a year ago but supposedly he didn't want anything to do with the church until now.  He´s ready to get baptized, but he lives a little far away from the church and his family doesn't have much money.  We´re working with him and his family right now so that they can come to church and so he can get baptized this Saturday! 

We had our leadership council this week and it was great! Something that really stood out to me from the conference was the subject of sacrifice.  They talked about the conference talk from one of the Seventies who talked about sacrifice and "one more day".  I loved this talk from Taylor G. Godoy and I´m so happy that my mission president chose to talk about it.  The talk mentions that sacrifice means "doing sacred things".  I love that because I think it´s so true.  Sometimes doing stuff like going to church, or reading the scriptures, or things like that seem like sacrifices, but they´re necessary in our eternal progression.  When we sacrifice something of ourselves to do sacred things that the Lord wants us to do, we will truly be blessed in the long run.  It´s a sacrifice in the moment, but truly a privilege and a great blessing.  

I hope everyone has a great week this week!

Elder Smith

Pics: one of the tires on the bus popped when we were going to Guanacaste..., Elder Waite and I, trip to San Jose, one of the roads here in La Victoria 

Semana 90: Changes to...???: 4/2/18

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone had a fantastic week last week and that you could all watch and hear the words of the apostles and prophet in General Conference!

I´ll talk about that at the end because first let´s talk about transfers! After 6 months (1 year in Heredia) I´m finally leaving.  And I´m going to... GUANACASTE! I´m finally going to get to know "the Costa Rica part of Costa Rica" haha.  My new ward is called La Victoria and I will continue as zone leader of La Zona Liberia! I´m super excited and it should be awesome.  I´ve heard about Guanacaste my entire mission but have never personally been there.  All I´ve heard is that it´s HOT, dry, and that there are monkeys all over the place.  Should be interesting haha.  I´m sad to leave my beloved Heredia behind but I´m excited to see what these last 12 weeks have in store for me in Guanacaste.  My new companion is Elder Waite from Colorado and he has about 18 months in the mission.  He started his mission in Flores so it´ll be fun to get to know each other better and work our hardest to bring about the Lord´s work!

Well this week was a good one, but the highlight obviously has to be General Conference.  This was my last one here in the mission and one of my favorites as well.  President Nelson is just such a spiritual giant and I loved hearing the many messages that he had to share with us.  It was a real big testimony builder to me that he truly is the prophet of the Lord here on the Earth.  He just had a different light about him that I hadn't seen quite as strongly until now.  I loved all of the messages that the other leaders and apostles of the church shared, but one of my favorites was from President Nelson on Sunday.  I don't have my notes with me right now so I can't remember very many details, but it really impacted me when he talked about personal revelation.  Personal revelation is something really simple but something I feel a lot of us overlook or don't appreciate as much as we should.  I know that has been the case for me the majority of my life.  Personal revelation is the right and ability that we have to talk to the Lord and RECEIVE answers from Him.  It´s like the video I attached in my email last week, "If any of you lack wisdom, Ask of God"! The Lord wants to communicate with us, but it takes a sincere effort from our part.  We all have questions, doubts, worries.  How can we overcome or find answers to these questions, doubts, worries? Study it out and ask the Lord for help and guidance and He PROMISES that He will answer us.  The Lord wants to talk to us a lot more than we want to talk to Him.  I invite you all to ponder about something you could ask the Lord this week and then do all that you can to look for this personal revelation that the Prophet invited us to receive! That is the Lord´s invitation through his chosen prophet!

I hope everyone has a great week this week!

Elder Smith

P.s. Didn't take many pics this week I guess :/  

Pics: saying goodbye to a few members last night 

Semana 73: Thanksgiving and Transfers: 11/27/17

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone had a great week and a great Thanksgiving!

I actually had a Thanksgiving meal this week and it was awesome.  First time I had eaten turkey, sweet potatoes, and mashed potatoes with gravy in quite some time haha.  And I can't forget the pumpkin pie either. The lady that cooks for us made us Thanksgiving dinner and it was delicious.

Sorry but I have even less time to write today than last week... I sincerely promise that I´ll do better next week but just know that this will be short.

We didn't have a baptism this week :( but almost! Widelban is progressing super well and was going to get baptized on Saturday, but is still a little unsure.  He placed his own baptismal date now for the 16th of December.  He wants to get baptized and be a missionary, but he wants to make sure he´s doing it because God wants him to, not just because he wants to.  Super spiritual 18 year old if you ask me.  Pray for him please! 

ALSO, I almost forgot. We had transfers! The sisters got take out and I received a new companion here in Flores.  His name is Elder Lake and he´s from Texas! My first gringo companion in the mission since the MTC.  He was actually in the MTC with me, but he was in a different district so i never got to know him too well.  We should get along just fine and I´m excited to learn from him and work really hard this transfer.

To end, I´d like to share something I learned this week.  Our Mission president came to our district meeting this week and shared a message that really impacted me.  He talked to us about the importance of keeping a journal and writing down the spiritual experiences that we have in it.  Sometimes we feel like we may not be progressing spiritually or that the Lord isn't there to help us, but that´s not true.  He is always there! We just forget sometimes.  It even happens to me sometimes here in the mission.  He is always out to take care of us and work miracles in our lives.  I know that miracles happen every single day, we just have to make the effort to look for them and I know   we´ll find them.  I challenge you all to start writing down these spiritual experiences that you have or where you saw the hand of the Lord in your lives on a daily basis.  It might be hard but I promise you will see the difference if you do!

Hope everyone has a great week this week!

Elder Smith

The sisters got take out and I

pics: Thanksgiving!, the food, with our cook!, went to lunch on pday!

Semana 89: New House!: 3/26/18

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone had a great week this week!

One of the highlights from this week is that we moved!!! We finally were able to find a house that´s more in the center of our area, and not to mention bigger and better.  We moved on Friday but we´ve already seen how much it has changed the way we do things.  We have one week til changes, but if i have changes at least I´ll be able to enjoy it for a week and know that I helped the future missionaries of Flores :)

This week was a really good one and one of the other highlights was Sunday.  We had 3 investigators at church (we´ve been struggling recently) but one of the investigators that showed up is super awesome! Her name is Lisbeth and we found her in the semana de miliagros! She now has a baptismal date for the 21st of April and from the few times we have visited her, seems really promising.  She told us she just started looking for God a few years ago, but doesn't go to any church.  She also told us that she had heard about our church before because about a year ago she discovered the mormon channel on youtube and LOVES the videos.  I´ve never heard of anyone just finding the mormon channel by accident before haha.

Another great experience that I had this week is that we had exchanges with the assistants! I went to their area with Elder Larson and my MTC comp (Elder Millward) went to my area with Elder Lake.  I loved the exchange and learned a ton from Elder Larson.  One of the things that called my attention was how they worked with the members.  I like working with the members but don't know how sometimes.  Elder Lake and I decided that we would begin working with the members more and teach them the Restoration.  We´ve been able to do it once so far and it was a super great experience.  We show them one of the newer videos of the Restoration and it´s amazing.  If you haven't seen it, I´ll attach it in this email, WATCH IT!  

I love this gospel and I know it´s true.  If you´re not sure in what you believe or have questions, who better to ask than God himself (James 1:5)! Ask and ye shall receive!

Elder Smith

video of the first vision:

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2017-01-0100-ask-of-god-joseph-smiths-first-vision?lang=eng

Pics: It rained this week!!! (it´s not even April yet), leaving our old, empty apartment, zone activity today, our new apartment in the room where we study :)