From Candace Smith
First of all, all the libraries are closed next monday, so no letter for you! You'll get to see me Tuesday Morning though. We will be skyping from the Paper Mill Ward Mission Leader's house. Long description there :) Anyway, I wrote down both your Skype addresses, so we should be okay. I'm not sure what time...probably anywhere from 11-2pm. I'll try to call you to let you know when I'm on.
First of all, I chopped off my hair. Okay, not all of it. But it's shoulder length now and I can completely do my hair in 5 minutes flat. SOOOOO EASY!!! I love it.
Honestly, it was a bit of a hard week, so we got a lot of lessons done, but there was also a lot of driving. We are seriously hurting for miles.
Oh, and the Mission Christmas party is the 19th, this Wednesday sillies!
----Tell us about your investigators.
McKenzie was able to talk to her mom about getting baptized. Her mom told her that she wants McKenzie to look up a few specific things, learn more about them, and when she can tell her mother about them, she will be fine with the baptism. We were so excited to hear that! So now she just needs to study up on the questions. We pointed out she has many resources. Bible, Book of Mormon, footnotes, Topical guide, Bible dictionary, Index, lds.org, mormon.org... We told her if she needs help, feel free to text or call, which she already does anyway.
Shirell and Talif came to the Festival of the Nativity, and then we were able to share the Living Christ with them this week. They like to feed us, and then us to teach them. Talif really opened up this week and asked questions that we knew he was wondering. It was great to see that. This family has 4 girls!
Laura is going through a hard time, but luckily she is leaning on Ward members for support. She is an awesome girl who really wants to know how to be closer to God.
don't have time!
---How long do you get for your phone call?
30-45 minutes. Please don't ask me to disobey rules. We are blessed as we listen to our leaders. I might not want to get off, but I'll need to.
---What is the weather like? this week?
VERY RAINY!!! It has been drizzling since yesterday morning. It's so gross! I had to back Sister Lovell out yesterday, and she reversed into a puddle cause she didn't watch me close enough, and I had to step in our friendly parking lot lake! I was so wearing tights, so I was wet for the next 2 hours. Blegh!
----What was your most spiritual experience this week?
We got to teach Wen-Wen the Plan of Salvation. We were on exchange, because Sister Worthington will be training again soon, so we had Sister Young from Hamilton Mill with us. Sister Lovell has this great puzzle for the P of S that has all the parts centered around the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It's amazing!
Anyway, so we started the lesson with Jesus Christ in the center and related everything to that. As we went through the lesson, i could just feel how she was believing pretty much everything that we said. Everything else, she asked about. Favorite question of the lesson, so if we were so happy and perfect with Heavenly Father, why did we choose to come to earth where things usually aren't happy? She said this in her awesome Chinese accent. It was so cool to see how much she already understood. We were running out of time, so we were going to stop at Our life on Earth, then she asked, well what goes here? and pointed to the next space of the puzzle. We just HAD to briefly finish it and told her that we would explain more later. It was sooooooo awesome! She seems to understand the scriptures pretty well too. She is reading about faith this week, which leads perfectly to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She is so amazing!
Monday, December 24, 2012
December 10, 2012
Pictures!
 |
| Atlanta Georgia Temple |
 |
| Atlanta Georgia Temple Stained Glass |
 |
My heritage: My Great-Grandma (Sis Lovell),
My G-ma(Sis Lapin), my mom and me! I love it!
 |
| Sister Lovell, one of the best people ever! |
 |
| Mission Sisters Luncheon |
December 10, 2012
To start off this wonderful email, I would like to address ALL of the skyping emails. I cannot skype on Sunday. I get about 30-45 minutes, and I'm not quite sure what time of the day. We are still working on it, but we are focusing on all the missionary stuff that has been happening this week, so not much progress yet.
So, I haven't got a haircut yet. When I do, I'll try to take pictures. There is a cute young couple in our ward who are great ward missionaries. The wife is going to cut our hair tomorrow because that is the only time we can.
This week has been super busy! It has been nice to be able to handle all of the work that we have had the pleasure of enjoying :)
We had a wonderful lunch this week with all the sister's in the mission. The number of sisters will probably double by March. It was nice to meet everyone and go to Macaroni Grill together.
This week was so busy that while weekly planning, I was not able to set the phone down for 1.5 hours! There were continuous phone calls and texts to be made and answered. It was VERY tiring. I remember when I thought I would mostly escape a cell phone by going on a mission. Yeah right...
This week we picked up 4 new investigators! The work is really hopping now. There are two for each ward.
Wen-wen is Chinese from mainland China. She is not very good with English, but I guess she is doing much better now. We taught her about Christ and how to pray. The next day we were texting her, and she said that she would totally like to learn more. We are having a team up who knows mandarin so that we have a back up when it is really hard to teach simply. She has no religious background, so we are literally starting from ground zero here.
Laura is showed up at North Point with a friend several weeks ago. We took her to the Festival of the Nativity, where they had TONS of Nativities from all over the world. Her family is from Mexico and we kept an eye out for one from Mexico when we cam across one which was the size of at least half our dinner table (The conference one at home). It included greenery, elephants, a stream, and even a pond with two real goldfish in it! It was incredible. We declared her country the winner. We prayed with her before she left the festival and that was a super spiritual experience. We are definitely taking this one slow because she has been pushed so much by so many other churches to convert right away. We told her how we pray and find truth and told her the Book of Mormon would help in her search.
McKenzie received a priesthood blessing this week because things have been crazy at work and she just got back from Ohio. We don't know if she told her mom that she is getting baptized, but she was given a lot of peace and strength in the blessing, so it will all be okay.
We didn't see Hollee this week :( I definitely got to text her though. We are focusing on unconditional love.
Shirrell and her family...I forgot the husband's name. Oops! They also came to the festival of the nativity. We went on splits on Thursday. I taught Connie while the other sisters dropped by Shirrell's house, who they knew from when they were companions in July/August. They caught her and she seems ready to be taught :) She seems awesome :)
Hey, did you know that there is a video on lds.org about Same sex attraction? It looks cool...Random thought :)
Mom, you asked what my companions would like for Christmas. First of all, they already LOVE the ornaments you sent in my package.
-Sister Lovell would like a big hug, another Sister Smith angel for the top of her tree, and a cool Arizona Souvenir, but we want to
send it to her home address, which I will give you later. I'll give her a coupon for it :)
-Sister Worthington would like a cool Arizona souvenir, and a HUGE hug! And pictures of the puppies sent to my email.
Or, I could just take both my companions to lunch at Panera, and that is the best present we could all get :)
---------Where do you think Tyler and Andrew go? Where do you think McKenna will go? Georgia or Peru would both be fun.
McKenna, come to Georgia! I'll train you! Tyler will go to New York :) Andrew will go to Alaska
-----Have either of you received any packages? They have been in the mail for awhile. Well they should be there.
I got a package this week. It was completely squished on one side, so the tree stand is kind of broken and so was the etched glass thing. I got to see what it should look like though because they had one just like at the Festival of the Nativity!
Mission party is on the 19th. That's next week.
-------What is the weirdest thing you have eaten on your mission?
Not vegetarian, not vegan, but microorganic or something like that. My body hated it! Not happy :) Ate more chocolate :)
-------How many of your investigators got to Church this week?
None :( It was stake conference, which was like 45 minutes away in Cumming, GA
--------What was your most spiritual experience this week?
Probably with Wen-Wen. It was awesome to see her willingness to learn. She can feel the spirit so well because the words are not as distracting to her I think. She is so full of faith already.
December 3, 2012
Sister Candace Smith
Sister Lovell is awesome! Being in a trio has made things much easier, because if we can see and hear one companion, we are good. Lots of "triangulation" :)
I'm going to a chiropractor this week! A member called in a favor and got us free service, I think. So, could you have Paul fax my records to Dr. Hortman? He is in the Sandy Springs Area. I wish I had more info for you, but we took his card home.
I'm having my first mission haircut tonight. I'm super excited! If it wasn't so cold in the mornings, I would chop most of it off. I think I will be cutting a good section off anyway, since it hits my lower back at the moment. When I have it in a high ponytail, it still gets caught in my jacket and scarf. BTW I will want my rain coat. The one I have is definitely too big for the summer here. Or probably even the spring. More on this later when it becomes more important.
I got dad's package. The map is really super helpful in this area, because our North Point people are from a ton of different places in Georgia.
Because of the coming influx of sisters, the mission is now putting more emphasis on keeping the sisters strong. We are now doing exchanges regularly, which we just did one on Tuesday. Sister Worthington went to Suwanee with Sister Nielsen (she came out with me) and Sister Berrett came here with Sister Lovell and I. It was really cool. I guess they planned it to boost the greenie confidence.
Sister Berrett came out with Sister Lovell, so this was pretty much the only time that I could have served with her. It was so fun! She is an awesome missionary.
We also have a Sister's Lunch coming up on Friday Afternoon. All the sisters from the mission are coming and Sister Wolfert is paying! We are renting out a room at a restaurant (I don't know which one yet) and having a fantabulous time together. I'm super excited for this.
Anyway, there is TONS happpening, and I can't write about all of it. May I just add on a final note before the questions that I do not like decorating? It turns out that our apartment has a 6.5" Tree. I don't want it, but that just means my companions get to decorate more. I'm so glad they want to decorate and they are fine with me just sitting and laughing with them.
-- Tell us about your investigators? (not a question; that's a command)
Sadly, not much has changed since last week. We don't know how it went with McKenzie's family because the school she works at is being audited...She doesn't think they'll pass. We hope it went well though. We want her to come to church with her daughter.
Hollee is still trying to believe that we can even know truth. She doesn't like relying on her emotions, so she has a hard time giving credit to Spiritual experiences. We are going on splits this week to teach her before institute.
We are definitely in finding mode.
--How is your weather there?
It starts out at about 40 degrees at 7 in the morning, then goes to 70 by the middle of the day, then the humidity rises and the temperature drops to about 50. It's really weird. It hasn't snowed though...YAY!!!!
If it did snow, we have a fireplace :)
--What is your favorite Christmas Memory?
Definitely the food storage christmas and going to waffle house in the morning. All the missionaries (except me) seem to call it Awful house here. I guess they are known for their terrible service and disgusting food...weird. I'll have to try it.
--What was your most spiritual experience this week?
Teaching the Plan of Salvation to Connie (Inactive, converted as a 13 year old, but stopped coming to church soon after). It was so cool! The Spirit was so strong and we were able to invite her to come to church with us on Sunday. She has been very afraid to come to church because she has been gone for so long (she is now 47), but the spirit was so strong. We told her her home teacher would love to pick her up, and since she has been able to keep in contact with him monthly for years, she said that'd be fine. We met at her house early Sunday morning and reassured her that she looked great, especially with her awesome pocketbook (aka purse :) ) Then it was off to church. By the end of it, she turned to me and said she wanted to come back next week. I'm so excited for her!
Sister Lovell is awesome! Being in a trio has made things much easier, because if we can see and hear one companion, we are good. Lots of "triangulation" :)
I'm going to a chiropractor this week! A member called in a favor and got us free service, I think. So, could you have Paul fax my records to Dr. Hortman? He is in the Sandy Springs Area. I wish I had more info for you, but we took his card home.
I'm having my first mission haircut tonight. I'm super excited! If it wasn't so cold in the mornings, I would chop most of it off. I think I will be cutting a good section off anyway, since it hits my lower back at the moment. When I have it in a high ponytail, it still gets caught in my jacket and scarf. BTW I will want my rain coat. The one I have is definitely too big for the summer here. Or probably even the spring. More on this later when it becomes more important.
I got dad's package. The map is really super helpful in this area, because our North Point people are from a ton of different places in Georgia.
Because of the coming influx of sisters, the mission is now putting more emphasis on keeping the sisters strong. We are now doing exchanges regularly, which we just did one on Tuesday. Sister Worthington went to Suwanee with Sister Nielsen (she came out with me) and Sister Berrett came here with Sister Lovell and I. It was really cool. I guess they planned it to boost the greenie confidence.
Sister Berrett came out with Sister Lovell, so this was pretty much the only time that I could have served with her. It was so fun! She is an awesome missionary.
We also have a Sister's Lunch coming up on Friday Afternoon. All the sisters from the mission are coming and Sister Wolfert is paying! We are renting out a room at a restaurant (I don't know which one yet) and having a fantabulous time together. I'm super excited for this.
Anyway, there is TONS happpening, and I can't write about all of it. May I just add on a final note before the questions that I do not like decorating? It turns out that our apartment has a 6.5" Tree. I don't want it, but that just means my companions get to decorate more. I'm so glad they want to decorate and they are fine with me just sitting and laughing with them.
-- Tell us about your investigators? (not a question; that's a command)
Sadly, not much has changed since last week. We don't know how it went with McKenzie's family because the school she works at is being audited...She doesn't think they'll pass. We hope it went well though. We want her to come to church with her daughter.
Hollee is still trying to believe that we can even know truth. She doesn't like relying on her emotions, so she has a hard time giving credit to Spiritual experiences. We are going on splits this week to teach her before institute.
We are definitely in finding mode.
--How is your weather there?
It starts out at about 40 degrees at 7 in the morning, then goes to 70 by the middle of the day, then the humidity rises and the temperature drops to about 50. It's really weird. It hasn't snowed though...YAY!!!!
If it did snow, we have a fireplace :)
--What is your favorite Christmas Memory?
Definitely the food storage christmas and going to waffle house in the morning. All the missionaries (except me) seem to call it Awful house here. I guess they are known for their terrible service and disgusting food...weird. I'll have to try it.
--What was your most spiritual experience this week?
Teaching the Plan of Salvation to Connie (Inactive, converted as a 13 year old, but stopped coming to church soon after). It was so cool! The Spirit was so strong and we were able to invite her to come to church with us on Sunday. She has been very afraid to come to church because she has been gone for so long (she is now 47), but the spirit was so strong. We told her her home teacher would love to pick her up, and since she has been able to keep in contact with him monthly for years, she said that'd be fine. We met at her house early Sunday morning and reassured her that she looked great, especially with her awesome pocketbook (aka purse :) ) Then it was off to church. By the end of it, she turned to me and said she wanted to come back next week. I'm so excited for her!
November 26, 2012
Sorry, but it was a CRAZY week! First transfers, and guess what?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! We got a new companion! The third in our WONDERFUL trio is Sister Lovell, who was formerly in a trio training Sister Merback. We have decided to kill her in January, so stay tuned for announcements! Just kidding. She just hit her 17 month mark this past week, and this transfer is 7 weeks long, so we get her until January 9th or something like that. We also got another Brazilian Elder! So we now have 9 people in our district. It's huge! I hope someone else knows how to play piano, but alas, I believe I'm the only one! They put Elder Fritas and Elder Gomes on bikes, and they only stay in our area now (the other companionship covers pretty much all of Georgia, from what I hear).
I'm going to see a Chiropractor! And I don't have to pay for it. A ward member has some connections, which leads to free work on my back! Good thing :)
So, there have been so many changes going on. It is almost for sure that I will train in January. We are supposed to double our sisters then, so literally, they think everyone will be. We'll see. I've been told by my companions that I could easily train now, even with my knees. So, life changes! Funny fact, I know! Chocolate is maybe eaten once a day in my life and I don't eat eggs. I avoid dairy. Weird!
Oh, so the knees! My chondromalacia is painful, but nothing to worry over! So stop! I know you love me, but I was told by a very wise christian woman that you either worry or you pray, you don't do both. So please just pray for me, and then everyone will be happy :) Seriously though, I don't have to drive anymore, and I am working on stretching the muscles. It is an obstacle, but not a roadblock. I know the Lord will help me. This week has been strange because on top of all these changes, one of our investigators was in Ohio telling her mother that she is getting baptized, and everyone else has been busy with Thanksgiving and family. It was really hard to get much done. Walking is not my knees favorite thing in the world, although talking to people is still. I love talking to people, even when they reject us. It can be painful, but just being able to talk to so many of God's children is such a blessing in my life.
Questions:
1. Candace, what did you do for Thanksgiving?
We went to the Walkenhorsts along with three other families and ate a traditional meal, then had the kids help us make hand turkeys. We then taped these hand turkeys to people's doors and handed them to random people on the street. The Elders helped us with that part. :)
2. What was your most spiritual experience this week?
4. How are your knees doing Candace?I described it above. It's painful, but I am so stubbornly hanging on to staying out here that I am taking any measure I can to help them feel better now AND in the long run. Lots for my new companion to learn about it though.
2. What was your most spiritual experience this week?
Teaching the Plan of Salvation in a role play. That seriously sounds so weird, but I have not taught the Plan of Salvation all out like that. It took like 45 minutes, but it was so powerful, and of course I had no pain during it. The Spirit led every word, and I had my personality in there the whole time, but the spirit guided it so that every single transition was so smooth and personally relevant that I think both I and my investigator (Sister Worthington) cried the entire time.
3. Chris wants to know, "What is the answer to life, the universe and everything?"
I heard 42. I like the answer,"Christ" or "The Atonement" better though :)
4. How are your knees doing Candace?I described it above. It's painful, but I am so stubbornly hanging on to staying out here that I am taking any measure I can to help them feel better now AND in the long run. Lots for my new companion to learn about it though.
 |
| Awesome Picture for our Candie PI |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)