Week 53

This week was pretty good. Not a whole lot happened. We got transfer calls, and we'll both be staying. We weren't able to teach a lot of people this week, but we had a good time. It's already gotten cold here, and there's snow in the mountains now. I've gotten a little sick with a cold starting Sunday morning, so I'm having trouble thinking of things to talk about. Sorry it's a short email this week. Love you all!!

-Elder Smith

Going up one of the roads in our area to see the cool view and the snow.

Our zone

This lady was super excited to share her parrot, Charlotte, with us. It was a funny bird.

Week 52 - Baptism!!

This week was super great! We had interviews with someone in our mission presidency since President Leishman has been recovering from hip surgery. Also Jennifer got interviewed for baptism, and it went super great!! She hasn't smoked for over a week now which was amazing!! She's still living in the same Oxford home and didn't get kicked out. She was baptized this last Saturday, and everything went perfectly. A couple  people who were part of the program didn't show up, but others who were there stepped right in and filled the position. It was such a tender mercy. On Sunday I was able to confirm her, and it was so amazing to have words just suddenly pop into my mind and go out of my mouth as soon as they came. It was a pretty great weekend.

The rest of the week was pretty rainy, and we weren't able to work with most of our investigators so we did a lot of knocking. We found some frogs, there's always tons of deer, and we even found a small bat. Hope you all have a great week!! Love you!
-Elder Smith

 The little bat that we found in the middle of the road,
so we moved it so it wouldn't get run over.

 Elder Borsky, Jennifer, and me at the baptism

Week 51

This week was pretty good. We've been getting a lot of rain lately and we've been working pretty hard to keep some of our investigators on date.

Jennifer has been having some trouble lately with the Oxford/halfway house that she's been living in. They've been threatening to kick her out and it seemed like they actually did this week, but then someone higher up came and made it so she could stay there. So she was pretty stressed out and had a single cup of coffee, but she didn't smoke at all!! So we will be having the baptism this weekend.

Alena is also on date for this Saturday, but we're not sure if she's super committed to it yet, but she's been coming to church every week and seems to like everything. She's been taught almost everything now, we just don't know if she believes or has the faith yet.

This past Thursday we had a church tour with Mike. He's an interesting guy, but he's super interested. We knocked into him a few weeks back, and we've only had one sit down lesson with him so far, but he was open to a tour of the church so we brought fellowship for him and he wants to be baptized. He loved everything about the church tour, and he's looking forward to the support system that the church has. He came to church this Sunday and loved it!! There were a lot of members that came and talked with him, and he kept saying how comfortable he's been feeling with everything. Everything seems to be going smoothly for him, so we're pretty excited for him.

We also had a good lesson with Rhiannon. She's been super busy so this was the first time that she was able to meet with us since last transfer. We were able to teach one of the lessons with her, and she also wants to be baptized. She also said she wanted to quit smoking before she gets baptized, and that was even before we told her about the Word of Wisdom!!

All in all, I feel super blessed to be up here in Port Angeles working with all these people. Love you all! Have a great week!
-Elder Smith

Elder Pratt (one of the missionaries down in Forks)
and I while knocking on Monday.

Week 50 - Temple trip

This week was pretty great. On Wednesday we had our temple trip which was super great, and we had an hour of zone conference after where I had to give my first training as a Zone Leader. It was not the best since it was sort of a weird topic, but it went alright since I didn't have to do it alone. The topic of our zone conference was about how we could improve our knocking and door approaches. I can't remember a whole lot about this week, but we've been going by Jennifer pretty regularly to help her stop smoking. We had to move her baptism to this next Saturday since she's been struggling with smoking, but she's super determined to quit which is really good. We were also able to get Alena put on date for the 21st and she's praying about if she should be baptized then, so we're super excited about that. Other than that I can't remember anything else happening this week. Love you all!!
-Elder Jared Smith

Elder Borsky playing with magnets

Us at the temple

Knocking

Week 49- Half way there

So a year from tomorrow I'll be home. It's so weird to think about. Next week will be my halfway point, and the week after is my year mark. It's all coming way too fast. But this week has been really good.

We've had a few good lessons this week. Jennifer is still on date for this Saturday, but we're worried she won't make it because of Word of Wisdom issues. She keeps saying that she's going to stop smoking, but she hasn't yet. We've talked with Alena a bit more and talked to her a bit more about baptism and the importance of it, so she said she'll have it as a higher priority for things to pray about.

This last week we had combined district council and mission leader conference (MLC) both of which were pretty good. In district council all I had to do was help the zone pick a goal for the month of September of how many baptisms we want to try to get, and at MLC we had a good training about how to have better doorsteps which was pretty good. So this next week at our temple trip/zone conference Elder Borsky and I have to give a training on a part of it, so I hope that goes well. Surprisingly, I haven't been too stressed about it. We don't have too much time because of the temple trip, and both Elder Borsky and I will be doing it, so it'll be pretty easy.

There's deer everywhere up here.
They let you walk almost all the way up to them.