Week 93: It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

Hello everyone!! I figured that since I missed emailing last week I should probably send a final one this week. It's a bit surreal to be at the end of my mission; it doesn't even feel real. At this point though, I've already shed my tears and have gotten through the sadness of finishing up the last of my missionary service, so the title of this email is fairly accurate: I'm feeling pretty fine.

Last Monday I was unable to email anyone at all because as a zone we went and hiked Mt. Rainier. It was one of the most amazing hikes I've ever been on! It was so pretty! We left at 8 in the morning and didn't get back until 5, and then we had to go and buy groceries with the remaining hour that we had left. But it was totally worth the sunburn that I got.

Since then we've continued to work with a lady named Betty. I'm not sure if I've talked about her before, but she's a single mom of two young kids. She's been amazing to work with because she's very open and wants to learn and develop her relationship with God. This Saturday we were able to give her a church tour with fellowship from the ward, and she loved the tour despite being distracted by her two little kids running around and banging on all the pianos they could find. She actually lives outside of our area, but she's moving again so we're going to keep teaching her until we can find out which missionaries to refer her to.

On Tuesday we had exchanges and so I wasn't in my own area at all that day, but I had a had time with Elder Kirkland and Elder Hodge. On Friday we had a free car wash that we were doing just to do some service and try to reach out to people in a positive way. We had made a post for it on our Facebook page, and it got over 4,000 views! It was awesome! So we had a good amount of cars that we were washing.

This Saturday we got our transfer calls, and my companion Elder Jensen is going to be training a greenie here, so he's pretty stoked about that. For me they decided to allow me to make the big transfer home. So that's where I'll be this Thursday... home. So good luck to all those still out in missions and for those who are back home, I'll see you soon. Love you all!

-Elder Smith

Week 92: Should I really still be sending these?

Hello everyone! It feels like last P-day was just yesterday, but here we are!

This week was fairly eventful. President and Sister Leishman went home, we moved to a bigger apartment, we met President and Sister Metts, we had the 4th of July to celebrate... it was a busy week.

Despite the craziness of living out of boxes for half the week, we had some good success with the area. We made some more appointments with people over the phone and we started teaching a couple more people. Mostly we're still trying to build up our area and our teaching pool so we have people to work with, but it's been pretty good. I've never really had to start an area from the ground up, so it's been cool to see things get started and how my companion and I find more joy in the smaller things that happen.

Also we got a call from some missionaries in the Oregon Eugene mission. They've been teaching a friend of their mom's who happens to live in our area and we got to drop off a Book of Mormon to her, and depending on how she progresses they'll hand her off to us to help with fellowship from the ward locally. So it's been super cool to see this happen to us.

Hope you all have a good week! Love you all!
-Elder Smith

Eating sushi at Trapper's Sushi

The district on the 4th of July

The zone with President and Sister Metts