letter and pictures from Nov 28

(I sent Sami a list of 25 things that I am grateful for, so she decided to reciprocate)
A ver, intentaré a hacer una lista de las cosas por las cuales estoy agradecida.

1. My mother who is my # 1 fan
2. The informative articles Dad sends me every week without fail
3. The fact that my sister´s boyfriend´s name sounds like a dessert
4. Being in another country
5. Learning a new language and culture
6. A companion who puts up with me (most of the time)
7. A hija after the manner of my own heart
8. The chance to know amazing people who are so cool and so strong in their faith
9. The ability to create things
10. Listening to music or even just the waves of the ocean
11. Mondays because I get to hear from my family!
12. A fleece blanket to keep me warm always
13. The Gospel in my life
14. The privilege of teaching other people about the Gospel
15. Lifelong friends I´ve made in such a short time
16. My killer family which is the definition of legit
17. Cheap fruit in Chile
18. My baby sister who I´ve never met but who I hear so much about
19. My adorable nieces and nephews
20. Family Game Night
21. Christmas in Chile TWICE
22. The opportunity to get a good education
23. I was really hoping Thanksgiving was on the 23rd (I am thankful for Converse)
24. Technology so that far away isn´t that far after all
25. A healthy body and mind

Is it sad that that took me a lot longer than I thought it would? Yep. That´s sad. Mom, I´m really excited to hear your Spanish en la carne. We haven´t had any snow here. Actually I don´t think it ever snows here... The weather keeps warming up. Love it. I am trying to give away all my winter stuff to a good home. I don´t really have much left now. I figure it will be a lot easier for me to get the winter stuff I need when I get back than for other Hermanas to wait to get good stuff from their parents. My personal attempt at charity. Haha. Just kidding.

So I´ve gotten in to making crafts. So far I´ve made a couple of headbands and a little flower hair clip. I´m pretty in to it. With all my spare time, you know. That last part was a joke. So... I bet you want to know about cambios......
(this is where her email ended - luckily she sent a follow up)

 Here are cambios. I will just tell you for all of the Hermanas so you don´t have to worry about finding out about all your conocidos.

Constitución
I am going with Hermana Melton to be in her sector with her investigators and am leaving the people I was teaching
Hermana Hardy is coming to be companions with Hermana Enders

San Javier (the same as it was)
Leggett y Robertson
McCombs y Jarrett (will become a trio when Hna Leggett leaves in 3 weeks)

Linares
Knapp (Training)
Cortes y Da Luz

San Carlos
Tzorin (Training)
Rockwood (Training in Trio) y Barretto

Santa Sabina (the same as it was)
Meikle y Whipple
Connley y Soderquist

I am sending some pictures too but I don´t have time to explain them all right now so have fun with that. You can guess what you think the story behind each picture is if you want... So I am really excited to work with Hna Melton and the investigators from the other sector, I actually know a lot of them already. I am also super excited for Hna Hardy to come here. She is awesome. She´s media hippy like I am. :)

We have a couple of really good investigators who have come to church and have a baptismal date so I am really excited that I can still be here to help out if Hermana Enders and Hermana Hardy need it with them. AND I will be able to be there for their baptism! And we found an amazing family that I already love and the other Hermanas are going to have such an awesome time teaching them. I feel really good about this cambio. Which also means that I am spending Christmas in Conti and dying here (dying means ending your mission - she is assuming that they won't move her for just one cambio - but one never knows). Oh Yeah. Well, eso es todo por ahora. Les amo muchísimo!

con cariño,
Hermana Smith

 Hermanas Smith and Enders

 Hermanas Smith and Melton

Letter from Nov 22

Hola mi mamita. Te extraño muxo pero sé que nos veremos en un rato más
entonces peudo aguantar. :) No. La dura es que estoy muy feliz ahora
pero igual quisiera verte. ¡Feliz cumpleaños! Ojalá que te disfrutaste
lo más que pudieras. No sé si mi español es muy bueno (especialmente
en la forma de Tu pero igual hago el empeño).

Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday Mamita.
Happy Birthday to you.

I still haven´t gotten the packages yet but I am sure that I will
receive them soon. Sorry that I haven´t sent you anything by real mail
these days. I´m pretty short on money so I don´t really have any extra
to send things. Email and love are free!

Your Spanish is coming along really well. Estoy muy impresionada por
todo que ha aprendido.  I´ve been feeling crafty these days, as in I
would like to do crafts. I made some one day and then gave them away
as birthday presents. They were so cute! The headband that Tallia sent
me last year inspired me (I made things with little fabric flowers).

My Birthday Present To You (Carole) will be sent later after this email.

We had 5 people in church this Sunday. Carol, Victor, Carolina, and
two new investigators Constanza and Anaís. They are two cute little
girls that are cousins. Anaís´ mom was going to come too but she
didn't get up in time to get her other two young kids ready. Her name
is Neli and her husband passed away 2 years ago. We talked about
eternal families and her husband and I felt the Spirit strongly and
when we asked her she said that she felt something different that she
hadn't felt before when we talked about her husband. It was a really
cool experience. Carolina is still as awesome as ever. She stayed for
the investigator class and she really like it. We are going to see her
later today. We are actually going to share with her really soon so I
have to cut this short. I spent so much time trying to figure out how
to make your birthday present work and at the end it didn´t. Lame. But
I will try again next week. Por mientras sepa q t quiero muxo (sepa
que te quiero mucho)

Sorry this is lame-.........................
love,
Hermana Smith

letter from Nov 15

We don´t need to go south. I would rather spend more time with people. I am confident that I will come back to Chile some day and that I will be able to see all the cool southern stuff then. I would much rather spend quality time with the people that I taught and met here before I go. (discussing my trip to Chile to pick her up)

 

Sounds like you guys had a fun weekend. We found an amazing new investigator named Carolina. She is the daughter of a new convert named Domingo from January. She is so cute. She is 22 just like us and she came to church with us on Sunday. We have only shared with her twice but those two lessons were some of the most spiritual experiences that I have had in my whole mission. The presence of the Holy Ghost was so strong. I literally felt like He was guiding our words like in D&C 50:13-22. So cool. Hermana Enders and I kneeled down after we left the second lesson with Heavenly Father to thank Him for the amazing experience that we had. Carolina is so ready to have these blessings in her life. we will be working a ton with her to help her prepare her for baptism. She felt the Spirit too and wants to be baptized at the end of this month. Please pray for her, she is so amazing I know that Satan will be working hard against her. But God is way stronger. :)

We have some other amazing families that need to keep their commitments so they can feel the Holy Ghost more and progress spiritually. Doralisa and her daughters, Lorena and her family, and some other awesome people. I hope I don´t get moved because there is so much amazing work here but I also know that whatever happens that God is behind it. He knows where I need to be to finish my mission and I trust what He thinks.

 

I know that I still have a ton of time left but sometimes I think about how excited I am to see you, Mom. You really are the best thing that has ever happened to me. No offense to anyone else... Mom, you really are my #1 fan and that helps me a lot to know and feel that. Did I tell you that Oscar is excited to meet you and that he is already planning to give you a hug? Prepare yourself. :)

 

Well, loves for all.

 

love,

Hermana Smith

Pictures of recent zone conferences in the Concepcion Mission

 Elder Zeballos and President Humphrey and their wives

 Talca Conference (with Sami)

 Concepcion Conference

Chillan Conference

letter from Nov 8

Señora Smith,

 

Gracias por su carta. Me encanta escuchar de su semana y las cosas que hizo con la familia. Ojalá que podamos hacer cosas divertidas cuando yo vuelva también. :) (Thank you for your letter. I love listening to your week and the things he did with the family. Hopefully we can do fun things when I come back too.) Your castellano seems pretty good to me. I´m excited to hear you speak it. Who knows, you might speak it better than me! (not a chance of that, but I am learning as much as I can & now always write a couple of sentences in Spanish in my letters to Sami)

 

We are having problems again getting investigators that come to church and progress. We have 3 families that we want to focus on so that we can help them progress.

 

Familia 1: Doralisa (mamá), Catherine y Daniela (hijas) They are a reference from the Bishop and a really awesome family. They were going to come to church yesterday but work came up at the last minute and they said that they weren´t able to come. We are going to work with them this week to try to get them to church this Sunday. I know that they will feel really good in church. They need a lot more peace in their life (the dad of the family passed away in a car crash about a year ago).

 

Familia 2: Lorena y Mauricio y sus hijos. Lorena was a reference from a member as well. She just recently had an operation so we tried to visit her in the hospital but we ended up visiting this tiny old lady who turns out was someone else. We couldn´t understand what she was saying but I guess she needed a visit that day more than Lorena. :) We passed by later by her house and shared about the Book of Mormon with Lorena, Mauricio, and one if their daughters. They said they were all going to read the chapters we left together that night or the next and we are going  back tomorrow to see how it went.

 

We are also sharing with Victor, another reference from a member. (I just realized right now how many references from a member we have received these days...) He works with some of the YSA on the chapel that is being fixed and he has already started reading the BoM. He is in Mosiah already and has come to church twice.

 

I am on Hna Fischbeck´s computer right now and she is kicking me off so I will try to write another email with more info after Hna Melton and I eat. I am in Conce. I wil explain..............

 

love,

Hna Smith

(from a second email she sent me)

More info. I am here in Concepción with Hermana Melton so she can get some medical tests done. We got here last night and passed by for Oscar for a while. He made us pasta; it was tasty. One of his friends is Mormon (mish, who knew?) and his other friend kissed my hand when he shook it. Classy. I just reread part of my last email and it said ¨I´m ecited¨. I just want to establish the fact that that was a false statement. I am not now, nor ever have been ¨ecited¨. Para que sepan. (Just so you know) Any way, we are leaving Conce tomorrow morning after doing some blood tests. 

Letter from Nov 1

Estoy bien. Estoy cansada pero feliz. Fuimos para ver un puente esta mañana y el paseo estuvo bueno. Tuvimos una investigadora en la iglesia ayer. Carol se llama. Sin la ¨e¨.  This week was good. I sure am learning a lot! You know what that means. And if you don´t, even better. We helped the other Hermanas with their baptism on Saturday. I did a musical number. I think I have done a special number at the majority of the baptisms that I have seen here in Chile. Good thing I love to sing. I just hope that no one gets sick of hearing me. I've been kind of distracted these days so I´m trying really hard to cut it out and get it back together again. We have some great people but we have decided to focus on just a few of them until we can help them accept the Gospel, then we can move on and help the rest. We decided to focus on Carol, Hector, and Doralisa, Catherin, and Daniela (a family of 3, they are really cute!). So we are going to focus on them and see if we can help them better that spreading ourselves too thin and not accomplishing much. I saw Hna Robertson at a Zone Conference! I love my hija. She really is the best. I´m glad that she is so close so that we can probably see each other a little more often. Thanks for the packages! I will let you know when I get them. Sorry the email is so short this week. I will be better next week, I hope. :) I´m glad you guys had such a happy Halloween. That´s the idea! Hope you keep enjoying yourselves until I get back. Then you can be lame with me while I rest. Then we will all jump up and have fun together again.

love,
Hermana Smith

Hey Dad, what´s up? Just felt like writing a note to YOU and only you. I have been in Chile for so long. Did you realize that? Haha. Just kidding. But really, my mission has gone by really fast and I´m excited that I will see you guys next...year. Maybe not so fast. ha. Really though. This has been the best decision that I have ever made in my life. I feel like I´ve learned stuff that would have taken me years and years to learn without my mission. But don´t worry. Expect your same Sami, I´m still me! But now I speak Spanish and I have an even stronger testimony of God and Jesus Christ so nothing bad happened. Love you, Dad!!

love,
Sami

Letter & pictures from Oct 25

Hey! I´m good. I made some recordings this week, I hope I have time to send them. I´m trying to figure out how to use that hard drive that you sent me in the MTC but every time I try to use it, it doesn't work for me. I just don´t have the magic touch. I think I am going to ask the computer guy to help me... I am computer challenged. I talked to him and he said that the the hard drive isn't working because it is either too old or it is damaged because it got dropped or hit or something (more likely) but now I am really sad because I wanted to see the pictures on it and it is so slow that I can´t even see the images. :( I ruin all technology. I will be trying to send things for you guys to look at / listen to.)

The written info will be short so I can send the recordings too. I met someone from the south of Chile so now we have a friend (niece of a member from Consti) who will let us stay with her if we want. Sweet. Hermana Enders and I have a lot of work to do together before that happens though.

We helped someone with diabetes get to the hospital because she had really high blood sugar (higher than 400!) I thought of you, Mom. So if that ever happens to you, God will send you someone to get you the hospital in time. :) Weird thing to share. Oh well.

love for now

Hermana Smith
(Sadly enough, Sami was unable to send the recordings - maybe next time)

 Cleaning the Apartment

 Zone Activities