Hellllllllo

Hello everyone. First things first, feel free to share this email with any mutual friends we have that may be missing this weekly update. My email is really annoying and so I find it difficult really to remember who it isn't emailing to... but share things you like on facebook or whatever. Or not.

I am doing great! I had a great week! I think I walked 1000 miles! Just kidding. But I walked a lot. Which was good. It's not always great to be walking a lot, because that sometimes means appointments are falling through, or you don't know what to do, but I feel we were led by the Spirit to know WHERE to walk this week, and although it didn't make sense always, looking back I see a lot of wonderful things that happened while we were walking. I think sometimes in life we are just seeing our plans fail or our hopes falling through and sometimes we feel as if we are walking aimlessly. But as long as we are doing best we can to live as we should, we will look back and see that He was always leading us. Whether you're walking through the heat of a trial or the cold of a loss, just like the seasons, those times will end. (Unless you are here. In that case. It is always hot.)

Other things that happened this week...I get so many compliments on this area about my tagalog. Not always that it is great tagalog but that I can joke in tagalog like a Filipina. I will take that. It's not me, it's the spirit :)

Earlier this week, I experienced a cool miracle. We were walking, and we saw a family. They were cute. But walking so fast. So they just passed us with a short reply to our good morning. After we passed, I just kept saying, "I love that family...I wish we talked to them. Why were they RUSHING?" but we kindof just moved on. We started walking to a different person's house, and you know what? We passed them again! It was exciting because we had a good little conversation, and they said we could come to their house. So we went the next day, and had a wonderful lesson. As we taught them, they told us how their son had been pointing at our church when they drove past (although they've never been there) and also during the part where we talked about Joseph Smith's experience their crazy two year old stopped playing and screaming, looked at the picture and was quieter than I've ever seen a 2 year old be. I know that Joseph saw the Father and the Son and I hope you will strive to know too. 

That's all I have to share right now, I love you all and keep moving forward!

--

Sister Smith

To Mom:

I'm excited you are starting to do more violin again. That will be fun. You can change lots of lives doing violin I think.

I wish I could go to the temple two times before my birthday! Haha. but have fun. I studied today about the temple a little. We had an area broadcast about the goals for the philippines this year, and they put 3 words as the focus. Obedience, Covenants, and Establish. This is what I said to pres. Deyro about it. haha. Lazy... I learned from that and from my studies the importance of doing things in the right order. Many missionaries seek to establish the church. They convince someone of the benefits, help them make covenants, and then expect that person to learn to obey. But we must teach obedience, or repentance first, and then help them make covenants, which establishes the church with converted members. This is also something we should apply in our own lives, to obey first, become worthy and keep covenants, then become established as a person.  I really loved the broadcast though because they talked about it in the context of Adam and Eve. I read a little in Moses today, that was really good. 

Something great-I found granola here...and yogurt was on sale. That was a blessing. So good. 

It's been so cold at night. I turned off my fan last night because I was cold but sad story someone left the windows of our house open so I got eaten by mosquitos since my fan was off and I couldn't sleep because my feet and ankles itched. But I'll survive. I love your blankie!!!!!

I got my birthday package. I dreamed 2x about opening it early. haha. but I haven't yet, even though what's inside is written on the outside. haha. 

My companion sleep talks. It's cute. but I really love her. She's samoan but from austrailia. she's so nice and funny. I love her! our new house is fine. It's nice. One of the 2 nicest I have lived in I think. My feet are okay. I've kept a couple pairs in case but I even wore just socks to bed (ew) last night and my toes hurt. So I might just buy another pair of sandals and I guess this is my life now. 

Napkin package? I don't even remember what I sent you. But merry Christmas. thanks for sending that to michael.

Yay it's almost our birthdays. 

Well. I have so many replies. I love you. Bye

Also, I am attaching pictures of my ID that they messed up and the new one. My mish pres requested a new pic too becuase my old one is obviously hideous (my hair isn't even even). But isn't it awesome to see how my countenance has changed? :) 

To Dad:

My new area is pretty good. It's my first branch. Being in a branch is different. But we are working to become a ward, and our district is close to becoming a stake. I have learned more about stakes lately too as I study d&c and stuff. We just moved the STL area from Bayambang to here. so that's why it's a new STL area. Before it was just normal missionaries. So now we need to try to make this a model area for the other missionaries. Since we do exchanges and stuff. Did you ever listen to the talk I reccomended to you guys called "the Mortal Christ" by Jack R Christiansen? It's really good. What you said reminded me of that talk.

I love your instights and stuff. IT's cool to see how much callings help us grow. \

I will try to take more pics to send you next week. Here are two pics of my area. Love that scriptures by the way. I just was pondering that this morning. Not that same scripture but the idea of pleasing the Father. LOVE YOU.