March 23, 2009

Dear Family,

Helsinki Finland!!!!! thats crazy. he is going to freeze to death. ha ha but that is way cool. i was so hoping he would come to this mission. but what were the chances of that. wow and justin enters the mtc in like 2 days. that is so weird that they are going to be leaving soon. the year behing me in school is already leaving but it makes sense i have been gone for six months now. it really does fly by. lets see. the biggest news of the weak is that as of right now i am a San Juanino. i got transfered to the province of San Juan. it is the province right above Mendoza. i am in the area Santa Lucía and i am on my second latin comp. his name is elder Cubilla (Cu-BEE-sha) for those that will need help. he is really cool. he is was relaxed missionary. he is from buenos aires and ha ha is 24 years old. it is like me and josh serving together. but he is way cool. he kinda reminds me of the guy on harry potter 4. the guy who competes in the competetion from the all boy school. i dont know just the way he is. he has 9 months in the mission and we are doing really good. mom you asked if it is cooling down. well it was in bermejo but here it is about the same temperature that it is in mesa. so i have been swetting a lot. the good thing is that i will be here during winter. yay not to cold. but im doing good here. i have some cleaning to do in my knew appartment. ya it was pretty gross. but we have the biggest zone in the mission and 3/4´s of the zone are latins. so ya. president said this zone is going to baptize the most because they can teach better. which is true. they dont have the culture or the language barrier. but it is good. we have really good zone leaders and we are going to do good here in santa lucía. we need to they havnt had a baptism in over a year in this area. but we have one for this sunday. i think the ward is happy. ya it is a ward to now a branch. we also have one they next sunday too. well we want it. we just need to show our faith. But about my area. Well first off it is huge. We know two boundries and thats it. Elder cubilla said that the mountains over there are one boundry and the other mountains another boundry. But it is huge. We went to lunch yesterday and it was like a 45 minute bus drive. It is crazy i have a lot to learn this transfer. For one thing elder cubilla knows about as much english as any punk on the street knows. Hello, whats your name? That is about it. Ha ha but we have fun.

Lets see. So last week in bermejo i got my first hair cut by a missionary. Elder berezay cut my hair. He did pretty good. And it was free. Um so ya, elder Riggs and i were waiting at a bus stop and a dog walked in the road and BAMB a car hit the dog and the dog flew like 15 feet in front and fell into a ditch. We thought for sure it was dead but then it got up and acted like nothing happened. Ha ha it was pretty cool. And then at the same bus stop just different days. We stopped a bus to get on and BAMB a motorcycle crashed into the back and the guy slammed into the back of the bus and then hit the grownd hard. He is ok but it was just weird to see his hit the bus. It was like he wasnt paying attention at all. Oh ya, one of my converts Belén. She wrote me a letter to thank me for baptizing her and gave it to me before i left bermejo. It was really nice to get that. It made me feel really good. One question. Mom Could you send me my fairwell talk if you can find it? I want to read it. Thank you.

So a sad story now. Here in santa lucía they have been working on the sewage pipes the pipes that take the Poop away. Well they were working with the pipes open and a guy got Dizzy from the fumes and fell in the hole. He fell in and it pulled him underneath and now they dont know where he is. They still havent found the body. But was a horrible way to die. So some guy stopped us on the road and told us to go the the poop treatment plant to talk with the mom and the wife. So we went last night. Really far away. And talked to them. They were so sad. We gave them a plan of salvation pamphlet and got there address. They dont livein our area but that pamplet should help them. I hope the elders in that area can find that house. It is such a sad story. But while they were looking for him they had to pipe closed off and the poop water was just going out next to the freeway. So there it just poop water river next to the free way. And we had to walk by it. So we had the smell of that and then to top it of there was a dead dog on the side of the road which just added to the horrible smell. We just laughed about it but it really did stink.

So ya dad, everyone has been asking me if i am a desendent of joseph Smith. And i really have no idea. Are we? So in this city there are more people with Money. So a lot of people have been to the states. Right now we are teaching one that went for ten years. They love the states but they are a little confused with all the political stuff. They just trash bush and love obama. But you see there is the rule that you cant talk politics. So i just agree with then so we dont start a huge conversation and not teaching the gospel. But man is it hard to keep my mouth shut.

So mom to answer the question about conference. We go the the stake center and the gringo missonaries watch it is english. I am way excited. I cant wait. But i am way excited for this transfer and for brenton and his mission call. I remeber when i got mine. Those three months go really Fast. So i love you all so much. Hope everyone is well and healthy. Love you.

Elder Smith