Elder Smith July 20 2009

-----Original Message-----
From: shain smith [mailto:shainsmith@myldsmail.net]
Sent: Monday, July 20, 2009 12:45 PM
To: smiths@snsnv.com; Julie@snsnv.com; snicksmith@gmail.com; Taylor@snsnv.com
Subject: Elder Smith July 20 2009

Hey Family,

How is everyone doing? Here in Ecuador we are doing really well. The weather is still hot, I think hotter actually and right now we are supposable in the winter part of the year, but its ok I’m pretty Ecuadorian so the heat doesn’t get to me haha. This week we have were focusing a lot on the less active members of the church. There are a lot of really awesome families in our sector and the only think that they are missing is to attend church. Seems like to me, that the hardest part for the people is to return after having so much time away from the church. We are trying to get all of the families that we are teaching excited to be able to go to the temple. At the beginning of the year when we were setting goals I said that goals should have a vision and our vision with the less active members is that the families can be sealed in the temple.

As far as the people that we are teaching, we have lots of people that want to get baptized. This weekend we will have one and the weeks coming up I think three families. As always it’s kind of hard to get people to come to church but we are working really hard so that the investigators can attend. Jacobo received the Priesthood yesterday. He seems to be pretty excited to be able to baptize a person. We are going to see what we can to so that he can baptize someone in his family.

Not too much more new this week. Fabricio and Lisseth moved to another city out of the blue. That’s kind of a bummer to not get to say goodbye to them but I guess that’s what its like when we have changes and we don’t get to say bye to any of the members. He told his family that he is attending church but the closest chapel to his house is 1 ½ hours in car. I told his mom that he has the Melquezedic Priesthood so he should form a branch in the city where he is living.

Well I hope that everyone is doing well. We are getting ready to start another week. Looking forward to helping lots of people enter the waters of baptism. Hope to hear from everyone soon. Thanks for the letters this week from home.

Elder Smith