Almost Christmas!

Hello Everyone,

I say the same thing every week but time is flying! We are so close to
Christmas, I can hardly stand it! Even in Spain the Christmas spirit
fills the air. And yeah, they might not be as receptive as the people
in Utah, but we are still seeing little miracles every day. To be
honest, it's a little sad that I won't be with my family for
Christmas, but I have another family here in Valladolid and I know
that everything is going to be okay :) here's my week!

I'll start off by telling a weird story that happened in the beginning
of a week. We were doing our weekly grocery shopping during medio dia
and got stopped by 2 guys who wanted to talk to us. They asked us what
we were doing there, two young kids in white shirts and ties was a
little weird for them I guess. Anyways, they seemed a little strange
to Elder Peña and I. They asked us about the church, where we lived
(which we don't tell people), and where we were from. As soon as I
said "Soy de los Estados Unidos", the focus immediately changed from
to the Peruvian to the American. One of them spoke English and started
to ask me all the basic questions that everyone here learns in school.
Then the other, started getting pretty close to me. He had piercings
all over his face, and then started saying "tú eres guapísimo!" It was
loud enough for other people around to stop and laugh a little. A
little weird, right? They told us to put their numbers down so we
could talk more on another day so we did. As we were walking away, the
weirder one kept calling me handsome and all this weird stuff, then
shouted "I want to eat you!" I was so scared haha but couldn't stop
laughing. I totally got hit on by 2 guys in the grocery store. Pretty
weird but kinda funny hahaha.

One thing that has been working for us is teaching English. Everyone
here wants to learn English, so that's a good way to get in the door
with a lot of people. We teach to mostly kids and then the parents
just listen. We always manage to share a spiritual thought too,
because most of the people we teach are referrals or less-actives. We
taught a family from Brazil Spanish and English which was crazy fun!
There were different languages flying left and right! I hope we can
continue to use this tool to open the hearts of the people.

My personal studies this week have been focused on the atonement and
how I can better apply it to my life. I was reading in Preach my
Gospel and in one part it says "God cannot look on sin with any degree
of allowance, and sin prevents us from living in His presence. Only
through the Savior’s grace and mercy can we become clean from sin so
that we can live with God again." This struck me pretty hard, the
atonement is something that we need to be using every day! This is
what we focused on in District Meeting on Wednesday, how we can get
our investigators and the members to feel of the important role the
atonement plays in our lives.

Thursday afternoon we went to visit the Familia Brozovich and they
live in a pueblo called Urueña. It had the coolest old castles and
stuff I have ever seen! The architecture was incredible! It was also
incredibly foggy so we couldn't see a whole lot of what else there was
to offer. Anyways, they made us a huge 5 course meal which consisted
of soup, rice and beans, chicken and more rice, beans and another
soup, then a warm apple pie. I have never been so full in my whole
life! It was delicious. They are a family from Peru and after dinner
they gave us tons of little gifts! They gave me a tiny Llama and they
helped me name it Cusco hahaha. They are such a nice family! The
oldest son in the family, Aaron, has his mission call to Bolivia! I
was super excited to tell him all about my Aunt Stephanie who served
there :) later that night we visited with Mabel, and she is struggling
with some stuff, so we didn't really share anything, we just listened
for a while. It's sad sometimes when we don't know how we can help,
but I think just listening may have been the most we could've done.

Friday we had intercambios and I was with Elder Fletcher again! It was
so much fun haha, he's like a brother to me out here! For medio dia,
we went to Hermana Fernandez's house and had some real traditional
Paella with chicken and man it was good. She invited over a less
active member named Miguel who works just below her Piso and she was
so happy to be doing member missionary work! When he left, she just
started getting so excited that he was here and she was sure that he
felt the spirit of the missionaries. It was the coolest thing to see a
member so excited about our work :) later, we met up with a lady named
Sandra, who is the mom of Nicole Ramierez! She's the one we always
hang out with. We shared a Christmas message with her and invited her
to church, but she said no because she had other stuff going on
Sunday. We set up another follow up appointment with her and hopefully
Nicole can help us figure out what she needs! Then to finish the
night, we had a meeting with Angel, the awesome guy who I love and he
loves me! I found out that he speaks 5 languages fluently, holy cow!!
We taught him the Plan of Salvation in English which was cool for a
change. He asked lots of questions and it was a good lesson! Elder
Fletcher was a good companion for a day :)

Saturday night we had a branch "Noche de Hogar" which turned out
incredible! We had lots more members than we expected there and
everyone had fun! We watched Christmas videos, had a testimony
meeting, sang songs, played games, and had treats at the end! Super
fun and everyone thanked us at the end which was the most rewarding
part of all. On Sunday we had the primary program and that was
awesome! It reminded me so much of Utah and made me miss home a little
bit! But to be honest, the songs for kids are cooler in Spanish ;)

Sorry it's another long week but there's so much stuff I don't want to
leave out of my emails. I'm having an awesome time out here serving
the people of Spain and wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now. I
know this is God's work and I'm more than willing to give him a little
bit of my time to help my brothers and sisters here come unto Christ.
Thanks for your love and support, enjoy the Christmas Season and I'll
be Skyping in 11 DAYS :) :) :)

Con Amor,

Elder Brady Craig Smith